Episode 29: Using the Author’s Journey to Heal from Loss: An Interview with Author Jennifer M. Alemany

Recap & Takeaways

• Turning Grief into Fuel: Jennifer embarked on her author’s journey after the loss of her boyfriend, channeling her pain into writing. Through intuitive writing, she discovered that her journaling could become a book, which eventually led to the creation of her memoir, “Mark My Love.”

• Exploring Love and Loss: In her book, Jennifer delves into various aspects of grief, reflecting on her experiences of losing both her boyfriend (recently), as well as her mother (over a decade ago). She shares how these losses shifted her perspective and made her focus on the love she had for these individuals, ultimately shaping her approach to life.

• Self-Publishing and Learning the Literary World: As a first-time author, Jennifer initially explored the idea of seeking an agent but ultimately chose self-publishing. Through the process, she gained valuable insights into the literary world, acquiring the knowledge and understanding necessary for navigating the publishing industry.

• Writing as a Cathartic Experience: Jennifer describes the cathartic nature of writing “Mark My Love.” Throughout the writing process, she released emotions and found solace, allowing her to transform and grow as a person. Writing became a transformative and healing experience for her.

• Lessons and Second Book: Jennifer shares the lessons she learned from her first book, emphasizing the importance of perseverance and self-belief. She also reveals her ongoing work on a second book, which is a memoir based on real-life events, highlighting her continuous growth as an author and her commitment to sharing her experiences.

Transcript for Episode 29: Using the Author’s Journey to Heal from Loss: An Interview with Author Jennifer M. Alemany

CARMA SPENCE:
There’s one thing in life that all of us will experience at some point, and that is the death of a loved one and how we handle it well is unique to each and every one of us. Many authors have channeled that experience into a book. Today’s guest is one of those authors.

Hello and welcome to the Author Switch, the podcast dedicated to helping new and aspiring authors turn on the author switch to success in their minds. Today my guest is new author  Jennifer Alemany. She is both an author and a mentor,  and after losing the love of her life, about two years ago, she realized that she had never fully grieved the loss of her mother, which was more than a decade before that.

So she turned all of her pain into fuel and she began to transform her life through this loss and turned it into a book. And thus “Mark My Love” was born. In her memoir, she explores love, loss, and looking at life differently.  In today’s episode, I talked to her about her author’s journey and how she learned how to become an author through this journey of grief.

And writing a book and a little bit about her second book that is basically in the womb right now. I hope you enjoy it.

Well, welcome to the podcast, Jennifer.

JENNIFER M. ALEMANY:
Thank you. Thank you for having me.

CARMA:
Why don’t you first start off telling us a little bit about how you became an author?

JENNIFER:
Well, my story starts with my boyfriend. He passed away two years ago, and I started actually, journaling by the pool, and then it turned into this, I wanna say this intuitive writing.

I was writing very quickly, and then I realized I, I think this is gonna be a book, possibly. And I wanna say it started there and then I realized five months later, I, I had a book on my hands and I started looking into, what I would do with it, what I was going to publish it, because it was a memoir and intimate.

And I had never published a book before. I’m a first time author. I know nothing about the space. So then I just started researching whether I was going to look for an agent or self-publish.

CARMA
And what did you end up doing?

JENNIFER:
I ended up self-publishing. I did seek an agent. I had a couple of folks say to me that they just wanted me to experience the process to get used to the literary world, right?

That the lingo is different. I’m an HR professional of 22 years. That was my former career, so nothing in this space. And so they wanted me to get a feel. Some mentors said to me, get a feel of the space, which was a really good idea. I, I enjoyed the experience. I wasn’t picked up by an agent. But it, it was, it did open up doors for me where I realized, okay, I started realizing I had to get some knowledge of behind a couple of things in the space.

So I then I went with, Book Baby to help me self-publish.

CARMA:
Okay. So is the book about how you processed grief or something else?

JENNIFER:
I end up talking about love, right. I, I call it mark my love. I’m, I’m marking points of love in my life. I think I. I talk a lot about looking at my life differently after the loss of my boyfriend and then the loss of my mother 13 years ago.

So I kind of dabble in different areas of grief that I had in both experiences, but then I also focus on the love that I had and then telling people that I realized when my mother, my mother had passed away 13 years ago. I felt focused on the loss, and I don’t think I ever really got out of it. And then when my boyfriend passed, it was a different experience and then that what made me focus on the love that I had from both of these folks.

And then, and then now that kind of drives my life where I do everything out of my heart, to be honest.

CARMA:
Was his name Mark?

JENNIFER:
No. I call a book, uh, mark my love cause I’m marking my love, like marking points of love in my life. Um, but his name was Roger. Yeah.

