The Inspiration You Need to Follow Your Dreams

On this episode of Small Steps to Self-Love, guest Flor Ana shares her writing & publishing journey, reads a poem on destiny, and chats with Shelby about following your dream and pursuing passions in life.

About Flor:
Flor Ana is a Cuban-American writer, poet, and musician who made her literary debut with her self-published poetry collection, Perspective (and other poems), which went on to become a bestseller at Barnes & Noble locations across South Florida. Since her literary debut, Flor has released various poetry collections including The Language of Fungi & Flowers (2021), Nourish Your Temple: Self-Love & Care Poetry (Indie Earth Publishing, 2022), and A Moth Fell In Love With The Moon (Indie Earth Publishing, 2023). Always a lover of academics, Flor obtained a Journalism degree at Nova Southeastern University, where she also minored in English Literature and was the copy editor of the school newspaper, The Current.

Flor has also been featured in various poetry anthologies and has released music with her band Leather & Lace as well as spoken word poetry. As of this writing, Flor is hoping to dive into the world of fiction writing and get her debut novel, Amanita, published. Find her on Instagram: @littleearthflower

JOIN THE POETRY CLUB:
Want to join a supportive community of poets learning to write and publish their poetry book? Hosted by Shelby Leigh, bestselling poet, you'll get all the support and resources you need, with multiple live events featuring award-winning poets every month. Head to jointhepoetryclub.com to learn more!

ABOUT SHELBY:
Shelby is a mental health author, who has grown an audience of more than 500,000 on social media who resonate with her work. She is the author of 3 poetry books, including her latest release, girl made of glass and her bestselling book, changing with the tides. Shelby also runs an online poetry community, and helps authors market themselves and their books for more sales.

resources from shelby:

·        check out Shelby’s mental health poetry books

·        Free self-love poetry print

·        Join the poetry club

·        Get help with marketing as a writer

connect with shelby:

·        Instagram: @shelbyleighpoetry

·        YouTube: Shelby Leigh Poetry

·        TikTok: @shelbyleighpoetry

Transcript

Shelby Leigh [00:00:00]:

Hi, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Small Steps to Self Love. My name is Shelby Leigh. I am a mental health writer and poet, and today I am joined by another self love poet and writer whose name is Flor Ana. I'm so excited to speak with her today about mental health and her self love journey and hear some poems maybe. So I'd love to just start off by asking you to tell us a little bit more about you and what you do, how you got started with the with writing as well. Yeah, definitely.

Flor Ana [00:00:27]:

Well, first and foremost, thank you for having me. For those listening, my name is Flor Ana. I am a poet, a writer, and I am also a book editor and book publisher, so I'm a writer that helps other writers. My self love journey has been kind of a roller coaster, but I'm really grateful for where I am right now. And everything that I've done so far has been really helpful for me, and I hope that it'll be helpful for others as well.

Shelby Leigh [00:00:53]:

Nice. How long have you been writing and what got you into writing?

Flor Ana [00:00:58]:

I've been writing for as long as I can remember, but I really think that I started writing for just myself and my own mental health when I was around 19. So I had gone away for college, not too far. I was just an hour away from home. But it was a very I think I went into that rebellious teen phase really late. So I was, like, 19, rebelling against my parents. And so, I don't know, I turned to writing and writing a lot of poetry, just journaling, and I really felt like I was able to find myself through writing and just better my mental health and just kind of give myself that love and care that I needed that I wasn't really finding elsewhere at the time.

Shelby Leigh [00:01:40]:

Right, that makes sense. I was similar. I wrote my whole childhood, my whole life, short stories and things. But I found poetry my freshman year of college, and I think that transition from leaving home and kind of being on your own and exploring that was really what started it for me. It's interesting to hear that it was similar for you in this stage of your life too.

Flor Ana [00:02:03]:

Yeah, I think that there's just something about that period where you're kind of just lost, especially, like, I went into university, and I had no idea what I was going to major in. My parents were, like, taking me down the business route, and I was like, But I love writing and, like, artsy fartsy stuff. So it was kind of this weird place where I felt like I was holding onto two ropes, and I didn't know which one was pulling me more. And then it was through writing that I really feel like I was able to find my voice and find myself in what I wanted to pursue.

Shelby Leigh [00:02:36]:

What did you end up going for in college?

