Book Birth Postpartem Depression

Having a book is a strenuous experience. It seems a good thing to celebrate and it is, but publishing a book is in many ways like having a baby, it means distortion, labor pains, anxiety, and depression can be part of the process. When the book is birthed it is out in the world naked for all to read and judge and celebrate. It has left the soft warm space of your body for the colder harsher world. I’ve been receiving rave reviews on my book, still it’s hard. 

My book, truth be bold—Serenading Life & Death in the Age of AIDS is in particular a hard book to birth. In it I come out as a long term survivor (LTS). Something I’ve held private and I have been discresionary about who I’ve told for many years. Now it is like an open sore, these words that I wrote to explore my feelings about living with the virus. The words that remember so many who have passed. The words that gave me emotional strength to carry on. The words I wrote to celebrate those lives who have passed and to honor the many souls who I believe if they were alive today we would be living in a different world sitation here in America. We lost millions of caring men and women. We lost artists and musicians, we lost sensitivity and humor. We’ve come to a heated head with a head of state who would not have been elected with those million plus lost votes. We’ve all lost, the clock has turned back. Right now the new government wants to slash global AIDS funding by 300 Million, that money saves lives.

I have been exhausted since writing my book, plagued with insomnia and depression. My book celebration was during Mercury in Retrograde and my book was left at home. I’ve learned a lesson the hard way. Now there are many to reach out to who want to buy a book and I’m committed to meet with each of them despite my exhaustion. I will crawl my way out of this and keep on surviving, find the next words, the next topic, the next book. That ongoing search all writers travel. I have a story I need to tell, how my early life connected to bring me this fate. Whether I have the skills to pull this off is questionable especially in this postpartem place. 

Right now my book is at Open Books, I am selling them directly, and of course they are on Amazon. Please consider buying one and if you do, please consider writing a blurb on Amazon and Goodreads. And, thank you for reading.