From
Paranoid Schizophrenic to a Life of Service
I was
labeled "paranoid schizophrenic" back in the '70's and had
multiple hospitalizations of about a month each over a ten year
period. Having survived this battle with my demons, I wondered if I
could help others with similar problems. Since I do a lot of
journaling, I decided to start writing about my experiences.
It took
me 18 years until I finally published my memoir: "The
Bumpy Road". This was “gutsy”, but “I got a little
help from my friends”, as the Beatles song says. Meeting an
award-wining writer, who asked me to provide her with my manuscript
was the beginning of making this publication a reality. She read it
and told me, along with many editorial suggestions, “I was so
absorbed in the story that I forgot to go to my yoga class! “
Things
just seemed to fall into place after that—I was in the
“zone”--meeting an artist who did my cover, a web designer who
introduced me to social media after designing my page, and a graphics
person to do the formatting, and then finally self-publishing in
March 2012.
I began
to ride the wave of many book events. Getting up in front of a crowd
to speak about my life was scarry! “Who cares about me?”, I
thought. I managed to get some sales. But was I really helping those
in need?
In
October of 2014, I took a gutsy leap and enrolled in a course
in online marketing. On my very low social security budget, this was
a huge leap of faith. I have designed a landing
page, and am offering a free ebook for those who sign up for my
blog, leveraging my memoir and life experiences to offer comparisons
of digital self-help programs to boost self-esteem. In the future I
will create products based on what my readers tell me they want. The
blog launch will be around the fall of 2015.
Now I
feel I am finally pursuing a way to help others based on my own life
experiences.
Couldn't
you do the same?