"Survival Guide" - a quote from that chapter in Adytum:

“He (my father) taught that what we think can outweigh the corporeal world around us.” 

Believe in yourself and you can survive—anything. That was his message. 

I believe that this is one of the most difficult lessons my father taught me. Having generational PTSD, I often doubt my opinion or what others think of my opinions. I have tried and tried to get over this but sometimes it is impossible. This is especially true when I think about the professional marketing offers I receive daily from hundreds of book promoters.  

I must keep telling myself that Adytum, my memoir, was not written to be a best-seller. I wrote it to reach a specific audience, those who have an intimate knowledge of PTSD and who are trying to live normal lives while coping with it. I also wrote it to teach others about PTSD. 

I remind myself that although others think that I must make the book a best-seller, I must market it to those who need it the most. I want to help others. Not profit from their pain. I would rather sell books to those in need than to those who want to be entertained by the stories of lives which are half-fiction, in order for the authors to sell books. My memoir is very real. It is so real that sometimes it triggers those who have PTSD. I truly hope this does not happen often but I admit that it may happen. I encourage those with triggers to keep reading in small bits since they may find that what helped me live, may help them. 

I am convinced, every time I see more promotional offers from marketers, that Marilyn Gaull included the correct ideas in her book about “English Romanticism – The Human Context”. She writes about the Romantic Age in writing: the early decades of the 19th century. I feel exactly how she felt about that age but my feelings are about this age, now: “(reality) writers . . . felt like aliens, displaced persons, refugees in a world that was evolving on principles antithetical to art. The principles of a marketplace governed by the laws of competition, of supply and demand, laws to which even literature had become subject.” (pg. 13 of her book)  

My book is real, as my life was real. I dealt with triggers and trauma in order to live. I did not write to dramatize my life for anyone’s entertainment. Let me help if PTSD has any kind of hold on your life. My book, Adytum, and my blog are here for you to learn to help yourself.