The Magic Was Never in the Books—It Was in Saying Yes to Myself

What my writing journey taught me about authenticity, passion, and trusting life's timing

My last few posts have been about authenticity and living in flow, so I am sharing an example of a series of events that happened to me when I first started writing, as well as some that have happened more recently.

I began writing my first novel in 2017, and it took me some time to feel comfortable speaking about it. In August, 2019, I was part of a Visibility Challenge led by Nailia Minnebaeva. She helped a group of us get comfortable with speaking about being an author and writing.

I often cried openly with them. I don’t know what it was about them, other than I felt seen. Since then, I’ve only met one of them in person, and that too, many years later, but I felt comfortable enough with them to express emotion. I felt strongly about my path as an author, and talking about it openly made me emotional.

It’s funny that I have always thought that I knew what I wanted. I have felt that way since I was a child. I thought I wanted to be a nurse, then a doctor, and I knew both paths were possible. But I didn’t pursue them. I pursued a career in hospitality, which I left in 2015.

Illness forced me to consider my true path, and that’s when I finally acknowledged that what I truly wanted was to lose myself in the world of books. I had wanted this since I was a child, but back then, I didn’t know what that meant or how to go about it. I thought it was magic, or that it took magic to make books. I had no idea how people came up with worlds and stories, or how they dreamed up characters and situations.

It felt so foreign and incomprehensible to me, so I stuck with what I knew: science and maths. And I followed that path for most of my life.

Over the years, I heard people express their passion about what they did for a living, and I didn’t understand what it meant to feel fully passionate about something. I remember an old boss telling me that “those of us” who were so passionate about the spa industry were in it for life. I looked at him and nodded as if I was part of the “us,” but I truly didn’t know what he was talking about.

Now I understand passion. Passion, conviction, desire, thirst, and commitment for something bigger than me.

When I started writing in 2017 and began the Visibility Challenge in 2019, I was forced to talk about what it means to be a writer for me, what motivates me to write, and what I write about. It was no coincidence that when I was ready, the experience appeared. I was open about my writing since then.

Shortly after that challenge, I attended a writing retreat, and one thing led to another, seemingly without my needing to make an effort, and one book was published after another. I published five books and rode that wave until it no longer felt right.

More recently, I separated from my publishers and took back my books, and I’m slowly republishing them under Trust In Your Soul.

When I first did it, I was overwhelmed. I didn’t know what I was doing or what I was getting myself into. Then, due to personal circumstances, I wasn’t able to put time or effort into republishing my books. But once I was ready, again, one event flowed into another.

I started with Lonely Dove. I found a company to help me with my cover redesign. I edited my book again, and the same company that did the cover laid it out. I got new ISBNs and quite easily uploaded my book to Ingram Spark and Amazon. It’s now on pre-sale and will be released on June 22!

The rest of the books, and more, will follow. I was authentic and true to myself, and life flowed.

What I’m saying is that when you stop resisting your authentic path, life unfolds. My writing journey was the vehicle, but the deeper message was that I trust myself and the universe, I got in alignment, and allowed life to unfold.