Flor Ana [00:02:39]:

I got a degree in journalism because it was the closest thing to writing that I could do, because it was either journalism or, like, English literature. And so ideally, I would have just done creative writing. But I got a degree in journalism, and I learned a lot about editing. And I was writing for the school newspaper.

Shelby Leigh [00:02:58]:

So nice.

Flor Ana [00:02:59]:

I was getting my feet in the water.

Shelby Leigh [00:03:02]:

Very nice. Yeah. I did some journalism in college, too, like some classes, but I didn't study it. But it's fascinating to learn about practice. I don't think I could have kept up with the demand of being an actual journalist. I feel like I do enough as it is, but knowing how many articles they have to pump out a lot.

Flor Ana [00:03:23]:

It is, and the deadlines are crazy. And it's so sad because it's such a dying field now. I speak to a lot of people that they're like, oh, yeah, I was a journalism major. I worked for this pub, for this newspaper, and then everything is switching online and things are changing. So it's interesting to see how times are just changing in general.

Shelby Leigh [00:03:42]:

Yeah, definitely. So whenever you started writing in this phase of your life in college, did you notice an impact on your mental health? Was it something where you started writing with the intention of, like, I'm doing this for my mental health, or did that come afterward?

Flor Ana [00:04:00]:

I think that came only a little bit afterwards. I think I was just writing out my emotions because I'm a very emotional person, and I'm also very scatterbrained a little bit. So I felt like writing out what I was feeling was very helpful to ground myself. And it got to be at a point where I was like, okay, I need to write because I need to ground myself, and I'm realizing that this is for my mental health and for my own self care, because if not, then I'm just going to spiral.

Shelby Leigh [00:04:28]:

Totally. I definitely relate to that. Yeah. So on this journey of self love and you write a lot about self love now, I would love to know when was a moment in your life where you really felt like you loved yourself for the first time, if you can remember that moment.

Flor Ana [00:04:47]:

That's a really good question. It's kind of sad to say. I feel like it was definitely later in life. I feel like when I released my first book and I was just kind of like diving into the literary world and kind of connected with that and just writing more and giving myself that space to fill and being like, okay, I want to pursue this, and I can pursue this, and there's nobody to stop me from following my dreams and being able to see myself achieving those little milestones. I really felt like I was giving myself that love that I hadn't when I was younger because my family had always been very music driven and I was in a band for ten years. I started being in a band when I was 13, and that was pretty much my life, just like shows and performing and my clothes were picked for me and all of these different things that I didn't have a say in. As I got older, I was like, no, I want to say in what I wear, and I don't want to wear these outfits. I would prefer to wear this. And it's more about the music than what I'm showcasing as and all these different things. And I really felt like with writing, I was able to I'd been always sharing my voice, I'd been performing, but with my writing, I was able to really showcase who I was and who I wanted to present myself as.

Shelby Leigh [00:06:11]:

Yeah, I love that I did competitive dance growing up, and so I can relate to some of that with the outfits and not feeling quite like myself some of the time.

Flor Ana [00:06:22]:

Yeah, I felt like a persona that I was putting on, and then I was so in it that I thought that that's who I was for a while. And then I realized as I got older, I was like, oh my God, this is not me. This is not what I want the world to see me as. So it was a really interesting time.

Shelby Leigh [00:06:39]:

Totally. So I would love to hear a poem from your book or any I think you have multiple books, right?

Flor Ana [00:06:46]:

Yeah, I do.

Shelby Leigh [00:06:46]:

Topic that we're talking about. So you want to tell us a little bit about your books and then read us something?

Flor Ana [00:06:51]:

Yeah, definitely. So as of right now, I have released four poetry collections. My first one is titled Perspective, which was very much that journey into myself and my self discovery, my coming of age kind of poetry journey. Then I released The Language of Fungi and Flowers, which is very much a very niche collection of poetry where I spent six months researching different species of mushrooms and flowers and then wrote a poem and illustrated each. And then I released a self love and Care Focus poetry collection last year titled Nourish Your Temple, which is a poetry book journal so you can actually write and journal in it and kind of dive deep into your own self love and moth fall in love with the moon. And it kind of touches on topics like perspective, which are more dealing with existentialism and trying to find yourself and focus on the positive things in life and realizing that even though we may feel alone, we're never alone and there's people around the world that may be feeling the same emotions that we are. So it's kind of deep, but I think that it's something that if you're not afraid to dive into, I think that going deep into yourself and deep into this universe is like important. So all fun stuff.

