Books Can be a Joyful Collaboration

THE NEXT CHAPTER: 

Weekly Tips for Writing & Publishing Your Bestselling Book

Last week, I had the great joy of sitting down on The Story Cure podcast with two extraordinary women. Dr. Louise Stanger is a renowned therapist specializing in interventions and trauma, and Cheryl Fox is a celebrated photographer and visual storyteller who has published several collections of her work.

Their book, Trauma is Your Superpower, is available for presale and launches on May 20! Honestly, what they have made together is unlike anything I’ve seen in the crowded field of self-help.

When most people think of books about trauma, they imagine serious, weighty tomes designed to take readers through a process of personal transformation.

Well, Dr. Louise—who turns 80 this October, still sees patients, and maintains an active Instagram presence—felt an urge to shift the mood entirely, from one of wounding and desperation to one of empowerment and celebration. As she explains, “Trauma is challenging and difficult and hard. But once you’re able to transform it, it can become your superpower.”

She speaks from hard-earned experience. Dr. Louise has weathered six sudden deaths in her lifetime, including her father’s suicide when she was just a child, her first husband dropping dead at age 42, and the loss of her infant son to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. She’s had every reason to stay buried in despair. Instead, each time, she has rebuilt her life around meaning. Her greatest purpose lies in helping others find their way through their own dark passages, including addiction and trauma.

What makes her new book truly unforgettable, though, is how Dr. Louise chose to tell the story. Rather than producing a text-dense self-help volume of the kind we’ve all seen a hundred times, she partnered with Cheryl Fox (no relation to me) to create a full-color, comic book-style workbook filled with vivid illustrations, journaling exercises and pages, and inspirational frameworks. Read it cover to cover in just a couple of hours, or flip it open to any page to enjoy the message or complete a worksheet. 

In the book, Dr. Louise acknowledges the enormous suffering that comes from losing a loved one or career or dream, getting in an accident, suffering abuse or struggling with addiction, yet she offers hope at the same time. You can and should grieve your losses, she suggests, and there's a clear path forward to healing through finding meaning in what happened to you.

Trauma Is Your Superpower is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and at Dr. Louise’s website, allaboutinterventions.com. If you know anyone confronting difficulties in their life right now, this is the book to put in their hands. It is colorful, wise and healing.

Hit reply and let me know if this short, practical book about turning trauma into your superpower appeals to you. I would love to hear more.

Aloha, 

MeiMei

TIP OF THE WEEK: 

Write Your Purpose Statement

Dr. Louise says that your purpose does not have to be tied to your career or title or anything you put on a business card. It simply has to have meaning for you.

Most of us walk through life without ever pausing to ask what gives our days direction, which is part of why so many people end up feeling lost when a job ends, a child leaves home, or a loved one passes away.

So, sit down with a notebook this week and complete the following sentence as many times as you can in five minutes:

"My purpose is to..."

Write quickly, without overthinking. Notice which answers make your chest open up, and which feel borrowed from other people's expectations. The answers that feel true are the ones worth following.

If you are writing a book, those same answers will likely point you toward the heart of what you are meant to share with your readers.

Want to know more about the next cohort of my 8-week online program and other offerings from Your Bestselling Book? 

Learn More Here!