
Faded Notebook To Novel: Moxy Is Out In 3 Days.
Share
My book Moxy is coming out in 3 days.
20 years ago I used to have a beat-up royal blue notebook, the cover nearly faded to white with an orange Popple sticker on the front. I carried it around the scorched heat of Tucson everywhere with me, while the boys I lived with and their friends teased me that my writing was crap. I used to close that book and tell myself that someday if I lived through all of this, I’d become a writer with published books. I’d live by the beach. And my daughter would like to know me. This was all unfathomable in 2004.
Today the hardcover and paperback proof of Moxy, my novel with the final cover, came in the mail. I clutched the glossy books in my hands like I used to clutch that faded royal blue notebook. Her voice wrote this glossy book just the same as she filled that old notebook. The only difference between then and now is time and practice. I disassociated for a while, lost in my name stamped across the cover. It doesn’t feel real, and when it does, all I feel is fear.
“It’s like our wedding day, when we both woke up feeling sick with nerves. I haven’t taken a deep breath in days. I keep putting myself in absolutely mortifying situations that I feel so intensely. I text my NEW BOSS a screenshot of a fucking screen that had the answers to everything I needed, asking her why I couldn’t find the answers.” I laugh to my husband, my head in my hands. It’s like I’m constantly looking at things I can’t see because I’m not really here. Or maybe nothing is out there. It tends to flip back and forth.
It’s because I still can barely say what my book is about out loud, and that day is coming whether I like it or not. So I might as well start now because it’s scheduled to be published in three days. It’s drugs. And the horror of prostitution. And what it takes to reclaim your own body and be a normal human being after that kind of trauma. Especially when living in a reactive state to the denial my physical body can’t support becomes normal.
Yes, that's right. Prostitution. I sold my body for years for drugs and far less. Did people traffic me? Absolutely. But the biggest component of trafficking that nobody talks about much is how they make you think it’s your idea. They act like you’re special and you’ll fit in with them, as long as they own you. Which, if you make it out alive someday, is profoundly confusing to believe. But then, you get older. Only time and getting older will teach you how young you were.
I don’t know how to tell people I work with about this book. To my horror, a colleague at my new job asked to see the cover photograph because she’s a photographer. When I showed it to her and she read the back, I wanted the floor to swallow me up, and it kept re-entering my mind. How will she look at me the next time I see her? I think of the pain and disappointment my mother will feel or my in-laws in the UK. What on Earth did their son marry?
I wake up at 4 a.m. every morning to sit in bed asking God to just get me through this gracefully and, if possible, successfully so I can stop living off of an American Express card and paying a 30% APR on coffee creamer and spinach. But who knows. In my experience, the ways I always thought were out were actually deeper in.
I’m here on this rock in this extremely limited physical form to transmute isolation into connection, pain into empathy, fear into power, and total spiritual death into abundant life. I know that the core message of my book is the story of how those shifts happen, and the way life changes and what someone is capable of as a result of those changes.
So anyway, my book Moxy is coming out in 3 days and wahhh, all of my dreams are coming true. I have worked on this book every single day for two years. Brilliantly talented people have supported me and this work to no end. And I wake up in the middle of the night asking myself if I will regret publishing this for the rest of my life. But I guess we’ll see what happens. I’m proud of my story, and of my voice — even when it feels like hell. The most when it feels like hell.
So please buy my debut novel Moxy on Amazon this Saturday 1/18 at 4:30 p.m. PST and review it so it can get shown to more people, and maybe I can start paying cash without interest for my coffee creamer and spinach.
This photo is of me as a 9-year-old having a wedding for all of my trolls in 1992. That little girl, beaming with pride over what she made from nothing, is still the core of who I am, regardless of all of my fear, bad decisions, and ugly secrets.
6 comments
So proud of you continuing to follow your heart and dreams. Cannot wait until we all get to read about the journey it took for you to get to this place now. You’re a very special human, Heather.
You are so incredibly brave and talented! You inspire me everyday!! I’m so proud of you and all that you have accomplished! I remember when you made that first step to go to yoga, then became a yoga instructor those were your first few steps to transformation. I watched you gain self love and self confidence. I can’t wait to read your book!
I’m so proud of you Heather. Your bravery and strength to have turned out to be who you are today. I’ll never forget meeting you the first time and how we’ve grown to be family. Regardless of everything that has transpired and where we all are today, you’ll always be special in my heart. After all you did bring our angel into my life.
I love you and Kevin.
SW
Such a massive achievement and a testament to your strength and talent
Love you Glowy . So very proud of you but more importantly, feel that feeling within yourself