Shelby Leigh [00:08:07]:

I was going to ask, could you repeat the name of the fourth one? Because you cut out a little bit.

Flor Ana [00:08:11]:

Oh yeah, no, of course, no problem. It's called a moth. Fell in love with the moon.

Shelby Leigh [00:08:15]:

Okay. I love that.

Flor Ana [00:08:16]:

Yeah, very cutesy. I love it too. But yeah, the poem I'd love to read to you guys is actually the title piece of the Self Love and Carrot collection which is called Nourish Your Temple. And it says, the universe has conspired in such a way with all of the cosmos to create you. So please don't see yourself as anything other than beautiful, deserving and absolutely magical. The chances alone of being alive, traveling through time and space on a blue green, gorgeous floating rock, spinning at roughly 1000 mph should be enough to keep you grateful and giddy at just the thought of being alive, being human, blas experiences and all. You are the universe one and the same.

Shelby Leigh [00:09:01]:

I love that. Beautiful. Can you tell us a little bit about why you wrote that particular piece?

Flor Ana [00:09:07]:

Yeah, so I have always been very into just believing that the universe is kind of just guiding me. That's like my version of God is just like the universe is here to there's so many things out of my control. But I know that the universe, I'm in its hands and everything will happen as it's meant to. Everything is already written in the cosmos. And while I have the free will to change things, there's ultimately a path and a journey. And I feel like realizing that I wanted to be a writer, I can't speak was very much like me realizing that my writing was meant to help others and I was meant to help other writers just kind of either begin their writing career or go deeper into their writing career. I really felt like my words could make an impact on somebody's life, whether it was through poetry or now that I'm sort of getting involved in fiction, but just kind of like figuring out, I don't know, feeling like my words can really help others. And knowing that that was my mission here was really what inspired that poem. Feeling like we may all have flaws, we're all human, we all go through things and we make mistakes, but at the end of the day, we are the universe. And I like to say that I am a galaxy within the galaxy and we are these amazing creatures and we're all so unique and special. And I think it's important for us to remember that because sometimes we just feel like another human being on this planet, but we have so much to offer and we never know how we can help another person and really help ourselves too.

Shelby Leigh [00:10:44]:

I love the idea of forging your own path, but there's still being some things already kind of decided for you or you have this destiny but you can figure that out and you can change it as you go through life and learn new things and find new passions and all of that. So that's a great way to look at things for sure. In this podcast, we always have our guests give a small step to our listeners to take with them each week on their self love journey. And so is there any steps that you take or have taken for your self love journey that have helped you that you would like to share with our listeners today?

Flor Ana [00:11:22]:

Definitely something that I have been practicing for a while now is waking up in the morning and journaling. And that being the first thing I do. Whether it's me journaling about how tired I am or journaling about how I love how the sun glows in, like a gold light into my room and kind of making it poetic. But taking that moment to just journal is really important for me. And then taking also the moment to reflect on those journalings after some time has passed because you can see your growth in it. And then you can look back and be like, oh my gosh, I was really going through something at this point. Or, well, look how much I've grown since then. Or I remember that memory and it's so nice. It's just a little thing that you can keep for yourself. And I feel like no matter how much time passes, it's something you can keep going back to and doing or something that you can go back to and reread and see how much time has passed or what the growth has looked like for you.

Shelby Leigh [00:12:16]:

Absolutely. Yeah, I do the same thing. I'm more of a nighttime journaler, so people need to find the time that works best for them. Definitely. I feel like a lot of people get thrown off when they hear like, you have to do it at this certain time and all of that and then they don't do it. So find a time that works for you and it can be a different time each day. But I've been writing in these five year journals for I think it's been almost ten years now, and it's so cool. It's so cool to look back at growth. It's a bad memory and it maybe brings it up again, and I don't love that, but a lot of the time it's like I've grown so much from this moment or I had this dream that I wrote about three years ago and it just happened. Things like that are really cool to look back on, so it's such a great tool and I love it. And if you're not a writer, do speak into your phone. I love voice notes, things like that. Like, leave a little message.

Flor Ana [00:13:06]:

True. Yeah, I love that. I hadn't thought about that. That's really good. I should probably start doing that too.

