From Vision to Reality: An 8-Year Journey of Creative Transformation with the SelfCare Book
Dawn breaks over my laptop screen in a quiet corner of cafe with my morning coffee. The cursor blinks on page one, chapter one, of what will become an eight-year journey. The morning air carries the scent of roasting beans and frangipani blossoms, while my fingers hover over keys that feel weighted with possibility. I take a sip of my flat white, not knowing this moment will replay itself a thousand times before the vision fully births itself into reality.
Evolution
Let me take you through the hidden chambers of this creation story. Picture yourself at the first "failed" launch, three years in. I'm standing in truth as i decalre it to the world "it's ready", the taste of defeat bitter in my mouth. The first manuscript mocks me - perfect bound but imperfect, something essential missing from their pages. The post receives so much love and support. Little did i know it would be a repeated story over the coming years, as I make the hardest decision yet - to pull everything back, to start again.
"It's not ready," my voice thick with emotion. "The medicine isn't complete."
As if my heart and soul knew that it would be ready when the world was ready, and when i could match the energy, vibe and frequency of the words and lessons in the pages through my own lived and embodied experience.
The memory shifts to a late night in Bali, year five. I'm sitting cross-legged on my villa floor, surrounded by hundreds of paper scraps - each one holding a piece of the puzzle I'm trying to solve. Yellow post-its chart reader journeys, pink ones track healing protocols, blue ones map community frameworks. My back aches from hours of piecing together this vision that refuses to be rushed. Through the open doors, fireflies dance like manifest thoughts, their light appearing and disappearing in perfect rhythm.
Rain pounds the roof as I write about sunshine. Waves crash on Uluwatu's cliffs while I craft passages about inner peace.
Each contradiction becomes compost for deeper truth. Friends and family stop asking when it will be finished. Their doubt mingles with my own on darker days, but something deeper than determination keeps me returning to the page.
Year eight brings another false start. The wellness center in Bali feels like the physical manifestation of the book's energy - until betrayal reveals itself wearing the mask of partnership. Standing in the space we created together, watching as potential legal documents strip away what I thought was our co-creation, I learn the book's central message in my bones: true wealth isn't in what we own, but in what we become.
Then comes the moment everything changes. I'm back at coffee shop where it all began, same corner table, different person. The morning light falls exactly as it did eight years ago, but now it illuminates a truth I couldn't have written until I lived it:
self-care isn't about perfecting yourself, but about coming home to who you already are.
The final launch unfolds not with fanfare, but with quiet rightness. My mother is there again, but this time we're surrounded by a community that grew organically around the vision while I was busy trying to perfect it. As I watch readers open the pages for the first time, I see what those eight years were really creating - not just a book, but a living bridge between individual healing and collective flourishing.
From an idea in 2016, to 2024 standing in the same room, sharing the book with the same people that were there at the beginning.
For those reading these words, perhaps carrying your own vision that refuses to be rushed: Trust the timing that seems too slow. Honor the failures that feel like endings. Keep showing up at your laptop, your craft table, your workshop - not because you know how it ends, but because the vision knows its own way into reality.
Today, watching the SelfCare Global community bloom beyond anything I could have strategized, I understand what those eight years were teaching: Some creations can't be forced into existence - they need to be grown, like gardens, with equal parts intention and surrender.
Are you willing to let your vision take the time it needs to become not what you imagine, but what it truly is?
The blank page is waiting. The question is - are you ready to trust its perfect unfolding?