Welcome to my blog! This has been a long time in the making and I am super proud to be introducing my new endeavor, Author Becoming-coaching! I can't wait to share what
the universe has spent much time teaching me about how mindset, fear, anxiety, and limiting beliefs can be the reason why many a writer or author can't write.
How Did I Get Here?
Funny you should ask. I started my adult life with two goals; become an elementary school teacher and have a family. My first lesson in striving for your dreams, is that colleges expect you to study not party. who would have known. So, my first big life shift, was switching colleges and majors after my sophomore year to become a chef. Goal one complete. However, I am not a person who handles what I see as failures well, so I did eventually get my teaching certificate and landed my first teaching job as a sixth grade English and Social Studies teacher. I had wanted third grade or lower, but ended up in that position for 10 years and loved it. I got married, had my two baby girls and life was good. Until...
Life took yet another turn and we packed up moving our little family back to my home town to care for my mother who had begun showing signs of dementia. I was lucky enough to land a job teaching eighth grade English at a school almost an hour away from my new home. Ok, it wasn't third grade, and winter drives would be harrowing some days, but it was a job.
Daughter number 2 did not adjust well to moving and that added stress and guilt to my plate. One year after landing my job, they moved me to the high school, mind you I was not certified to teach high school, so I had to take on studying to pass the exam, oh, and it still wasn't third grade or below, it was fricking high school.
My mother steadily went downhill and became combative and emotionally abusive. I understood it was the dementia, not my mom, but it took a toll piling on more guilt, anger, and sadness.
Fast, fast forward to 2008. I had started writing historical romance and had a goal of publishing. It was my refuge in a shit storm of crap swirling around me. My mother had been put in assisted living and had adjusted fairly well, my youngest daughter was thriving, my oldest, still not coping well, and I HATED teaching high school. Seriously, if a high school teacher dies they are going to heaven and they should be put at the head of the line. I couldn't take working as a teacher anymore, but by this time I had 15 years of service and would not get hired because they would have to pay me too much. Hubby and I talked and he agreed between my mother's care meetings, dr. appt. and other issues, and the girls it made sense that maybe I take this time concentrate on my writing dreams so I retired from teaching. Things were going to get better! No.
Not too long after, and I won't go into details here to protect, well everyone, but my husband and I hit a rough patch. The one rock in my world crumbled and I was adrift. At this point my writing, which I was going to "concentrate" on fizzled to a stop. I "had" to put all of my energy in my mother's care, my children's needs, and rebuilding my marriage. Oh, and again, more guilt because I was supposed to be writing and I wasn't. The longer I avoided writing the worse the guilt got, to the point my writing, my one refuge in the storm was relegated to being just another thing on the list that never got done.
I Needed to Get Off The Ride!
I was always what I called a "realist", which I have come to learn is really just "negatives" cranky, drunk, loud younger sister. In my mind it was safer to plan for the worst and hope for the best. But, in fact I wasn't doing the last part. I had lost hope and couldn't see beyond my past and my current situation to over myself and back to the things I loved.
I wasn't eating, I had been diagnosed with celiac and type 2 diabetes, and I had withdrawn from everything that brought me joy including my writing. I never did give up my dream of being published and the smartest thing I ever did was to continue to be part of the writing community, going to my writing group's monthly meetings etc.
At some point, I honestly can't tell you the spark, but I knew I couldn't live the way I was anymore, and it was ok that my girls didn't have matching socks, honestly it was the in thing anyway. I needed to take back my hope.
After a lot of self help reading, coaching with some very smart women, and sheer determination I began seeing the world from the lens of possibilities again. I hadn't realized how much of a shift my brain took away from what the world could offer me to how to dodge what the world was throwing my way.
Why Should You Care?
Now, as I write this first blog post on my new coaching blog or my new Author Becoming-coaching business my 7th historical romance is also launching today and I am lucky enough to be writing now full time, and on the regular. I still get stuck, but it isn't because I am getting in my own way. My blocks now are the blocks that writers should have; plot issues, character problems, etc.
I have wanted for a long time to find a way to give back to the very community that held me up and showed me grace when I couldn't find it for myself and my new business is the culmination of all you read above, and my own observations of so many writers and authors getting in their own way, no matter if they are brand new not even published, or USA Today top selling authors. You don't need to live with the burden of a negative mindset, limiting beliefs in yourself and what is possible, or flat out fear about possible failures.