Purpose of a proposal is to pledge undying allegiance to someone or some project. In the case of a Book Proposal, it is to hook a potential buyer/publisher, tell her, in irresistible terms, the gist of your writing, show her your chops ~ writing wise ~ and include all the connections you've got that will make marketing easy for her. Plus your CV (curriculum vitae), bio, and how to reach you.
Why did I ever think I could get all this info together and send it by Monday to the agent who said to me last Sunday, "Send me everything you've got."
Now, I'm in the familiar pattern of my birth trauma ~ needing support to get this all "born!" "Houston, we've got a problem." All this material is not going to fit into the wee tiny space of forty-eight more hours. Bring on the forceps, please, but apply them gently.
Another agent, with whom I had a consult Friday, said, "Get hold of Michael Larson's book, How to Write a Book Proposal. The current, updated edition." Turns out Michael Larson is one of the founding members of the San Francisco Writers' Conference, which is where I did the speed dating with agents last Sunday and got a nibble for my manuscript, Emergence.
So, the writing is on the wall... and I need it to be in an email to send by (my ignorant, self-imposed deadline) Monday, August First. Aaaaaaack! Pan-ick Attaaaack!
No way the books I've ordered will be here in time to read. No way I'll be complete with translating my manuscript from Steve Jobs' Pages program on the MacBook Pro to Bill Gates' Microsoft Word program by Monday either. And editing? Piffle Poffle... eat my waffle... Each chapter up to Chapter Twelve has been polished to within an inch of its patina. Only nine more to go. What happens if I wing it? Could I write a proposal that will be intriguing enough to garner agent loyalty to getting the word out that our climate catastrophe will only grow worse if all of humanity is too traumatized to "look up" and see what's going on and that we are the only species who MAY be able to shift the demise of the entire ecosystem called Earth?
Healing our birth trauma removes the basic ingredient which supports PTSD to grow so abundantly in ourselves and in our fellow humans. Post Traumatic Stress becomes a disorder when the pathways have become so well worn that our only response to what's going on around us is a trauma-based response. We do really stupid things, like continuing to make stuff out of plastic, burn fossil fuels, wage wars, foul our nest, demean women and all marginalized people, abuse children, and practice differentism in all aspects of our lives.
Healing from the effects of what happened to us on the day we slipped into the world can go a long way towards reclaiming our birthright of joy, creativity, bonding, and sense of belonging in this, the human family.
Unhealed, our take-aways from a difficult birth can take us all down... down into depression, rage, fleeing, fawning, acting out, committing murder and Gaia-cide.
For Greta Thurnberg, a one-pointed focus comes naturally. Her perspective is among the highest modeled and she wants us ALL to see what she sees: that punching a hole in someone else's side of Lifeboat Earth, means we're all gonna die, not just the one we wish would depart.
We're all in this together. Could we each, individually, lift our blinders, see that how we got to this point is along the well worn path of trauma that never got healed; that it's not our fault, that there is a way forward? The only game in town is to heal our own nervous system and THEN watch how the ripples spread across the planet to all humans. Collectively, we DO have the capacity to take actions that will mitigate some of the impacts our bad decisions have had on Gaia?
I think we CAN! I THINK WE CAN!!
I think we'd better! Unless Jim Jones was right and we should all drink the KoolAid and leave the planet before it becomes a self-immolating entity ~ a dead planet.
Which feels better to you? Doing everything we can to reverse course and bring life back to earth? Or giving up and killing ourselves and everything else along with us?
Elephants have my heart. Salamanders have my heart. Sloths, penguins, octopuses, and eagles never hurt me. I want to vote for them and for all critters and plants. SAVE THE PLANET!
Won't you join me?
Find out about healing your earliest imprints here:
APPPAH
(AssociationofPreandPeri-natalPsychologyAndHealth BirthPsychology.com)
SEI (SomaticExperiencingInternational.com or TraumaHealing.org)
BodyNamics(R) (BodynamicsUSA.com or https://www.bodynamic.com/therapy/ )
