When I first did the material in the book, I mis-read the title as Walking In The World, a telling distinction.  I don’t easily inhabit my body or this plane, having evolved a very deep intellectual capacity as a way of avoiding abuse when I was a child.  I felt that my misunderstanding of the title signaled this separation – that, to me, the world is not concrete and one but ethereal and infinite.  While it makes me an effective writer, because I have a well-developed imagination, it’s crap for helping me do stuff like, oh, laundry and balancing my checkbook.

As I take an opportunity to look back on the week and reflect, this week of walking in this world has been filled with a lot of abundance and good things.  Rachel and I finished Sealed by Magic and sent it off to our editor for consideration; we finished the first and second rounds of edits on Emerald Keep; we made a deal for the third book of the Chicagoland Shifters which will come out this summer; and we started work on the keepsakes we will feature in the blog book tour for Emerald Keep.

It’s becoming a normal experience for me to have more difficulty the more positive things occur.  I’m much better in times of crisis, because they are so familiar to me.  I’m told this is a function of PTSD and of abuse survivors, because we become so accustomed to the chaos and unpleasantness that we don’t know what to do when it’s subsided.  So my goal is to become so good at enjoying when things are going well that I make that a habit, instead.  Sounds much more positive to me, doesn’t it to you?

I will say this to those of you who have suffered abuse at others’ hands: there is hope.  Get help, be gentle, and write.  Trust your own memories and not those you are told to have.  You can find your own voice, and you can heal.  It will take time and it will be challenging.  But you can do it.

Write on!