144 - We Are the Expert of Our Greatest Wounds

Today’s Topic: We Are the Expert of Our Greatest Wounds - Writing an Impactful Book That Leads the Healing Journey…

I talked a bit about sitting with our greatest challenges in a blog post over on my personal page (nicolekristingabriel.com). It’s a work in progress over there, but ultimately, I want to begin opening up about some of the challenges I’ve faced in my life and how those obstacles I’ve learned to overcome have turned into my life’s greatest strengths.

For many years I have watched how authors use a book to tell the story of what they’ve learned…on the other side of something they have come through. Many are cancer survivors, some have lost loved ones and are restructuring their lives, some are business leaders that have stepped up after many years of bootcamp in lower ranks, some have healed their sick children, and I’ve even had some authors that have been through sex changes and have had to say goodbye to their former selves.
Generally people that write books have come through something and now they are writing almost in a celebration of what they have survived and are now stepping up, not just to tell their story, but they also serve as a center of expertise in the thing they have overcome.

I’m going to make a general statement after years of observation… your weakness, when overcome, becomes your greatest strength! So, does this mean we can make a list of all our wounds and that’s what we should write about? Well… if you have overcome those challenges that have been repetitive in your life… yes! You’ve become an expert of your wound… if the wound is no longer emotionally charged!

Perhaps you have even considered (or already created) a foundation, a support system, a training program, a list of best practices or guidelines, or some other success from this event or experience. If you have taken things to the next level (or simply survived the wounding) then you most definitely have a right to speak with a certain level of expertise on your subject. Whether you have reached a pinnacle point in your life or career or not, you don’t have to wait til you reach a kind of plateau to tell your story.

I’ve personally been kinda waiting for the final chapter and that has kept me from releasing my story up until then. I wanted a happy ending for the next book because God knows I deserve it. But, because it hasn’t come as I expected it to, I was held up and unable to put words to pages. I decided to start a new blog outside of my general topics here on the publishing industry.

I have had a very unique and experiential life outside of the publishing industry. I’ve shared some of this in my books over the years. But, honestly, I’ve been plagued with wanting to write for years yet I wasn’t sure both what the world wanted to hear and how to tell my story in an authentic way without sharing the interactivity with those that were…let’s say…colorful characters in the traumas and dramas that are at the heart of the stories I would tell. I have always written authentically.

It can be a bit challenging when you feel held back because you keep revisiting old wounds that you know have to make it to pages. But, how do you share the story without sharing the personal aspects of all the participants of your story?

Let me tell you a bit about what I’ve been contemplating on my next book as an example…

I’ve been through many things that nearly killed me but I’ve overcome them time and time again. At a certain point it hit me that I’m not wounded but really one bad momma! As they say, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right? So, I decided I wanted to write my story not about me being wounded but about me being the hero. On the other side of my stories I’ve been awakened. You know, the kind of awakened that realizes those same mistakes won’t be made again.

I wanted to write about being an awakened woman, but not just that, but to show how a man might better love an awakened woman. We don’t all come with instructions after all!

Awakened women have likely been through something. We have a certain level of expectation in all relationships as we know they have to be built on trust. We’ve learned that we don’t have to tell you why we know what we know, in fact we may not even want to because we know that would make us look more like a victim. We want to embellish our strengths but that’s challenging for a man because he sees us as wanting to be self-sufficient. The difference is that we know how to do on our own and we really don’t want any person to come into our lives and take us back all the years it took us to arrive where we now are. We have a hard time turning over the reigns to anyone that hasn’t proven themself worthy of taking the lead.

My personal challenge is multi-fold. First, I don’t know how to tell my story without telling the story. I feel the story of how I interacted with certain people would make my story far more impactful but I don’t want to overstep their privacy, destroy my credibility, or not act with integrity. Second, I don’t want to share details in a way that points fingers at others and makes me a victim. This gives me no strength. I want my book to be uplifting but, in order to be real, I’ve always felt it needs to get more experientially detailed. I’ve started and stopped writing many times.

I’ve really had to process many things about my story and get clear with regard to where I’m at in the healing journey. If a certain person you’ve spent time in life with was not a person of integrity then how much integrity do you have sharing the details of an interaction you had with them? You see my point?

If I wanted to approach my book as a business leader then I would have all the details of interpersonal relationships worked out. I would have a handle on my emotions. But, if I wanted to be a relationship counselor I might have a need to share a baseline story for an example.

