Pull up a chair, kiddies, it's story time! Actually, I wish it really were story time, because then this intensity would be over, and I'd be writing about this in past tense. The truth is, I'm smack dab in the middle of the story, and since this story is about a woman in the throes of labor, it's bound to be a little messy.
As I begin writing this piece, it's Tuesday, September 21. It's the first day of autumn, and the seasons are changing. For me, a dream of 15 years is about to come true: Dr. Cat's Helping Handbook is scheduled for delivery (another "birth" term) in November 1999.
Right now, though, that delivery still feels like a dream, because if there's one thing I've learned from this lo-o-o-o-nnnng dance with the book, it's that nothing is for sure. Nothing!
Although I've never given birth to a human baby, I have some sense of what it must be like to be pregnant — in my case, for 15 years! I've been doing everything possible to support the birth, but now, in the weeks before the big event, I realize again that all kinds of things can still go wrong. The timing could be delayed, the cover colors could turn out weird, the binding could be faulty. Anything could happen. After 15 years of work, you can bet that a botched birth is not exactly my favorite fantasy.
That's why I'm writing this: to help me integrate some fears. All these shadowy feelings are running around inside me like chickens with their heads cut off. I need to call them back to the coop and help them settle down. If I succeed, I may be able to get through the last couple months of this ordeal with a little more grace.
Even though I don't really have time to write an article while I'm in the middle of book production, I know I need to take the time anyway. For one thing, I doubt if the intensity is going to let up anytime soon. The details and demands of design, production, proofing, and printing will simply shift to fulfillment, distribution, promotion, and marketing.
As any parent knows, the birth of a baby is just the beginning. I may breathe a little more easily once this baby is out of my womb, but I still have to raise the child. Therefore, there's probably no better time than now to stop and write about a question that has come up countless times during this adventure.
That is, how do I know when to push and when to let go? I've asked this question many times in the middle of endless rewriting and production tasks, in terms of wondering how I can do everything and still take care of myself. I've also asked this question in regard to the overall project: How do I know when to keep pushing and when to let go when things feel too hard?
This book is definitely the hardest thing I've ever done professionally. My work with Dr. Cat's Helping Handbook makes 15 years of private practice and three academic degrees look like Sandbox 101. Frankly, if this were only about producing a book, I would have given up the fight long ago. However, it's not about that, any more than my practice was about "helping" or my degrees were about "having credentials." Helping and having credentials are certainly valid reasons to work with others or to go to school, but those reasons aren't primary to my soul.
For me, Dr. Cat's Helping Handbook (and everything else in my life) is about fulfilling my purpose, which is to liberate my heart. That's the bottom-line answer to the question I posed a moment ago, regarding when to push and when to let go. Every time the tasks of writing, designing, building, and funding this book threaten to overwhelm me, I stop and ask myself: Is this helping me to liberate my heart, or not? If so, then I keep pushing. If not, I must let go. So far, the answer has always been affirmative, so I'm still pushing, even though there have been plenty of times I've wanted to let go.
One of those times happened a couple of days ago, just after I started writing this article. It had been a particularly rough week in the book-birthing dance. My production team and I had been working overtime to get the second round of galleys done, so I could meet a deadline for an indexer who was about to go on vacation.
To make a long story short, the trickster spirits chose this past week to "corrupt" the electronic files of the book, so we lost thirty to forty hours of work among the three of us. I also lost the window of opportunity for the indexer, which meant that the printing would be delayed. Plus, the lost or corrupted files would have to be rebuilt, which would entail additional time and expense.
It's still possible that the book can be released in November. After all, late November is still November. However, if worse comes to worst and the baby is late, I know it's not the end of the world. Things change, official publication forms can be refiled, and embarrassment can be overcome. As always, nothing is for sure.
When the files corrupted this past week, I'd already been living on three or four hours of sleep for a couple of weeks while I proofed the first round of galleys and placed the quotations in the margins of the book. Can I tell you about the quotations? It will give you a taste of one small but important aspect of this gargantuan book-building odyssey.
