Sarah Nannen – Book Journeys Author Interview – June 23, 2017

On this episode of Book Journeys, Maggie McReynolds, interviews Sarah Nannen, author of Grief Unveiled: A Widow’s Guide to Navigating Your Journey in Life After Loss.

Sarah was a birth doula, a single mother of four and a widow. As such, she felt the cultural constraints set by society on widows and sought a way to show, both herself and others, a new way to look at grief and the process thereof, free of any stigmas related to these.

Ever since high school she had always thought she would write a book. She was, however, intimidated by the process of writing a book proposal and sending it to a lot of people who might look at it and then reject it after doing so. She was also concerned that she would give up a lot of her rights to get her book published and that those in the publishing company would have her tweak and alter what she was writing so that she would actually have no real say in what the book would actually turn out to be. Thus, when she came across Angela’s program and learned that her message would come out loud and clear, she joined it in January, 2017, and was able to write her book, which was released in the last week of June, 2017.

It took Sarah three tries before she finally wrote the final book, and her first two drafts were totally different books from the one she finally wrote, with her first draft being written while she was hiding from owning her book, and her second draft came out very academic in tone. She admits that she needed to become the book’s author before she finally succeeded in writing the book she needed to write, and that allowing herself to be vulnerable was critical in doing so. Sarah also noted that the process Angela used to guide her authors in writing their books was a big boost to her confidence, as she was sure she would have a book at the end of the program. The “Idea to Done” program also helped her get through writer’s block, by enabling her to think about the source of that. That said, with all the demands on her time, Sarah found it challenging to write out her book over a period of several weeks. In the end, she stayed in a hotel room for four days and focused only on writing the book then.

Where grief is concerned, Sarah acknowledges that the journey is long, hard, exhausting and painful, and for all its intensity it can also be a beautiful and transformational experience. Sarah also remarked that writing her book makes her an authority on the subject to everyone else, and being a grief coach enables her to open conversations on the matter with people who are curious about grief, are grieving themselves or know someone who’s grieving and wonder how to best interact with the grieving party. She also finds it empowering to share, with the world, the wisdom she’s learned both from her experiences and from those of her clients, a wisdom that she remarks is not part of today’s cultural norms.

Listen to the Sarah Nannen Interview on Book Journeys Radio

Interview Transcript: Sarah Nannen – Book Journeys Author Interview – June 23, 2017

DOWNLOAD the PDF: Book Journeys Author Interview – Sarah Nennen – June 23, 2017

Watch out for Book Journeys interview with another exciting author.