Shelby Leigh [00:13:12]:

Yeah, I'm not as much of a speaker. I love a pen in my hand, but I know there's lots of people that do and writing isn't the best fit for them, but there's still ways you can express yourself and be creative and kind of keep track of your goals and your journey and all of that in one place, which is cool.

Flor Ana [00:13:31]:

Yeah, definitely. And I agree with you wholeheartedly. I know I said the morning, but really I think it's important to find that time for you. And every day, like you said, could be different because every day is kind of different. So just finding that moment when you feel like you can sit down and write or speak something into your phone and then kind of keeping track of that. And I feel like it's really helpful just on a daily basis to practice that because you never know how even just speaking something out loud can help you to process something if you're not that much of a writer and you never know what you can take from that.

Shelby Leigh [00:14:08]:

Absolutely. Yeah, that's such a great point.

Flor Ana [00:14:11]:

Wonderful.

Shelby Leigh [00:14:11]:

Well, thank you so much for sharing. Is there anything that we didn't cover that you want to mention before we close out?

Flor Ana [00:14:19]:

I always like to mention whenever I'm a guest on things to just remind listeners that their dreams are achievable. And I think that you and I are really great examples of that and you even more than me. But it's really amazing to see how I've been able to achieve this dream of being a writer and seeing how far I've come from where I started. And I'm still really just a baby in my writing career. But I really think that if you have a dream, then you should follow it. And all it really requires is just that disciplined and that motivation to keep you going. And you don't necessarily have to work on your dream every single day, but dedicating time to your dream at least multiple times a week, or even if it just means, like, daydreaming about it and thinking about it, it can help you to achieve those goals. Because I genuinely now believe that dreams are achievable. And you can do it. You just have to put the time into it and really manifest it. But it's definitely possible.

Shelby Leigh [00:15:19]:

Yeah, definitely. I love that. And I could talk about this all day because I'm so passionate about following your dream, especially creative dreams that I feel like can be looked down upon or not possible for you. It's not going to happen. It absolutely can happen. And don't let yourself get stuck in just thinking about it and not taking action toward that goal, even if it is manifestation or it is writing out your action plan or daydreaming about your action plan. Those are still steps you can take. Definitely. And yeah, don't let yourself get stuck in the what if, because you'll never know if you never take action and try.

Flor Ana [00:15:57]:

Yeah, I always say the answer is always no if you don't ask, so just go for it because you never know where that dream can take you. And it may be something that you're like, oh, maybe down the line, maybe ten years from now. But what if you start today and you're able to see results in two years or a year rather than waiting out this dream for however much longer, right?

Shelby Leigh [00:16:18]:

Yeah, I always get one of my biggest questions I get asked is like, how long it took me to grow my audience. And a lot of the times it's someone who is feeling stuck and not even wanting to post, yet they're nervous about sharing their work or being vulnerable. But it's going to take even longer the longer you wait to even start. So all of these things take time. There's no like overnight, I guess. You can go viral and be overnight success or whatever, but it's very rare. It takes a lot of time. So the quicker you start or the sooner you start before you're ready is what I recommend because then you'll learn and grow so much along the way.

Flor Ana [00:16:55]:

Yeah, I completely agree.

Shelby Leigh [00:16:57]:

Yeah. Perfect. Well, where can people find out more about you and your books and the work that you're doing?

Flor Ana [00:17:03]:

Yeah, so you can check out my Instagram, which is at Little Earthflower, and if you are interested in me helping you to publish your poetry or fiction, you can check out at Indieearth Books on Instagram or Indirectbooks.com. That's my publishing company where I help writers. It's kind of a self publishing meets traditional publishing bridge where you have the complete creative freedom of self publishing, but with the support of a traditional publishing company behind you or an independent publishing company behind you. I do have a YouTube channel, it's just Florana, my username on there as well is at Little Earthflower. I'm not super active on there. I'm a little bit more selective with what I post on there, but if you're interested in listening to some of my music, it's on there too. And I'm also doing spoken word poetry on Spotify now, so you can listen to some spoken word pieces on there as well. My artist name is my name, which is just Floridana.

Shelby Leigh [00:18:03]:

Beautiful. Well, thank you so much for your time and being thank you for having me. Yeah, of course. And I hope everyone has a wonderful week filled with self love and compassion and kindness. And I'll talk to you next time.