Did you really write this book?

A backhanded compliment from a friend who offered to read a pre-published version. I’m not
going to pretend it didn’t sting. Was she saying it was good? Or something else?

In Resonance, I describe a conversation with a spiritual advisor who suggested I might find more
ease if I could learn to just be. As we were wrapping up, she added persuasively, “You should
really be writing about your story.”

Within two weeks, I had my first version of Resonance. It was rough, but it came through easily.
It felt like alignment—that internal yes that doesn’t require convincing. The kind that says,
“What are you waiting for? You’ve been writing this in your mind for years.”

A year and a half later, I estimate I’ve logged about 2,650 hours into this book. Not in a force-it,
push-through kind of way. It never felt like a chore. It invigorated me. I would sit down for a
little while and look up hours later, wondering where the time had gone.

So I asked her what she meant. Was she suggesting it didn’t feel like me? Was it assisted? She
paused and said it was beautiful, but polished. Lacking human authenticity.

Oof.

As someone who didn’t always feel like they had a voice, writing became the place I could find
one. It lets me express myself from a steadier place. I’ve always been drawn to language—to
shaping a sentence until it carries exactly what I mean.

My husband jokes that I must have been an editor in a past life. He doesn’t understand how I can
spend so long reworking a single sentence until it feels right. He’s not wrong. One email can take
me an hour.

Around that same time, I got hit with an upper respiratory illness that took my legs out from
underneath me. Another slowdown. I’ve started to see these moments differently. The ones that
interrupt everything. There’s usually something in them for me—something I wouldn’t have
noticed if I had just kept going.

Slowing down gave me space for my ego to settle and sit with what she said.
“Never enough” surfaced. Perfectionism. Patterns I know well. Somewhere along the way, I
stopped trusting what was already there and started trying to refine it into something safer.

Cleaner. More complete.

Maybe there was a moment, a few months ago, when Resonance was ready. But I wasn’t.
She was right.

Let me be clear—there are countless tools available to writers. I’ve used some of them, like most
people do. But every word in this book is mine.

What shifted was something else.

I went back to an earlier version that once felt unfinished. This time, it felt honest. Less polished.

More alive. Maybe there was a part of me that wasn’t ready to let it be seen. Vulnerability has a
way of doing that—of convincing you to keep adjusting instead of releasing.

But it also showed me again something I recognize in other parts of my life.

When I feel unsteady, I reach for more. Better. As if refinement could replace certainty.

Sharing this journey has already done more than I expected. I didn’t know a healing journey
would ripple outward the way it has—into conversations, into relationships, even into my family.

I’m still letting that part unfold