CARMA:
Oh, okay. Yeah, Roger that. That would’ve been an interesting way to twist it. And anyway, I, I like to play with words, so …

JENNIFER:
Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.

CARMA:
That’s really interesting. Cause um, I’ve had similar experience. My first major experience with grief was losing my grandmother. And that experience was particularly traumatic because I was literally on my way to England as an exchange student when we got the telephone call.

So it was literally like, your grandmother’s dead, bye.

JENNIFER:
Wow.

CARMA:
And so everybody else got to grieve and go through the grieving process while I’m like off and in another country doing everything on my own. So I, it took me years before I was able to process that, and I finally ended up like creating my own ritual to kind of like release it.

But it, you know, the, the, the thing with these, with grief is it, you can release it. And part parts of it stick.

But it’s like a cycle. And then, um, in 2011, I lost my father, and then the very next year I lost my little sister.

So it’s like, It’s like all I’ve got left now is my mother. And I’m like, you are sticking around.

JENNIFER:
Yeah.

CARMA:
You, you do not have permission to die. Cause I cannot handle another family member dying at the moment. So it’s like, yeah, I, I totally get how. That loss.

It throws you for a loop. And I am also working on a book that is dealing with this, so you and I should probably talk offline because

JENNIFER:
Yeah.

CARMA:
Uh, my angle on it is finding the blessings in sorrow. Yes.

JENNIFER:
Yeah. Mm-hmm.

CARMA:
And I’m, um, yeah, it’s, yeah.

And, and, and there’s so many, so many ways to go through it. Go through grief, right. There’s so many ways.

JENNIFER:
Yeah.

Go along or, right, right. And that’s why I like speaking to people about it. And I’m comfortable speaking about it now with folks and I realize this is probably what I’m meant to do. You know?

CARMA:
It sounds like you did find a blessing.

JENNIFER:
Yeah. Yeah. I did. I realized, like I said, I think, 13 years that my mom was gone. I was living my life, but not fully. Like I realized it now, I realized it like, oh, I was doing things, but it wasn’t in a fully, in a full state. And it wasn’t until he passed that I realized, oh, wait a minute, because I was on the floor again with this shock, right?

CARMA:
Yeah. There was a stuckness.

JENNIFER:
Yeah. Yeah.

So at this point I was like, okay, now I’m gonna get up and now I’m gonna do some things really different. And now I’m really gonna live now because. I realized how precious things are. Right. I always knew that.

This was another kick in the butt, I wanna say.

Right. That the universe gives us it. It does. Right. So it was like, okay.

CARMA:
It’s like the first kick wasn’t enough. Here’s another one.

JENNIFER:
Yeah. And I think that, you know, I think that I’ve often heard, sometimes, you know, the hardest lessons. I don’t know. I hear something like someone had told me. The strongest people are given sometimes the hardest lessons, right?

And you know, my mom was my best friend. She was like multiple people in my life. She was a single mom, so she was my mom, my dad, my best friend. So that was like multiple people. I felt like that left my life.

And that’s why that was, you know, so this time around it’s like I realized, okay, I think that she was giving me messages from the other side all along.

I, I don’t think I was paying attention this whole time, to be honest.

And then when he started giving me messages, And then she was basically getting messages behind him, like, oh, wait a minute. You’re listening, listening to him. So let me, let me get a couple of things in my life has been a lot different because of it, to be honest.

CARMA:
So the experience was growth and then the book writing the book was growth. Are you working on a second book?

JENNIFER:
Yeah, I am actually, I started that a second book, the end of last year. I just, again, I think there’s some. You know, I think there’s some spirituality to it and helping me from the other side, I feel like, because I just intuitively start feeling something and then I need to write, so I had started writing a second book, you know, in that manner.

CARMA:
Is it like a sequel or is it related in any way?

JENNIFER:
It’s, you know, it’s not really a sequel. It’s basically, I wouldn’t, I don’t wanna call it a sequel. I’m basing on some real life events that are going on. But I’m adding to it a little bit more, I wanna say than I did my first memoir.

If that makes sense.

So it’s still a memoir, but it’s different.

So it’s a work in progress because it’s evolving right now. Basically what I’m saying is almost writing it live as life is kind of happening and coming back to me little by little.

If that makes sense.

CARMA:
Yeah, that totally makes sense. Yeah. So what lessons have you learned from writing the first book that’s helping you do this second book better?

JENNIFER:
Well, I wanna say, first off, it’s not easy writing a book. And not that I ever thought it was, but often people say like, I’m gonna write a book. Right?

CARMA:
Yeah.

JENNIFER:
And until I went through the process and then started editing myself and really reading, reading and reading again, and over and over again, I was like, this is a lot of work.

