Writing a book is an act of love and dedication.  Why else would you spend months on end locked in a room with your computer, writing, editing…. editing and writing, until you’ve wrung every word out of you, searched your mind to see if you’ve covered all the bases, and know that there is still more that you can give. But there’s a point where you have to admit… this is where the book stops.

It’s been over a year putting The Fearless Factor and it’s accompanying Study Guide together,  and I’m about ready to launch.   It’s almost like birthing a baby, because at the end of the pregnancy, you’ve had enough.  You are excited to see the new person out in the world, but you can’t rush. You need to have those last few weeks to make sure it’s as good as you can make it.

Sometime in the next two weeks this baby will be launched on Amazon and on my website.  In the meantime, here’s a brief excerpt. I hope you find it interesting.

I find that it is not the circumstances in which we are placed, but
the spirit in which we face them, that constitutes our comfort. —Elizabeth T. King

Early in my journey to develop a healthy attitude to life, I was greatly influenced by the works of Clarissa Pinkola Estes, noted psychologist and the author of Women Who Run With the Wolves.

For the first time, I was presented with the idea that we choose our parents. At that time, I wondered how that could possibly be true. Why would I choose to come into a family that was completely chaotic, violent, and abusive?

Many of you reading this will be thinking, “that’s nuts! No one would choose what I had to go through.” In my case, it took me a while to sit with that idea before I finally understood that life is about making choices, so why wouldn’t I choose my parents. There were certain life lessons to be learned, and while it could be seen as harsh, the evolution of my character was strengthened by what I endured in my early days. My mind was a generational tar pit of anger, self-hate, depression, sadness, and grief. Oh, yes, we do inherit the sins of the fathers and the mothers. I grew up with chaos so I learned to recreate it in my own life.But as my journey continued, I began to see the lessons to be learned.

I believe that the main purpose of life is to learn who you are, how your world functions, and what is your place in it. So why wouldn’t you choose parents from whom you could learn some of life’s greatest lessons? In my case, I had to learn compassion, forgiveness, and self-esteem. I’ve learned how to overcome great odds, using my intelligence, humor, determination, strength, indomitable spirit, and wonderful creativity to move beyond the circumstances of my birth and environment.

I learned to ask for MORE — and received it.

For more on The Fearless Factor