The Counselor's Couch - No. 3

TL;DR: Thanks for your patience with me as I sift through the places somewhere in between ruined and rebuilt.

The Counselor’s Couch, No. 3: Which one?

“How is book writing going?” my friend asks me, and of course she would, because Emily has known me for 20 years and she knows what to ask. Before I even put one word on the internet, she was sitting across from me at coffee shops, or over frozen yogurt with extra toppings, asking the deep questions because she has long known my deep dreams.

And writing a book was always one of them.

Just over a year ago, after two attempts at book proposals and two tough rejections, I had put the book idea back on the shelf and was determined to leave it there until God made it clear if or when I should ever take it down. I had no capacity to play the algorithm game, and no aptitude for it either. I felt (and still feel) a growing concern around my stewardship of social media and I wondered, given the publishing industry being so deeply enamored with the size of one’s followership, if I was ever going to be able to be an author and live my life, keeping up with its very real and difficult demands. So I chose my life, and with it a tiny little space on the internet here, to just be a writer, and stop worrying about being an author.

Within three months, two editors reached out to me about two different projects, assuring me they still wanted me to be a writer, and isn’t it just like God to take something out of our hands because it’s in such better care in his?

In July of 2023, I signed the contract to write the book I have had in my heart since 2018. 

Seven weeks later, I was meeting with a lawyer to begin divorce proceedings and living my life as a single mother to six kids. 

“Well…” I respond back to my friend, who already knows the ins and outs and twists and turns the last seven months have taken, “The book writing is feeling a little bit complicated. Because here’s the thing, I don’t know how to show up to the page. I don’t know who my publisher will want to show up to the page. Because there are a few different iterations of Katie these days, and which voice belongs in the book she’s writing…?”

And as soon as the words are out of my mouth, I realize I am not just talking about the book.

Which version of Katie will show up for my life? That’s the bigger, and far more important, question I have to answer.