Ultimately, when you write, you want to sit at a certain level of expertise. If you almost lost your life then perhaps you share how that happened but then you shift your focus to what your big ah-ha moment was that came from it. How are you not just surviving, but thriving now as a result of it?

I find its far easier for people to stay with high-level concepts when they don’t have deep feelings however. Myself, I’ve always been an empath so feelings are rich and deep. But, how you approach sharing the details of your wounds really, ultimately, depends on the goals you have for your book. If you intend to “spill the beans” so-to-speak, then what do you hope to get as a result of that? Is it just to make you feel better to release it or is there a valuable reason you feel you should share it?

In my case, I wanted to write a book about being an awakened woman as a guideline for how to love someone like me… for a future partner. But, in all reality I’d rather have a partner willing to discover the secrets on his own because it’s likely we would discover many things about one another we didn’t even know in the process. I want to build the “guidebook” to all things me through an intentional discovery in the safety of an ideal partnership. I mean, after all, my story is quite sacred and I owe it to no one to tell it. Of course, certain choices and behaviors in partnership, in particular, are chosen because of former teachings. It might be assumed that you have a captive audience in the book you choose to write and telling your story to those willing to listen can really be quite healing. But, what we don’t often understand is that what goes on those pages in now public for as long as that book remains intact. Your future self might be better served to make sure that what goes onto those pages is kind to the future healed self. Because the last thing you’ll want to do is to keep re-living those stories with each new reader.


When People Listen We Heal!
As someone who has worked many years in the healing arts, I’ve learned that there is much healing that happens when we finally find someone to be able to authentically share our story with and they truly, and I mean truly, hear us! Unfortunately, for many of us, we don’t find the person to really hear us but we have to find ways to heal. It can often times manifest in the writing and publishing of a book.

As we age we pick up experiences in life, and not all of them are pleasant, we also find way to overcome the scars. You know, I have a client that wrote a book about her 18-year old sister that was murdered back in the 80’s. The greatest question I think everyone wants to know is how do you continue to live after such en event. The sense I got from her is that it’s her job to find forgiveness to give herself freedom. But, she’s also learned that she’s really had to live life large to live for the sister that never got to go to college, never got to get married or have kids. She’s almost lived with more purpose to make up for the life that was lost.

We often think our own personal problems are worse than anything anyone else has ever experienced… until we meet someone that gives us a bigger story. Not all of us are capable of handling the bigger story. That takes a big presence… a bunch of courage… it’s a big courageous soul-growth kind of life for sure!

Have you ever thought that perhaps if we all spoke more courageously about how we feel if we’d all live more authentically? When we share our stories we give others permission to do the same and as a whole we all end up healing. We begin to live authentically. We create our own rules.

There is often such a divide in the world. We can’t go to work talking about the issues we face at home if we want to keep our job. It wouldn’t be considered professional. And church seems to be that place we show up in our Sunday best to heal the wounds we never speak about…and when we leave we sin. Our therapist charges by the hour and insurance only allows us so many visits to get to churn through our minds and prescribe a healing. My point… oftentimes we don’t have a place we can go to talk, listen, and share. The burden often falls on our loved ones or we keep thoughts and ideas to ourselves. The healing may never happen and we hold our dramas and traumas deep in our hearts and continue walking throughout our lives finding ways to numb the pain.

I’ve often said a book is a therapist. It happens when you read a good one, but it also happens when you write… you heal! But, there are a few obvious dilemmas when you use a book to out your wounds. First and foremost, you become vulnerable. Second, you are always going to live on those pages as the wounded. A book will capture this chapter of your life indefinitely. And thirdly, you are going to have a hard time escaping the picture you have painted… at least until you write another to showcase your growth.

How many times have I been asked questions about my first book and it’s been more than a decade since I wrote it and even longer since I captured the experiences I laid out on those pages. I know that I owe it to myself to showcase the next chapters and what has come of some of the vulnerable stories I not only shared then, but the growth I have had since. The layers of the onion will always keep peeling.

When you share from your heart and get vulnerable on the pages just be aware of what might haunt you later. There is a great release and healing that happens in the writing of experiential and self-help book with heal life examples.


Keeping Things On the Surface
There is also another mistake when sharing your story. Many authors keep things rather surface-level and don’t get too personal and come across cold and inauthentic. There is a fine mix between sharing too much and not sharing enough of your own story. Your book is always going to be received better when you start by talking about what gives you credibility to write, but remind your reader as they read why you are an expert of the thing your writing about. People do like to know that you’ve reached a certain point in your personal or professional life after you’ve been knocked down a few times. It’s more relatable.

