Hello Cheyenne, Wyoming friends!
I am doing my very first book signing, for the book I published last year, You Are Loved, on Sunday, December 10th from 4-6 PM at the new Barnes & Noble location at 5116 Frontier Mall Drive, Suite 400! This is where the old Natural Grocers location used to be. I so hope you can make it!
I’ve never done anything like this before, so needless to say, I am nervous! But I am also greatly excited to share this message with my community, here in Cheyenne where I currently live.
One of my main goals with this book was to do something that made myself as vulnerable as possible, to demonstrate to myself that I could come out the other end okay. Publishing the book last year and giving my friends and family the chance to see the deepest, most personal parts of me was quite an experience. And one of the things that shocked me the most about publishing this book was how well it was received. For such a sensitive subject matter, I had expected a lot of mixed reviews. It was incredible to see even some people who I thought for sure would not enjoy the book write to me saying they loved it!
I was diagnosed a few weeks ago with Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) after seeing a psychologist in hopes of getting some more concrete information to guide me in the next stage of my mental health journey. For those living with social anxiety, one of the best things we can do is to expose ourselves to situations that make us feel uncomfortable, not as a way to punish ourselves but as a way to bless ourselves even when we feel scared. This is very much what I get to do right now! Pulling back the curtain on ourselves can feel painful and terrifying, but when we do so we also give ourselves the opportunity to feel love. I have struggled very hard with depression and anxiety for eight and a half years now. I rarely, if ever, get to actually feel love, even in the best of circumstances. But feeling loved and being loved are two separate things. This is a lot of what my book attempts to explore.
As I allow myself to be vulnerable in the most public way I have ever done to date, I am also going to be blessing myself with a new experience—and with each new experience, our old experiences are gradually rewritten, and we find reasons to be less and less afraid. It’s not going to happen all at once. It is very much a process. But my hope—my very desperate hope—is that given enough time and new experiences, I will gradually find a way to feel love. But in the meantime, feelings are not the full picture. You are loved, right now, today—whether you feel it in this moment or not.
I think a lot of people assume that the authors and influencers and public figures of our world are the ones who have their shit together, while the rest of us ordinary folk are the ones with issues. It’s almost like we see two classes of people—the inspirers, and the inspired. But this is not even remotely true. I didn’t publish this book because I have my ducks in a row; I published it because I don’t! And we need more people in our world willing to admit that.
It’s okay that you don’t have your shit together. It’s okay if your life is a mess. So is mine. And if you show up to this book signing with me, I hope we can take some time together to embrace our own messiness, our own humanity, and enjoy a chat and some laughs and maybe even some tears as the confused, anxious, uncertain, strange, beautiful human beings that we actually are.
If that’s something you want to come celebrate with me—you’re invited! I hope to see you there!
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