healing from a breakup | q&a with shelby leigh

it's q&a time! in this video, i answer questions about healing from a loss of a loved one or a breakup, how to find your voice again, finding your passion, where I see myself in 5 years, and questions about getting published!

welcome to small steps to self-love with bestselling mental health writer, shelby leigh!

every episode has a small step for YOU to take on your self-love journey.  tune in for today's small step about finding your why and screenshot this episode and tag me on IG @shelbyleighpoetry with your favorite takeaway. i'd love to hear!

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resources from shelby:

PREORDER MY NEW BOOK

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Shelby’s mental health poetry books

Free self-love poetry print

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connect with shelby:

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·        YouTube: Shelby Leigh Poetry

·        TikTok: @shelbyleighpoetry

·        Twitter: @shelbyleighpoet

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Transcript

Hello and welcome back to another episode of Small Steps to Self-love. My name is Shelby Leigh. I am a bestselling mental health writer and poet, and today I wanted to do a Q&A with you. I did a Q&A for my very first episode of the podcast, and it's been how many months, like four months now and we've had over 3000 downloads, I think almost 4000 now, so I thought we could do another Q&A. I asked my followers on Instagram for some questions and there's a range of mental health questions, and then also writing and book related questions, so I am just going to dive right into the questions related to my self-love poetry book that is coming out in January and we're really close to it. I'm actually supposed to be receiving my first copies of the book today, so I'm like constantly turning to check my mail. See if there's a package being delivered. So if it arrives during this podcast, that would be epic, but I don't think it's going to.  

The first question is what is my favorite poem in the book, and I'm not ready to share my favorite yet because I want the book to be out. I want people to read it and I want to see what people think, but I will share with you the first poem in the book and read that for you right now. So this book is called Girl made of glass and it's my longest collection yet, and it also has the most sections. So this book has four sections and it goes through the nightmares, which is kind of about our fears and how our past can kind of hold us back and then it goes through a few other sections ending on an entire section on self-love poetry and really learning to love yourself. So the first poem is in the fears section, the Nightmare section. So I'm going to read this one for you and I really feel like there's something for everyone in this book. And I'm doing a giveaway right now so if you pre-order I'll put the link to the different prizes, but that does end in January. If you pre-order, you'll get like a postcard from, you'll be entered to win signed copies of my other books, these really cute handheld mirrors that really go well with the theme of girl made of glass.  

So anyways, this is the first poem in the book I used to be afraid of the dark. Every night I found shadows in the sinking sun and heard breaths beneath the bed and creaks in the closet. As I got older and the fear faded, I realized I'd created these monsters to feel less alone, because when I'm alone I'm left with my own thoughts. No moving shadows on the walls to distract from the horrors that haunt my head. So that's the first poem in the book. I cannot wait for you all to read it. I am just so excited and thrilled that this book is almost here. So yeah, if you want to pre-order you can from most online retailers I'll put the link in the description as well.  

Moving on to other questions, let's go to some mental health related questions here. There's a couple of questions about missing people and coping with missing people and didn't really specify in terms of if it was losing someone from a death, which I think is a little bit different from missing someone or losing someone in a relationship whether it was a break up or something like that. But the last episode, the episode that came out last week, was a beautiful episode on grief and loss and self-love after loss. So if you are referencing grief and losing a loved one, I would definitely recommend checking out that episode and then in terms of losing someone from a break up, I just think that it's such a wonderful time to reconnect with yourself and find yourself again and find what hobbies and passions you have. And I talked about that in I think it was the 3rd episode of the podcast and I'm not mistaken, so I'll link that one as well. But I think that that one's a really good one about how to kind of cope with a breakup and reconnecting with yourself, even though it seems really hard right now. I think that it's a really wonderful opportunity to reconnect with yourself, even if it doesn't feel like it. Either way, I'm really sorry for the loss you're going through. I'm sorry that you are missing someone. It's not fun. But even though it's cliche time helps, it might not fully go away, or at least as soon as you think it will, or as soon as you want it to. But it does get easier. It does get better, but I'm wishing you the best.  

Someone asked me what keeps me motivated. This wasn't specific to anything in terms of motivated to write, motivated to, I don't know, but I will say that sometimes it can be really, really hard to feel motivated to stay motivated. I think that you have to find what drives you and what makes you passionate. For me I sometimes go weeks without writing anything, but I always go back to it and I try not to put a lot of pressure on myself, because I think that there are things that we love and we're never going to lose that passion for it. It just might kind of ebb and flow a little bit. So whenever I am not feeling motivation, I honestly don't worry too much because I've had that experience and know that it tends to come back. Sometimes it just takes a little spark that seems to come randomly, and when I need it most. But I think that it's really deciding on what your motivating factors are. What gets you up in the morning? What excites you? If it's not your job, what motivates you at the end of the day? To do well in that job and income to support your family or to support the lifestyle that you want? Or to get a promotion into a job? That you would like. All of those things could maybe motivate you in your current job, even if it's not something that you're super passionate about now. When it's something like a hobby like writing or some sort of artistic hobby that maybe you aren't making money from, we have to find that motivation inside because it can take a lot of time to build it up so that you can make a good income from those types of things. So I think remembering why you got into it in the 1st place and why that hobby is so meaningful to you.  

And as this week's small step, I would recommend journaling through these types of questions. What motivates you? What first got you into a hobby or a project that you're not feeling as motivated about right now, really reflect on that and what used to bring you joy about it, why it no longer does and see if you can kind of get that back and pull it out of yourself. What could be the cause of feeling unmotivated? A lot of times that will in itself make me feel more motivated again because I'll remember why I used to love it so much, so give that a try. I hope that helps.  

