Lived Experience and Launching What Matters

On PTSD, Book Launches, and Impostor Syndrome

Once I read a post about a trauma therapist who got into a car crash. She knew all the signs and effects of trauma, and how to walk people through it. But she herself hadn't gone through a life-threatening traumatic experience until the car crash. She was reflecting on how strange it was to be an expert on trauma and then finally see signs of it in herself.

(AI generated)

Vietnam

This past week I read Kristin Hannah's book, The Women. It is pretty hefty, about the experiences of combat nurses in Vietnam. This is a period in our history I didn't know very much about, and yet I still regularly talk with people who lived through it. The plot seemed distracting, intriguing, and a useful thing for me to read. I went for it.

I found myself grossly captivated. My new therapist and I are working on the uncomfortable, "letting waves of sadness that come at me move through me." This time, I didn't try to push them away. As I read it, I cried and I cried often. I cried on my way to pick up a kid, and I cried making dinner. Deep grief welled up in me and overflowed, often without an apparent reason as I listened to The Women.

Maybe I wouldn't have read it if I knew so much would be about PTSD and trauma recovery. But it was and I related to it. Who am I to be relating to combat nurses?

Launching joy

I just love a good book launch. They're energizing! Joyful! They’re movement and a birth of creativity! This year I bit off more than I can handle in supporting other authors' book launches. I was obviously part of

Lore Wilbert

launch (I wrote about it here). But there was one for

Sarah E. Westfall

last week and another is coming next week for

Jenai Auman

(I write about her chapter on Hagar here). There were multiple other books and authors I hoped to support earlier this year, too, but was unable to spare the bandwidth.

It isn't a ton of work to come around a writer and celebrate their book-baby coming into the world, but any give can still be a sacrifice, even a small give, if you are giving from nothing. I have to prepare margin to invest in their launch. Without the relationship collateral of being besties with the writer, it is easy to feel the effort doesn't matter. But it does.

AI Generated

Five important parts of a launch

A book launch isn't drastically different from other types of launches. I led twelve launches for my nonprofit's annual global awareness and fundraising campaign challenge. We'd prepare and network in the fall, begin marketing in January, ask for commitments in February, and put all our effort in for the four weeks of March, with a big push the first week for registration and a big push in the last for donations. When we'd wrap it up, we were so exhausted we'd have to take the rest of the spring and summer off.

Some of these launches were done with excellence. Others were done pretty poorly. My team and I did a lot of learning the hard way, at least until we got some training. But the know-how did nothing for us unless these five things were in play:

1. The world was in a season to receive

2. We were all on the same page with the vision

3. We used our team's strengths

4. We networked more than we marketed

5. We had the bandwidth to give

The anti-trafficking nonprofits

You might not know this about me here at Authentically Elisa, but I founded two anti-trafficking nonprofits over the last fifteen years. (Not on my own of course, there were always dedicated people with me.) When this season ended not too long ago, it was raw, painful, and complex. I tend to not talk about it too much here; it is something I am still grieving. But this experience, especially when I was the acting executive director, shaped me greatly and mostly towards growth.

One of the ways I grew was to become trauma-informed. It was necessary to effectively come alongside survivors and combat trafficking and exploitation.

Experience matters

When I read the post from the trauma therapist after her car crash, it caught my eye. I too had a lot of information about trauma in my tool bag. I too had walked with others on their healing paths. But it was another thing to experience complex life-threatening trauma myself.

I find my perspective has drastically shifted since getting post traumatic stress disorder. I am much more empathetic and full of compassion. I am more gracious. I stopped putting a timeline on others' healing.

I'm still trying to give these things to myself.

Timelines

It took the main character of The Women awhile to get mental health help, and when she finally tried, she was sent away, her experience totally invalidated. Frankie found some good and also some bad coping skills. She moved on in life. She survived, and her parents might even think she was primed to thrive. Inside, she was still struggling.

By the time she encountered new triggers and losses (which both hailed back to her experiences in Vietnam), she spiraled. It took her at least five plus years to get the help she needed, and the only reason she got it was because she almost died when her unhealthy coping skills were killing her. I think the book concludes over fifteen years after her time in Vietnam. By this point, she had finally healed enough to be able to come alongside other women vets.

This timeline really struck me. Frankie's whole life was altered by events in her early twenties. I have talked with many survivors of abuse who took years, even decades to get help after their experiences. I marvel that it is even possible for people to function with unaddressed PTSD. Then I remember "functioning" might not be the best word.

Within a month of Kai being born I knew I wasn't experiencing only postpartum depression. I was pretty sure I had PTSD. I felt like I had gone crazy. The mood swings I expected, but the dreams, dissociation, and flashbacks? I'd also never experienced depression like this, wanting to just disappear. And although I was familiar with anxiety, the level of hypervigilance and catastrophizing I was experiencing was something else. I was having panic attacks. I was barely functional.

