Never did I imagine I’d do this, but I am independently publishing Searching for Mom. I’ve spent the last 20 years earnestly dedicated to traditional publishing. I poured my heart into leading the Western Washington chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI). I worked in publishing as a publicist. I’ve supported multiple New York Times bestselling authors with their marketing campaigns and book tours. I also review traditionally published books. I’ve forged lasting relationships with editors, agents, authors, illustrators, booksellers, librarians, journalists, and reviewers—many of whom have become dear friends. Traditional publishing has been my world. I’ve loved that world and have been enamored by it—and mostly I still feel that way.

I finished this memoir 18 months ago, and spent a year shopping it to agents here and there. I also spent months and months honing my book proposal. I’m super proud of that shiny 50-page proposal, I must admit. But it wasn’t getting me anywhere—at least where I wanted to be: signing with a well-known literary agent and landing the book contract that my writing dreams were made of. I kept hearing nice feedback about my book’s literary quality, but the overall message was that “adoption books don’t sell” or that my platform, which right now matters more than my book’s artistic merits, wasn’t large enough.

While I was pleased with the time this process gave me to work with some excellent editors and hone my manuscript to a point of satisfaction, for months I also felt deflated and hopeless. I was garnering some really amazing early endorsements. What was wrong? Was my story not meant to be shared? I came close to giving up. And yet, I kept tinkering and tinkering—with my manuscript, with my proposal, with my query letters, with my “dream agent” list.

How long this tinkering and random submitting might have gone on, I’m not sure. On a whim, one afternoon I attended a writing workshop, where the facilitator led us in an exercise to write out our life story using our non-dominant hand, with only a minute to do so. Here is a picture of what I wrote:

I’ll translate, since it is so hard to read:

I was born. I was left. I loved. I lost. I was left. I forgave. I loved more. I was left. But not. I learned love never goes away. I healed. I loved more. I am still learning to keep loving. I am still here. I am me. Learning to love me. All of me.

This was a tremendous and scary wake-up call for me. It looked like a child’s handwriting. It sounded like a child wrote it. A child did write it! Me, as a child, channeled right out of my woman’s hand. The uncensored words came straight from my unconscious, from the little girl I had buried deep there. As a young child suffering from the trauma of adoption relinquishment, I had decided myself unworthy. I hid my true self from everyone. As in, literally, everyone—I’d kept her locked away, even from myself … or so I thought.

It really freaked me out to hear from her. It made me think of The Shining.

A couple of nights after the workshop, that young girl appeared to me in a dream. It wasn’t a nice dream, either. She threatened to kill me if I didn’t get on with it—sharing her story. It was a dream, so this was all metaphorical. But I woke up scared out of my wits—more so than if I’d watched a horror movie (although I do not watch them, for sensible reason!).

We do more harm than we realize when we push down on parts of ourselves. It is a murder of sorts—via an innocuous and soul-crushing death. Our bodies can manifest physical symptoms, too. Would she kill me of cancer? Would she give me a heart attack? How much power did this little girl have? I realized then that I’d grossly underestimated her—and her needs.

I came out of the notorious adoption “fog” seven years ago when I decided to find my birth mother. During the search, I’d started my book as an immersive memoir. But then my adoptive mom died, and as these things happen for writers, I lived and saw the bigger picture of my story. I wrote. And I wrote. I poured my heart and soul into this book. Through the writing, I came to see how much of my life had been spent striving to be noticed—proving I was good enough, proving that I mattered, proving my worth to exist in this world. I had a yearning to be discovered. And—spoiler alert—ultimately I was! I was found in really big, totally unexpected ways.

But when the little girl scrawled her life story at that writing workshop, I realized my story wasn’t finished. That little girl was still desperately waiting to be noticed.

When I looked back at her pictures, I couldn’t tell her to be quiet anymore. I couldn’t tell her to quietly wait while I kept striving for us to be noticed, for the perfect agent to come along and rescue us, for the big publishing deal that would prove that she mattered, that our story mattered.

I realized, then, that I owed this story to that little girl I’d silenced all of my life. That little girl needed her voice to finally be allowed a chance to speak.

And tomorrow, when the book releases, she will finally have that chance. I am so happy for her, and it’s only because of this unplanned publishing journey that I am discovering just how much love I feel for this young girl. I hope you love her as much as I do when you read her words.

(Searching for Mom is available for pre-order now, in both paperback and eBook, in all of the usual places. Always ask at your local bookstore or library first, even if it might mean waiting a couple of days longer. I’m still a traditionalist in that way!)