My Why

I sat down at my desk, ready to write something that was going to be life-changing and somehow liberating. Words on paper have always been an escape for me. I used to write short stories as I didn’t think my life was interesting enough FOR a longer tale. But sitting at this desk, at this point in my life, was neither going to be liberating nor an escape. It was going to be painful. And I would have to sit in that uncomfortability for seven years.

I felt a strong urge to start writing my book in the Fall of 2016. We sat around a campfire one evening with some church friends, and a fellow asked me what I was going to do now. I had just put my anti-trafficking ministry to bed after hitting burnout pretty hard in August of that same year. I told him I was thinking about writing a book. When he asked what the book would be about, I replied, ‘My life,’ with a weird twinge in my accent that wasn’t ordinarily there. It’s the kind of twinge that happens in your voice when you don’t really know what to say, what to say next, and you don’t really want anyone to ask any follow-up questions.

I’d had this twinge in my voice before and many times since.

I started to write my story, but it was more a collection of facts than feelings. Nothing emotionally charged, if you will. Nothing I didn’t think anyone past my best friend would read and tell me it was brilliant. You can’t trust that woman!

It wasn’t until two years later that I would be met with my ACTUAL story face to face, in the office of a friend I had just met for the first time in person. She challenged me to know my story well. I didn’t know what she meant, but it sent me on a journey of self-discovery I have yet to come back from.

Fast forward another two years, and I’m finally taking that overnight trip alone to go write in a hotel room an hour south of home. I hate staying in hotels alone. They creep me TF out. I did my usual routine of making a public statement in the lobby in front of men traveling for work that I was not, in fact, alone and that my husband would be joining me shortly. I walked past my hotel door and down the hallway as to avoid said travel men from knowing which room I was in, alone at the time. 

Ugh, Being a woman is a lot of work.

I sat down and wrote what is the majority of the first draft of my book. I listened to “brown noise,” which I’d just learned was good for focus. I listened to instrumental, emotional music. I used my Apollo Neuro for focus and recovery when my brain felt like it had melted. I escaped to the Mediterranean restaurant in town for dinner that was mediocre at best but one of the few places I knew I could eat there. And the next morning, I drove home, having packed an “easy” 7 and 1/2 chapters into my hard drive. 

But I wasn’t anywhere near done.

Over the next few months, I would add, edit, erase, add more, erase more, and come to finish my third draft before working with my content editor. That’s when the real work began. I had been triggered in writing many of my chapters, but this was next level. The challenge it brought me to dig even deeper was harder than I’d ever worked, or at least since I’d finished my level one at the Allender Center. 

I’m used to digging deep. Hell, it’s what I do with my clients. But this was something akin to digging a hole to China like I did on the beach when I was little. This wasn’t just hitting pay dirt. This was like looking for the molten lava stuff that’s at the core of the earth…or whatever you call it. This was the worst part of the whole writing experience.

Until…

I had five days to get the final edit uploaded into the platform before I was leaving on two back-to-back trips. Immediately after I hit “submit for approval,” I had a sinking feeling I’d made a terrible mistake. My heart, my blood, and my guts were entirely out there for the world to read now. And worse, criticize. Listen, I’m on TikTok, so I'm no stranger to hate comments on the internet. But hate comments and criticisms about my writing, my story, my….life…? I don’t think I am or ever will be ready for that. Worse, I expect people to call me a liar. Why? Oh, I don’t know. Chalk it up to childhood trauma, I guess. Sometimes, it’s hard for me even to believe all that I’ve lived through.

So why go through all of this? Why not just live my life as a trophy wife instead, a joke I regularly make with my husband with a sarcastic tone in my voice. Despite all the discomfort, despite the possible hate comments and criticism, I still believe my story matters. And even though I’d love to be #1 on some platform somewhere, I’m mostly fine with having it read by the ONE person I wrote it for. My audience of one. The one that will read it, realizes that what happened to them WAS real, DID happen, and finds a path of healing for themselves.

So yeah. That’s why I wrote my book. 

I hope it changes just one life. And if it does, then that will be enough.