THE Big Dream (The Naked Truth & Cover)

My memoir, The Year of YES! is coming out on Tuesday. THIS Tuesday. This is it. THE Big Dream.

The Year of YES! is a real time, unfiltered, raw account of the year I said YES! to everything my Soul told me to do. It came on the heels of that bitch, 2012. I had just gotten a divorce and like many other women I had tanked my career for motherhood. I was making $600 a month and I was feeding my kids from the food bank. I was terrified.

Yet, in the midst of my desperate situation my Soul whispered this promise:

Follow me. I know where I’m going, I know the fastest, easiest way to get there and I will never, ever steer you wrong. Say YES!

I committed to saying YES to everything my Soul told me to do for one year. No matter what.

My Soul came here with a purpose (so did yours) and she wanted to live it.

Everything she asked me to do was designed to do one thing: heal me.

From what?

Friends, I’ve written about a lot of my traumas individually over the years, but put in one book form it’s pretty startling even to me. As a teenager I was beaten and date raped by my boyfriend for two years, I was married to a real life drug addict/drug dealer at 17 years old, like many women I’ve been sexually violated in various ways by various people (strangers and intimates), once I finally got my shit together from all that I was an eye-witness to 9/11 and gave birth to my first child three weeks later while suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, which drove me to severe anxiety and postpartum depression, which led to overprescription of medication, which led to drug rehab for Xanax addiction, which led to a deep dark hole of depression and anxiety. I spent the next 13 years clawing my way out of that hole.

During my Year of YES! I healed all of it. (And much more that I don’t mention here, because I’m too afraid to write it.) I waded through, and released, 40 years of psychic garbage. And I did it in unconventional ways by simply saying YES!

My Soul took me to Crazytown a few times. She took me realm hopping in the other-worldly dimensions. She took me to healers all over the globe. She took me deep into my unhealed grief, which had to be experienced before I released it. She took me to Meetup groups where they practice Orgasmic Meditation (for reals). She took me to dating websites. She held my hand while I invented a deeper sexuality, one fit for a 40-year old divorced woman (well, this 40-year-old divorced woman, anyway).

I’ve written my blog since 2007, under The Girl Revolution and now TraceeSioux.com and The Year of YES! 

I know this: every time I’ve shared my true struggles it has healed both me and my reader. Because you’re out there living this life too. And sometimes we all feel like the only one—the only one who doubts, has pain they don’t know how to heal, has internal conflict, and the only one who shouts at the heavens when we just can’t go on.

Most of us have unbrainable things happen to us–you can’t make sense of them or think your way out of them–and we don’t know how to resolve it within ourselves so we can go on living full happy lives. This book is about that.

Me too, it’s one of the most healing phrases on Earth. Me too.

So I offer the world this book, my memoir, The Year of YES! It’s raw, uncut and unpolished. This is how it really happened in real time. It’s the beautiful, the sad, the joyous, the ugly, the shame, the light, the shadow, the freeing, the Soul. All of it is in there. It’s my personal diary and I open it to you because of this promise from my Soul:

This book will free you, Tracee.
And it will free others too. 

The Year of YES! is out on Tuesday and I’m asking you to buy it. This is my life long dream. It’s a big giant scary risk for me to put all of my stuff out there. But, my Soul won’t have it any other way and I trust her, it will free me and others.

You’re my Tribe. I’m asking for your help to spread the message. Buy the book. Share the book links on Facebook & Twitter, forward it to your email contacts, write about it on your blogs, give it for Christmas. Please. I’m opening up my soft, vulnerable, raw places for criticism and scrutiny. So, please have my back out there on the Internet.

I really, really need reviews and bestseller status on Amazon so we’re going to have a contest next week. We’re doing a .99 cent Kindle promotion and we’re giving away a Kindle Fire. Please participate, look for contest details on Sunday. Don’t let this stop you from buying a paperback copy too.

If I’ve ever said something that inspired you, brightened your day, made you feel less alone, made you see something in a new light or touched your life in any way–please, support me by buying this book and getting the word to the masses.

Tribe, thank you so much for being there for me over the years.