There’s a time and a place for personal sharing of stories of failure and success in a business book - especially one about entrepreneurism. You’re stories are not all going to be relatable to the reader and many times authors think their stories are not important or big enough to engage a reader. But, if you are going to interject a story into the function and flow of your book, you are best to really elaborate on it. But, there are some stories that just require a quick mention. Perhaps you mention you had a paper route as a young entrepreneur and that’s really all you need to say unless something greater happened during those deliveries. Just keep in mind that the best stories told are the ones that are relatable to the function, flow, and content of the book.

Universal Wounding
Let’s take a minute and address the obvious. Our world is going through a massive upheaval and transformation right now. If I were writing a book I might mention the setting and time frame you are writing within to give some atmosphere and showcase the environment that is moving you to write what you are. But, also keep in mind that I’ve witnessed many books referencing the uncertainty of these times and the material they are using is obsolete, dated, incorrect, or simply dates the overall material.

We are in the midst of some great disclosures and the human spirit is being tried. It can be very hard to find your grounding right now. There are earth changes affecting general well-being, health challenges that have plagued the world, and a geopolitical divide on many levels in politics, world views, identity, and religion. Everything is up for discussion and all of which is a target for scrutiny. It can be very challenging these days not to offend someone. Many believe they are right and everyone else is wrong. These are the times we are living in. It can be very challenging to have good footing to know how to approach delicate matters. Even when you are not trying to, these days you are offending someone.

Exposing who you are by writing a book may set you up as a target if you are not aware of how you speak. Social conditioning is vastly unique and there is such a great divide. How you live your life today vastly affects how you get viewed as an author and the audience you draw as readers. Country folks have no use for city rules and city dwellers don’t understand rural needs. Electric vehicles, for example, aren’t useful when you are several country miles from your next location. Big diesel trucks may be a stinky pollutant in the busy city. You’ve got to be aware of differences in ways we never thought of before. And, how you write now immediately tells not just your side politically, spiritually, and socially, but it also showcases your level of awareness. There are many topics currently that seem to be understood by some but overlooked by the majority. If you’re so caught up in your wounds or busy in your work life to do the necessary reading and research required these days you might find yourself writing or using source material that is quickly out-dated. In fact, now that AI is becoming more popular, you might even find that sourcing is all wrong. It’s been known that AI is not properly sourcing materials that feed into the research you might be pulling up as reference material for your book. You’ve really got to find more than one resource and be very cautious with quoting sources these days.

Conclusion
If you get a bit stumped on how you are approaching your writing and the content you discuss, start looking at your wounds and I’m pretty sure you’re going to find the greatest lessons you’ve overcome and certain levels of expertise worth sharing. Because I watch so many authors bring book to print, I can tell you that it’s quite common they are writing about what they have overcome. In fact, it’s so common that it truly gets a bit redundant as a book coach. The real trick in any book to to make it less about you (the author) and more for the reader. You have to decide on your angle of value. You value might be through creative wordsmithing and your ability to entertain or it might be about not just providing valuable incite but tools for the author to step into a change they are looking to make in their lives. Just don’t get yourself stuck in pouring your heart out onto the pages until you really think through your approach and desired result. Since you are self-publishing you ultimately get to choose how you want to approach your project, just use good common sense and consider positing your material so that it gives you an opportunity to step off the pages and into speaking or coaching or something else beyond the book.

I’m just wrapping up a Memorial Day weekend here and I hope that you have enjoyed a few days off and somewhere in the celebration of an extra weekend day you take a moment to remember those that have fought for your freedom. Today our freedom is in jeopardy more than any other time in our history. I do hope that you are stepping up and questioning the narrative and doing some research, as there is so much going on behind the mainstream narrative that so many are absolutely oblivious to. For those of us awake and able to see, it’s alarming the mind-numbing that has over-taken our country. I pray daily that we are stepping into a better time for all sentient beings. I’m afraid however, that in war there are casualties. And so few know what I am speaking of to be very real. If you’re hear and listening I know you are awake and watching just like I am. There are a few of us still paying attention! Bless you for hanging in there and staying strong. We’ve still got a ways to go. Make it a good short week as you return from Memorial Day weekend. As always, I wish you peace, love, and light!