What It Feels Like To Begin Outgrowing Your Story

By Lisa R. Conner

Hitting publish was one kind of courage.

Waiting in Amazon jail was another.

There is something surreal about spending years carrying a book in your body, months writing it, days formatting it, and then suddenly being done with your part while the whole thing hangs in suspension.

Uploaded.
Out of your hands.
Not yet visible.
Not yet live.
Not yet real in the way the world recognizes it.

That was the breath hold.

Not panic.
Not exactly.

More like standing at the top of the stairs with your hand on the door, knowing that once it opens, the life on the other side is no longer only imagined.

And then it happened.

I was having coffee with a dear friend when I checked my phone and realized Casa Renae had gone from “In Review” to “Published.”

Then I asked her to search Amazon for the book title on her phone because my hands were already shaking and the words were blurring.

She turned the screen toward me.

And there it was.

My book.
On Amazon.
Live in the world.

What happened in my body in that moment is hard to explain, but I know this much:

It was the deepest exhale of my life.

I cried.
I trembled.
I stood up in the middle of the coffee shop and asked her for a hug.

She held me while my body did what it needed to do.

Release.
Tears.
Relief.
Disbelief.
Joy.
A letting go so profound it felt molecular.

Ahhhhh.

I have held these stories my entire life.

And now I have let them go.

Not carelessly.
Not dramatically.
Not for attention.

But with intention.
With love.
With courage.
With the deep knowing that I am no longer willing to hide behind a mask just to make other people comfortable.

That may be the real door Casa Renae opened for me.

Not just publication.

Freedom.

Freedom to tell the truth.
Freedom to be seen.
Freedom to stop editing myself down to a more acceptable size.
Freedom to let the story leave my body and become a bridge, not a burden.

That is life-changing.

And the most beautiful part is this:

The book is already finding the people it was written for.

Women I do not know are writing to me.
Readers are telling me that certain phrases rocked them to the core.
Friends are sharing how powerful my words are.

People are seeing themselves in their own house.

They are moving through the rooms.
They are finding comfort there.
Recognition there.
Company there.

That means everything to me.

Because I did not write this book to please anyone. I did not write it for everyone.

I wrote it to tell the truth.
And to make something useful, beautiful, and honest from the life I lived.

If it helps one person feel less alone, less emotionally homeless, a little more seen, a little more companioned, then it matters.

Deeply.

What I feel now is not the ache of exposure.

It is the relief of alignment.

I am no longer asking for permission.
I am not asking for validation.
I am not trying to make my truth palatable enough for every room.

I am simply living in the house I found.

My inner home.

And from here, the second story is calling.

Love Reimagined is not about finding home.

It is about how I live here now.
Day by day.
Choice by choice.
Breath by breath.

I am not broken.
I adapted.
And now I get to choose.

That is the world I am living in now.

Not perfect.
Not finished.
Not tidy.

But open.
Free.
True.
Alive.

The door opened with an audible exhale.

And I walked through.

Living in curiosity,
Lisa

Lisa R. Conner is a writer, coach, REALTOR, and entrepreneur based in Alaska. She is the author of Casa Renae: Outgrowing Your Story & Coming Home to Yourself and writes Fireweed & Flannel as a place for honest reflections on reinvention, courage, identity, grief, real estate, and the wild beauty of becoming.

If you are interested in my book, please order it here: Casa Renae eBook