by Alvin Ramirez June 30, 2015
Last week’s episode of Book Journeys with Angela Lauria featured author Emily Schvaneveldt who talked about her book, Journey to Authenticity. Emily’s book is a compilation of quotes that she had collected as she went through both the good and tough times in her life. Her idea for this book actually came to her in a dream where she saw her book on an end table. Then one day she just thought of going through her old journals, books, letters and cards, and fell in love with the process of finding all these quotes and thinking how cool it would be to have all her favorite quotes put together in a compilation. She loved quotes because they always hit home even as they are simple, clear, and precise. She said that there was something in each of these quotes that resonated with her heart and allowed her to go deeper within herself as far as figuring out who she was and what she wanted to do in this world.
Emily’s book journey actually started at a time when she was in transition, having had to leave the only home she and her family had ever known when her husband accepted a new position in a different town. She felt like the carpet was ripped from underneath of her as her entire support system was removed from her, with only her husband and kids as her source of love and support. But for the first time, she also didn’t have all those people around that she was taking care of her whole life, so she suddenly found herself having the time to take care of herself, with two to three hours everyday just doing what she wanted to do. This brought her to the realization that it was important to take care of herself and give attention to her own needs instead of always putting everyone else’s happiness before her own. Her book taught her to love herself and now it has become her mission to teach women to take care of themselves the way they take care of their family and friends.
For Emily, the most valuable thing in writing her book was not really the idea that she could sell many copies and help change people’s lives, or even make an imprint in this world so that her life mattered. For her the golden nugget was the actual writing of the book which centered herself to know what was going on in her life even as the process of writing and dialoguing allowed her to find out why her experiences were coming to life and what they mean. The bottomline, as Emily puts it: “Goals and dreams are cool but it’s the person that you become while you’re doing it.”
Listen to the Emily Schvaneveldt interview on BlogTalkRadio
DOWNLOAD Book-Journeys-Author-Interview-Emily-Schvaneveldt-June-25-2015
Watch out for Angela’s interview with another exciting author.