Living Life Resiliently - A Guest Post by L.J. Evans : All About Romance %

I write contemporary romance that’s driven by music and by characters who live life resiliently. Why do I write emotionally driven books? Well, it’s because people amaze me. And I don’t mean that in the way you hear a lot nowadays, about how horrible people can be. I mean it in the way that people are INSPIRING. I’m sure each of you reading this would amaze me because you have all suffered losses in your life and are still here. Still moving forward. Still trying to find a new normal in your life after the last loss you faced.

When I lost my grandmother while in college, a friend gave me a book called How to Survive the Loss of a Love by Harold H. Bloomfield, M.D., Melba Colgrove Ph.D., and Peter McWilliams. When I read the book, I realized that I’d already experienced a lot of losses in my life. Losses that I hadn’t called a loss. Losses that I’d already survived.

Because loss is not just about losing a person. Although that can, obviously, be one of the hardest from which to recover. Loss can also be about losing your job, your home, your dream, your goal, your pet, or any other thing that was once in your life and has now disappeared. Loss is an emptiness. A void for something that was once there and is now gone.

And it amazes me that people have these losses and still get up each day and live. Do you doubt that you are living the resilient life? Well, I want to share some ideas and poems from How to Survive the Loss of a Love so that you’ll realize just how resilient you already are.

Acknowledging Loss: This first stage can be hard because we tend to underestimate loss in our lives or pass it off as no loss at all. Just a normal life occurrence. Like graduating. It’s a good thing, but it’s also a loss because we are no longer working towards this huge goal that you set for yourself. Sure, the goal is now gone because it’s been achieved, but it’s still left a void in its wake. This particular poem makes me think of Seth Carmen in My Life as a Rock Album because his love really does leave him, but it’s also a good reminder that facing reality is the first step in being resilient. And I bet you’ve already done that several times in your life.

Finding Support: In all of my stories, the characters have someone to talk to. A therapist, a friend, a family member. In My Life as a Country Album Cam has lots of family and friends. She wasn’t alone. I hope you aren’t either. I hope there are people out there helping you through this shuffle called life even if it is a social media connection.

Moving Forward: For Mia in My Life as a Pop Album, her movement forward was often scattered with mini steps backwards. The line to resiliency wasn’t straight. And that’s the truth for all of us, our path to getting better will be littered with mistakes and slip ups. Our lives aren’t straight lines. I’m sure yours hasn’t been either. Don’t give up.

Acknowledging the Good: When you are suffering a loss, every day activities seem pointless. This was particularly true for Cam in My Life as a Country Album. But those every day things give us a chance to find our way to our new reality. To the new version of ourselves that takes the good and the bad and melds into one new thing. Hopefully, the new you can see past the loss to the good moments that were there.

Finding Hope: And after the struggles. After the movement forward. There is hope. There is another chance out for happiness and love and everything that you deserve. You’ve survived. You’ve been resilient. You may not have ‘bounced’ back, but you’ve moved forward. All the books in the My Life as an Album series end with the main characters finding this new hope. This new moment. I hope you’ve found a new hopefully ever after in your life even if it isn’t the originally planned happily ever after that you had dreamed. And if you’re not there yet, if you’re still in one of the other stages, I hope that you know that the ‘hope’ is out there waiting for you. That it will come.

I hope that you can see your own resiliency now. I hope that you can see that all of us are living the resilient life. It may not be dramatic and newsworthy, but you are doing it each day.

Do you need some inspiration? Are you looking for some great reads with suffering protagonists who have lost loved ones, dreams, lives, hopes, and more? Here’s a few of my favorites:

The Smallest Part by Amy Harmon
180 Seconds by Jessica Park
From Lukov With Love by Marianna Zapata
Swear on This Life by Renee Carlino
Me Before You: A Novel by JoJo Moyes
Making Faces by Amy Harmon
Looking For Alaska by John Green
Almost by Anne Eliot.

I hope you find someone in one of those books that you can connect with, whose life speaks to you.

And of course, each of the books in my current series, My Life as an Album, has a protagonist recovering from loss. They are characters struggling to live the resilient life. The first two books, My Life as a Country Album and My Life as a Pop Album, are available now. The third book, My Life as a Rock Album is available for pre-order.

And the good news is that there is a giveaway bonus going on right now. If you pre-order the eBook, My Life as a Rock Album, you can enter for a chance to win signed paperback copies of all three of the books in the series PLUS you’ll receive love letters that go with each of the books.

PRE-ORDER FROM AMAZON (click the banner)

Then, CLICK HERE to enter the giveaway.

See the pre-order giveaway entry page for Official Rules.

I know that you have many choices when it comes to books to read and authors to follow and I appreciate that you’ve allowed me a few minutes of your time today by reading this guest post. Thank you!

I’d truly like to get to know you all a little better. So please feel free to sign up for my newsletter and/or contact me via email from my website, or you can follow me on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram where we can chat as well. I hope you look me up and share your resilient life story with me!

Happy Reading & Happy Life!

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