So I give a lot of credit to authors out there, you know, all of you who come before me. Cause I was like, wow.

So that, so that in itself that I know, at least now I know what I’m getting into right ahead of time. But I wanna say I’m not being as hard on myself with what I’m writing right now, if that makes sense. I think that the first time around, because I didn’t know anything of it, I was beating myself up a lot. Like, oh, who’s gonna read this? What, what is this? Like, who am I and what is this? And all of that. And now I’m just like, no, just leave it alone. Just let the words flow out of you and And see what happens.

CARMA:
Exactly. I mean, it’s like the thing with a book is that on the one hand it is easy because you just write, you get it out. The hard part is that it can take long, so you can get impatient. And then there’s the editing. That’s the hard part. Because you have to massage. You sometimes have to get rid of pieces that you’re like, but I really like that part, but doesn’t fit. But I really like that part. But it doesn’t fit.

And so sometimes you just have to take that part out and maybe it becomes its own book.

Or maybe it just ends up in a folder where it never sees the light of day. You never know.

JENNIFER:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It makes sense because there was a portion of this book that I spoke a little bit more about my, my professional career, and then I realized it really didn’t fit in there.

It really didn’t. I, I spoke about pieces of my life from the beginning in the book, I, I speak about my Latin background and growing up in Brooklyn, New York, so I go into all dabbles of my life. But the professional part, it didn’t flow in there, to be honest. Right. Yeah. So I took it completely out. It didn’t make sense.

CARMA:
Right.

JENNIFER:
And I saved it. So who knows what that’ll be? Maybe something one day, but it didn’t make sense for that story, you know?

CARMA:
Exactly. But sometimes you have to allow yourself to get that stuff out because sometimes the process of getting the stuff that doesn’t work out like it, like uncork the stuff that needs to be in there.

So allows it to get out. So yes, I totally agree with you. You need to just be easy on yourself. Let. Let the stuff out.

JENNIFER:
Yeah. Yeah. And writing Mark My Love was, was so cathartic for me writing it. I cried the majority of writing it, to be honest with you. But I was releasing so much. I released so much, and I felt like a different person after I was done at the end of that year. But, you know, I finished the book at the end of 2019. I was done with it. And I had this, such, such a release out of me, you know? And then it was basically thinking about what was next steps to do with it after that. But it was an amazing experience.

CARMA:
That’s wonderful. I’m so proud of you. That you leapt into it and you did it, and you’re doing it again.

JENNIFER:
Yeah. It feels right, you know? So I think that, I think that I also discovered a little bit of my purpose. I was often asking myself that, and I knew my HR career all this time, wasn’t it. It felt, it never felt exactly right. And then doing this felt like, oh, wait a minute. And then it reminded me, I realized, oh, when I was in high school, teachers were telling my mom, oh, you know, she writes really well, good papers, and she may be a gifted writer. But I didn’t look at life like that, you know, at the time, and neither did my mother, you know?

So I think I found something here that, that feels right to me.

CARMA:
That’s good. That’s wonderful. So is there a lesson that you’ve learned so far that you would like to pass on to people who are coming after you, to new and aspiring authors.

JENNIFER:
Yeah, just keep going, keep writing and keep moving it along and, and follow your dream if that’s what you wanna do. And you feel that that’s right for you, don’t listen to anyone. Right?

I often tell people I didn’t tell anyone that I was writing this while I was doing it or when I was about to publish it, no one knew about it. I mean, no one outside of the universe and you know, those on the other side, because I knew I didn’t want any doubts in my mind at all. I knew it was right. So that’s what I share with others and pay that forward. Don’t listen to anyone else. If your gut’s telling you, go for it, just keep doing it.

CARMA:
That’s very, very good advice. That’s part of the reason why I do this podcast, is to encourage people to just go for it. And even if the book doesn’t get published, sometimes just the process of doing it is the benefit in and of itself.

JENNIFER:
Yeah. Absolutely.

CARMA:
Is there anything else you’d like to share that I haven’t asked you about?

JENNIFER:
I think last thoughts is just for everybody to, you know, to live their life in love. And I think that to begin with self-love, that’s important.

That was a big, a big thing that I learned throughout all of this Also, so I just wanna share that forward with everybody too. So just live their life in love and start with that, with self-love.

CARMA:
Wonderful. Now, if someone wanted to learn more about you and your book, where would they go?

JENNIFER:
On my website, jennifermalemany.com. I’m also on Instagram, @jennifer.m.alemany and Facebook, also, and LinkedIn.

CARMA:
Wonderful. Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today.

JENNIFER:
Oh, thank you. Thank you for a wonderful conversation.

CARMA:
Well, this is the end of The Author Switch. I am your host, Carma Spence, signing off. Ciao for now.

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