How will you show yourself love today? I love this question and I want to ask the same thing to all of you to think about, and sometimes it's little things right, like you don't have to do all these like big self-care type of things each day. I don't think that's feasible for a lot of us, but for me while I'm filming this, I am prepping to go on a trip and this month so far has been pretty busy because I've been trying to wrap a lot of things up before I go on said trip. Self-care and Self-love has been a little bit iffy this week, although I guess I could argue that I am showing my future self love and care by getting all of this done so that I can have a week off to relax to get lots of writing done. I'm really excited for that, so I guess that's kind of what it looks like today, is preemptively getting a lot of work done. So it is this podcast, such as some other client work that I have to do. And wrapping that stuff up so that I can enjoy slower December, which is one of my goals for sure this month 

That is how I'm showing myself love and I would love to hear how you are showing yourself love too if you want to screenshot this episode and share it on Instagram, your Instagram story with how you're showing yourself love today, I would love to hear it. OK, and then this question from the wonderful Skyler asked where do you see yourself in five years? I'm a very goal-oriented person. I'm not so much a5 year, 10 year goal type of person. I set my goals like a few months in advance/maybe a year in advance so I had to think about this one. I absolutely see myself still writing poetry, still writing in the self-love and mental health space. I would love to expand into other genres, whether that's nonfiction or possibly fiction. And again, I'm not sure. And then still running my business and I don't have any specifics because I believe in evolving and I'm also someone who, not that I get bored, but I love to switch things up and experiment a lot. So in five years I think that I'll still be helping other authors and creatives with their marketing because I love marketing, but I don't know exactly what that looks like because it's five years away. So we'll see you, but definitely still writing books and publishing mental health poetry because I love it so much. And then I think 5 years from now, let's see, I'll still have my tortoise because she's going to live till she's 70. And I'll be, I think I'll be married. I'd like to have a house by then for sure. I have no idea where I will be located because I don't like to stay in one place for too long. I love traveling and I don't know if there's any place in the world where I'd want to permanently settle, so we'll see where I end up. But I love that question, thank you for asking that.  

OK, a couple writing related questions now. What do you do when you feel you've lost your writing voice? OK, I love this question and I think that you haven't lost your writing voice. I feel like you've grown into a new writing voice. I think that we can change and grow so much as writers and develop our writing voice over time. It honestly took me years to even figure out what my writing voice was. So I think it's possible that you have just grown a lot, and your writing voice has developed and changed. I think we just tend to grow and our writing voice does change over the years, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you have lost that part of yourself. I guess if you are missing how you used to be able to write read through all the things that you've written that you really loved and see if that can spark writing something similar. I love to reread over my old stuff and see how much my voice has grown and changed, but there are also times where I look back and I'm like oh dang that was really good, I don't know if I could ever write something like that again, so I definitely can understand looking back and maybe thinking that you've lost that that touch that you had. I don't think it's gone forever. I think it just needs to be pulled out. So go through, read over old writing that you have and also embrace this new voice that you are experimenting with and that's coming out in your writing because it can lead to something amazing too.  

OK, so the last couple are a little bit more publishing focus, so I'm going to answer these quickly. So one question is on actually choosing an agent to help you achieve your book publishing goals and how you find them. So I would start by researching agents that are in your genre specifically. There are not that many for poetry, but there are a lot of others for other types of genres. But what you would want to do is look at traditionally published authors in your genre, who you look up to and see if they have on their website or something like that who they are represented by. A lot of them do, and you might be able to find some agents to submit to from there, but what you want to do is go to these agents’ websites and look at their submission guidelines. There will be a querying process where you would submit your proposal to them. They usually would ask for a sample of your book and then an overview of the book. What it's about, comparable book titles, all of that. But definitely do your research and look into the types of deals that they're getting for authors. And then if you actually get a request from them and they want to meet with you, you would want to ask them questions about their process. You could even ask them for referrals to their other clients and ask them how their experience has been, because it's really a business partnership, so you want to make sure that you're getting in with a good agent. Just also a side note, this process is a long one. It takes a lot of time. Self-publishing is amazing and I highly recommend it whenever you're first starting out. That doesn't mean that you have to. If you want to go the traditional publishing route, but just know that it is kind of time consuming, so don't get disheartened if you are months into the process and haven't really gotten too far yet.  

And then someone else asked about self-publishing and how you print copies of the book. How do you sell them on Amazon? So my first book is self-published. My second book was self-published and then was republished by a traditional publisher and my third book is traditionally published through Central Ave, which is my third book that I was just talking about in the beginning of this episode. And whenever I first published, I used Amazon KDP, that is Amazon's self-publishing company. It's free to self-publish. There are of course costs such as hiring a cover artist and editor. I edit poetry if you're looking for a poetry editor! And they print them for you. So every order that you get, Amazon prints it and ships it out. And you don't have to touch it. Which is something that I was looking for. Other authors might choose to hire a local print company and print them and ship them yourself. Keep in mind that this can be more difficult, not as scalable. If you happen to sell a lot, which is amazing, you're shipping all of those out yourself. So just keep those in mind. Some authors choose to order author copies through Amazon and ship them out signed copies. I've done that in the past too, but yeah, that's definitely why to choose a print on demand company if you would like to have that part of it done for you.  

So those are all of the questions for today's episode. Don't forget to do today's small step and share it on Instagram or in the comments if you're watching here on YouTube. Thank you all for listening and have a wonderful week filled with self-love and kindness and compassion. I would love to ask you to leave a review on the podcast platform that you love listening to, Apple Podcast, Spotify, and I'm going to pick a few people to write a custom poem for, just for leaving a review. So if you leave a review and screenshot it and send it to me on Instagram, DM it to me, I will pick a couple of people to write a custom poem for. Thank you so much for doing that and I will talk to you next week!