This is something Frankie experienced, too. But she lived with it so much longer than I have because of the lack of awareness, resources, and help. I long for these to be available to all

Coaching book launches

Every writer I had as a coaching client this past year met with me to plan their book launch. I've gotten pretty good at helping authors develop their personalized launch plans. Although I typically lean into impostor syndrome with pressure like this, to my surprise, these coaching sessions haven't made me feel like a fraud. I actually have felt like I can help authors with this!

As I already mentioned, I’ve led launch teams. I love being part of launch teams. I have years of experience as the friend who cheers. Then, I researched and I wrote my own book launch plan for Restart the Rising's book proposal. Also, I'm actually trained for this: I'm a certified writers coach.

Just like I understand survivors and others with PTSD in a unique way, I'm getting the same (although much more pleasant) vibes from living the experience of a book launch. My own books were supposed to be released in less than a week, and I find myself nowhere close to putting into practice an ideal launch plan!

Professionally, I am "an expert" in both walking with survivors of human trafficking and clients in through their book launches. And yet when I'm the one on the other side of the table, this expertise can help, but it doesn't bestow the characteristics needed to face the path forward.

Launching books might be like launching for a journey? (AI generated image)

What hasn't gone right

There have been a few things keeping me from starting my book launch eight to four weeks early, as recommended. I didn't even decide to release these older resources as books until eight weeks ago! I've tried to keep my head down, eyes on the goal, but it has gone at lightning speed.

As any author would tell you, getting books ready to publish will suck-up all your bandwidth. I am feeling this. There has been a significant amount of rewriting and redesigning, adding more content, proofreading, endorsements, comparative market research, legal research, etc... Even now, a week before launch, I wonder if I shouldn't have disregarded my list of other ideas that potentially could have bumped these books from being just good to being excellent. All to say, moving these printable resources to books I could be proud of was a lot more work than I expected.

In addition, the person I was consulting for publishing and I ended up not being on the same page. This ended up throwing more into disarray and required a lot of the work to be done twice or having to learn how to do things I wasn't expecting to have to do. I've always wanted to work with a traditional publisher to avoid this work. As I don't have that lived experience, I wonder if much of that work would have been thrown on me, regardless. Based on my conversations with friends published traditionally, I thing I'd be exchanging one set of problems for another. However, I would probably have the much longer time-table of 18-24 months to get prepared.

Impostor Syndrome Pt.5

Truthfully, the main reason the book launch hasn't taken precedence is that I have done a poor job validating this experience.

For one, I am releasing two books that I wrote years ago. Although I use The Life Mapping Workbook and Justice-Minded Kids in my life today, they aren't me today. They are the old me, before COVID, before lupus, illness, a traumatic pregnancy, PTSD, church hurt, relationship betrayals, and a nonprofit implosion. They still represent what I believe and teach; I am publishing them because they will meet hundreds of not thousands of people where they are. It is just hard to get my mind wrapped around marketing something I developed and was most passionate about seven and five years ago.

The work of authors builds upon their old work. We shift, change, and form, like all people do. Who we were becomes enfolded into who we've become, which will fold into who we are today, and then who we will be tomorrow.

The second reason really notches-up that impostor syndrome: I am self-publishing these. And although there are myriads of self-published bestsellers, and I would never tell a client their self-published book isn't a "real book," honestly I struggle with this.

I wasn't chosen by an agent or pub team to bring these books into the world. I didn't ask for permission. I just did it. For those of us who are deconstructing from cultures that tell us we need to be under someone's directive this is a challenge. If we have such poor judgement that we must be part of a hierarchical approval system, stepping out to self-publish takes a lot of bravery.

And lastly, I begin to doubt if any writers will ever trust me in the future with their own book launch because I can't even get my own together.

What is worthy?

All to say, as I acknowledge how much work this is and that I feel like an impostor, I am still left with a book launch. Besides recognizing lived experience matters, it is very possible that the only other thing both PTSD and book launches have in common is that centering on more truthful and accurate statements can help.

One that I've been saying to myself a lot recently is "this isn't worth losing peace over." And I can only believe that if "my worth isn't in what I produce" and "these books are still valuable to launch even if I don't sell hundreds and thousands of copies."

Sustainable book launches

Another truth affirmation I'm finding important to rally around is this: "It is worth it to me and the people I serve to create a sustainable book launch." With the experience I do have with launches informing me, I actually believe this.

In case it hasn't been obvious where I was headed, I want to invite you to be part of my slow-burn book launch. How will you do that? I'll be sending out another email this weekend about sustainable book launches, so keep an eye-out!

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In the meantime I'd love it if you could tell me if you related to any of this. It means so much to me when you tap the heart, share this with a friend, quote this on Notes, or leave a message in the comments. Thank you!

Other Posts on Impostor Syndrome:

• Fraud: Impostor Syndrome Pt. 1 (as a writer)

• Identity Theft: Impostor Syndrome Pt. 2

• Work: Impostor Syndrome Pt. 3

• Changemakers: Impostor Syndrome Pt. 4