Thank you Lisa Mistra for this illustration. Love it! Melissa Scott Sinclair was the moderator, a talented author and writer for Richmond magazine and Style Weekly and I am the presenter on the topic of personal branding.
If you are an aspiring author in Richmond, Virginia, James River Writers is the group for you. Such a gracious, interesting, supportive and engaged group. I thoroughly enjoyed presenting to this group. And that’s saying something since I had been in a serious grief relapse.
The topic was personal branding and social media and I used some examples from this site, annemoss.com. It was interesting combining my professional knowledge as a digital marketing firm owner with my personal blog. What you don’t always know when you are speaking in a theatre since the audience is darkened is who is in the audience.
I knew Charles’ 8th grade English teacher, Katherine Herndon, was there since she is now Executive Director of this nonprofit.
So I’m chatting at the end of my talk and I see Charles’ doctor from the time he was 9 months until his last visit for a cold at 19. Dr. Jackson was with his two daughters, 13 and 17, both writers. One of them already has a blog!
As you can imagine, it was an emotional moment.
He hadn’t heard about Charles’ suicide until that night during my intro. It did feel good to connect. And I was surprised in finding out Charles’ doctor was also an author.
Reaching out and connecting with people in my grief journey has been important to my emotional healing. I don’t shy away from presenting examples of social media marketing that include content about suicide, addiction or mental illness because it’s real. And I refuse to carry on the tradition of shame tied to these subjects.
Melissa Scott Sinclair summed it up well and author member, Shawna C tweeted it out.
