What Happened After I Said Yes

Wow. What a journey from the day when I said “yes” to writing my book to the day when it was finally released into the world. So many things have happened between those two days, and luckily, many of those experiences are now part of Still With Me: A Journey Through Loss into Life – a memoir about love, grief, inner transformation, and finding my way back into life after losing my partner Jannis.

So if you wonder what’s been going on during all these months since my last blog post and after such an immense journey through grief, it’s been writing, editing, polishing and typesetting my book, making decisions about the front and back cover, and of course, going through all the emotions related to those stages.

And… moving again on my favorite island into a new apartment, suddenly deeply connecting with stray cats — White, Cuddle, Hope, Tongue Cat and Aris — who have become my little furry family whom I visit nearly every day. I also started exploring Greece again, doing some island hopping and allowing myself to move forward with my life after such an intense period of writing and processing everything I had been through. Also, the inner process I have been going through during the past 4.5 years has continued, peeling away some final layers of my doubts regarding my self-worth and my ability to receive good things in life.

But back to the book.

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Some months ago, I found a literary professional to give me editorial feedback on what I had written, which suddenly kickstarted a second wave of writing, although I had already thought that my book was ready. I had even posted a short blog post several months earlier, announcing that my book was ready. Little did I know…

Clearly it wasn’t (and neither was I emotionally).

The first wave of writing had happened incredibly fast. Much of the book poured out of me within a very short period of time, while I was still living through many of the experiences I was writing about. That first wave held an extraordinary kind of beauty and intensity. But after I thought the book was finished, I entered a five-month period that began with some of the most painful weeks of my life. During those months, I went through not only some of the deepest layers of grief, but also some of the most profound inner transformation I had ever experienced. I also did my best to simply live and to process everything I had been through — both on my grief journey and on the years-long journey that completely transformed me internally. In many ways, those months became a kind of rebirth. And when I eventually returned to the book, I wasn’t quite the same person who had written its first version.

Only after that pause, and after receiving the editorial feedback, did something suddenly click into place.

In late January this year, I began writing again. For a month and a half, I was able to write new material and edit the already written text from a much more grounded place. Looking back, I think I needed both waves. I needed the intensity of the first one, where I felt almost as if I had plugged myself into an electrical socket and far too much energy was running through me, but I also needed those months in between to live, grieve and gain enough distance from everything I had experienced. When I look at what I wrote during those different stages, I can see the transformation even in my own writing voice. The high-octane, soulful language that came through during that expanded state of consciousness gradually became more grounded and embodied as I did.

Then that literary professional helped me polish the grammar, which meant thousands of new edits… thousands — not hundreds…

Can you imagine…?

I definitely did not!! 😊

After all this work, I bumped into a self-publishing company that also helps with worldwide distribution. That was important to me, since my book is written in English, not in my mother tongue, Finnish. I decided to take that route instead of spending more time trying to find a traditional publisher at this stage. I still felt a sense of urgency to get my story out.

The company helped me typeset the book and created the front and back covers. Those became their own processes, with a few little bumps in the road, and I needed to go through the pages several times again until the book was finally ready to be published, and until my brain and eyes had reached their limits because of several review rounds.

Earlier this month, I flew to Finland to receive the test copy of the book because I still needed to check one final time that everything looked good.

It did, to my relief.

My family in Finland and I celebrated this moment on a beautiful Finnish summer evening. The moment I had waited so long for had finally become a reality.

Never in my life had I thought that my path would take me through something like this — and I’m referring not only to writing and publishing a book, but to the whole journey the book is about — but looking back now, I couldn’t be more grateful for the path my soul had chosen.

As I have written on its pages, the path itself was the purpose, not just the destination.

The suffering. Surrendering to what is. My old life completely collapsing. Going through intense trauma release and waves of grief. Following my heart when my mind had no map of where I was going. And simply trusting that if I kept taking the next steps forward, I would end up somewhere I was always meant to be.

And of course, the journey still continues, but from a different state of being.

I have no idea how many people will read about my journey, or who they will be, but I know that I didn’t write this book only for myself. I feel that I wrote it first and foremost for other people. To help others see that we are so much more than just our physical bodies or what we can experience in the physical world. And that love does not need to die when the physical body does. The connection can still remain, just in a different way from what we were used to. And that following the heart might not always be easy, but it can give a sense of meaning, purpose and fulfilment.

If you are interested in reading my book, it is now available in the BoD bookstore in Finland as a print-on-demand edition, and the e-book will also become available soon. I am also planning to sell copies directly a couple of times a year, but I still need to figure out the best way to do that. Over the next days and weeks, the book will find its way to other Finnish and international platforms like Amazon.com, and all the way to China and South Africa.

When I say that out loud, I can barely believe it…

If you have any questions regarding the book or where to get it, don’t hesitate to leave a comment here or reach out to me privately through my Instagram account, Soul Speaks Now.

Only now that the book is actually out in the world am I beginning to understand that this chapter is over. For more than a year, there was always something left to write, edit, check or fix. Now there isn’t.

The book has left my hands, and now it feels as though not just a new chapter of my life, but a completely new book has begun. I just don’t know its content yet…

I want to end this post with the words that begin my book. May they be a quiet request to life that my story finds its way exactly where it is meant to go — to the countries, the places and the hands of the people it is meant to reach.

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Until next time ❤️ — and hopefully it happens sooner this time. 😊