Untangling Samantha...

Well, I put in my edits to my editor yesterday.  The book is coming together and is nearer its release date, which I am still not sure when that will be...but this fall for sure.

It is so weird to still be holding onto something I started so long ago.  31 years is a long time to hold something you now intend to release.  It is exciting, terrifying and poignant.  I am ready, I think.

I know not everyone is going to like it.  I know not everyone is going to get it.  I know people are going to talk shit.  I know it is going to be hard to hear some of the things people will say about it.  

But none of that changes my experience with it.  I had to live it, you, if you so choose, only have to read about it...

I wish I could say this is the last reveal for the secrets I have kept...but it isn’t.  There are more.  Perhaps the subject of a later book, who knows.  But this is the biggest one. This is the one that almost killed me.  This is the one that feels like I am taking my life back with the telling and the releasing.

I am going to Panama in January.  Solo. Back to where it all began and where it all ended for me.  You can expect there will be a second book.  I have already started writing it in my head...

I guess what I am feeling most this day is how grateful I am that I get to do this.  I get to release this.  I have the talent to write about it.  I have the ability to let go that which I have held onto so tightly for the whole of my life.

I have only one wish for this book...that it helps others.  That others read it and think

“Me too!”

“I had that experience!”

“I felt that way!”

“I almost killed myself too!”

I hope you will read it and feel anguish, pain, loss, heartbreak. But I also hope you will read it and feel joy, humor, laughter and redemption.  I hope you will be buoyed by the reading and will put it down feeling hopeful about our experience as humans.  That no matter how great the tragedy is that befalls us, we really do get to decide what we do with our trauma.

We

Get

To

Choose

Trauma is usually something someone else gives us...but then it becomes ours.  Not really fair, but it is what it is.  What we do with it from there, is ours alone.  We can let it take us out and down, or we can use it as a catalyst for growth and change and healing and to really fucking live.

I can’t wait for you to read it...

And I never, ever thought I would say that.

Again, still...