Birthing the Beast…

There are zillions of people around the world who have read the books of Jean Shinoda Bolen, who have heard her lecture, participated in her workshops, and been the recipients of her healing work in the world.  They all love Jean, and with very good reason.

If they knew Jean better, they would love her even more. I can say that because I know.

Oh, I’m sure there are people whom Jean has discomforted, and some she has even aggravated, with her fierce advocacy of the causes close to her heart. Those causes would include the well-being of women and children, the protection and nurturance of Nature in Her largest and smallest forms, the enlightenment and elevation of the human psyche on an individual and collective level, and the empowering of every soul to achieve the best manifestation in its allotted lifespan.

Jean has applied her formidable intellect, her iron determination, and her golden heart to all of these causes and so many more.  And sometimes she has surely offended a few people who did not cherish these causes as she does. But if you cherish any of these things, or if you find yourself in any of these categories, you will not have a more powerful advocate and devoted ally than Jean Shinoda Bolen.

This means that if you happen to have an unpublished manuscript on a topic that Jean feels would be of great benefit to the enlightenment of the human psyche and elevation of the human soul, then you might want to be prepared to see that manuscript become a book because the odds are (against all prediction and advice) that you will.

It’s been less than six months since Jean initiated with me what my dear grandmother used to call “a sit-down chat.”  You know...the kind of chat where you’d better be sitting down because important things are going to be discussed and you will want to be well-grounded for the discussion.  And at the end of that chat, I had to agree with Jean. I owed it to my pandemic story, and to anyone who needed to read it, to try to turn my manuscript into a book.

Now, I must say that getting published was no longer on my bucket list at this point in my life; I already had a published book, a book still in print and still doing its work in the world. And I knew what a shitload of work it was going to be to turn this embryonic beast into a book...impossibly complex and anciently horrifying as its topic was. But there was something about Jean’s review of the book’s creation — reminding me of how I felt like I was being pushed onward by a compulsion to find the end of the story — that persuaded me to let the same push send me onward through the publication process.
So here we are, my book and I (with Jean beaming at us from the threshold with her beautiful Foreword). Just a few weeks away from the release, and a few more until the formal launch of Hollow Crown of Fire. My beast is very lucky to have such a powerful godmother/midwife as Jean Bolen. And I am profoundly fortunate to have such a dear and devoted friend.