I started collecting quotations more than ten years ago, because I saw that Dr. Cat's Helping Handbook would have spacious margins peppered with words of wisdom from many different people. After collecting more than 550 of these quotations over a decade's time, I spent the last year deciding which would go in which of the book's 55 chapters.
The moment finally arrived to begin placing these quotations by page, once I received the "double truck" galleys from my production team. (Double trucks show two pages of text on one big sheet, as if the book is open before you.)
At that point, I had to place the quotations not only according to page, but also according to the most relevant paragraph on each page, and also, according to the overall composition that arose when multiple quotations were juxtaposed in the margins of the facing pages. It was no small task.
As it happened, the aforementioned digital disaster happened just after I'd completed this task, and just after my computer helper had entered most of my work onto disk. The loss of this work was a bit much to bear, given my state of exhaustion and the fact that this was just one of a zillion setbacks in the ongoing saga.
To make matters worse, these book-birthing pains came on top of some growing pains in my relationship with John, my partner. Following his participation in a couple of weeklong Process Work seminars, John had gotten hitched to his star in a big way, and he was suddenly and uncharacteristically withdrawn as he tended the fires of his own embryonic soul-birthing.
Although I supported his newfound power surge at the spiritual level, emotionally I felt like a woman who had been deserted in the delivery room. John had always been there for me throughout the book's development, and his support had been constant and invaluable. Now, just when I needed him most, his energies were focused elsewhere.
On the flip side, I had been there for him through his long master's degree program in business psychology, and I was the one who encouraged him to go to the seminars as part of his postgraduate work. Now, at a time when he was giving birth to a new phase of his life, I was rather preoccupied, seeing as how I was finally giving birth after 15 years of gestation. It was no one's fault that neither of us had much to give at a point when we each needed extra support. It's just how things turned out.
On top of the arduous book process and the relationship challenges, I had to undergo some distressing conventional medical procedures during this same period, and things were also heating up in the money department. Because no financial backing came through for the book, my spiritual helpers informed me that I was to take on credit card debt in order to print and market the first edition (this was on top of thousands already spent in pre-production costs).
I can live on almost nothing, monk-like creature that I am, but I certainly couldn't pull $20,000 out of a hat to print and market the book. However, since I abhor credit card debt and therefore have always managed to avoid it, I was none too thrilled about this directive from on high. Even so, I realized that this, too, was another liberation lesson.
That is, my spiritual teachers helped me see that my hatred of credit card debt was not only a rejection of the typical American mentality of buy now, pay later. In my case, it was also another manifestation of my addiction to control. They said that if I couldn't take on this responsibility in order to birth the book, then I wasn't really free around money. Busted!
It was within the context of all these simultaneous pressures that I broke down and cried my heart out a few days ago. After months of holding the tears at bay, my body finally found its way into the cleansing waters of grief. Everything felt too damn hard, and I didn't know how I could navigate the chaos and still take care of myself.
The thing is, I'm in the middle of labor right now, and once labor begins, a woman can't say to the incoming baby, "Sorry! I need some time to kick back and relax!" The final stages of book production are the same way, except this kind of labor is measured in months instead of hours. My exhaustion level is profound. My desire to say screw it is off the charts. However, every time I give myself the litmus test and ask if this is helping me liberate my heart, I get a yes.
Truly, self-care is rarely a black-or-white matter. I'm going for it with Dr. Cat's Helping Handbook because it's part of my heart liberation work, which is the deepest level of self-care I know. In other words, I'm doing this book on purpose — according to my life purpose. That's why I keep pushing myself past my limits, and that's why I know not to give up when it feels too hard.
Just before this article went to press, life presented a few Titanic-sized obstacles that will prevent 1999 publication. Feel free to check for updates about Dr. Cat's Helping Handbook by visiting <
