I am thrilled to be hosting a spot
on the A LITTLE CLOSER TO HOME by Ginger Zee Blog Tour hosted by Rockstar Book Tours. Check out my
post and make sure to enter the giveaway!
About The Book:
Author: Ginger Zee
Pub. Date: January 11, 2022
Publisher: Hyperion Avenue
Formats: Hardcover, eBook, audiobook
Pages: 288
Find it: Goodreads, Amazon, Kindle, Audible, B&N, iBooks, Kobo, TBD, Bookshop.org
In Ginger Zee's follow-up to the bestselling Natural Disaster, the ABC chief meteorologist takes readers on a much deeper journey of self discovery.
When Ginger Zee opened her life to readers in Natural Disaster, the response was enormous. She put a very relatable if surprising face on depression and has helped lessen the stigma surrounding mental health issues. But Ginger tells us, Natural Disaster was "Ginger Lite" and only scratched the surface.
In this moving follow-up, Ginger shares her truest self. She spent most of her
life shielding her vulnerabilities from the world all while being a
professional people pleaser. Her stormy childhood, her ongoing struggles with
crippling depression, her suicide attempts, and many other life experiences
will resonate with readers who are likely to see themselves along the way.
In spite of its serious subject matter, Ginger's positive, life-affirming
outlook comes through loud and clear. Written with great heart and quite a bit
of humor, Ginger normalizes issues and challenges millions of people face every
day. A Little Closer to Home will broaden the conversation
around mental health at a time we need it more than ever.
Grab Ginger's first book Natural Disaster now!
INTRODUCTION
This is a book about healing. A deep
healing in a woman, who ten years ago found herself in a mental health
hospital, but is now thriving and finding her identity.
She is me and this introduction
changed just weeks before final print because after I re-read the manuscript
and shared it with other people, I realized the book isn’t really about the
healing itself, but about the process of healing and most importantly the hard
work that is required before and after healing.
After my therapist read this book, he
said something so poignant to me that I had to include it. Even he, who had been
with me through this whole journey after my mental health hospitalization, had
not realized how much I had been through and more importantly how much I have
overcome. Reading it all in one sitting in such a condensed fashion changed the
story for him and for me.
Instead of being concerned about
releasing more deep, dark secrets for the world to know and to judge me on, I
know that these “secrets” are my secret weapons.
Sharing these secrets is power and
gives me an instant jolt of connection to other people who are on their own
mental health odyssey. My transparency in my first book helped other people but
also gave me sovereignty over my own narrative. It’s true that I will never be
100 percent cured of all of my issues, but I have proven that dedication to
healing is effective. I am living proof! Goodness, I sound like an infomercial.
But just like the Flowbee had an infomercial, this is one that works and will
hopefully last you a lifetime (my dad still has the Flowbee he bought in the
eighties to cut our hair and it still works. It is also back in style to have a
Flowbee. I can’t believe it.)
Every time I charge myself with
writing a chapter, committing more time to finding other ways to meditate or
even forcing myself to sit on my couch and launch the zoom therapy session that
I “don’t really need at the moment,” it uncovers something else I do need to
work on. But that something else, I can now put in a HEALING, solution-based
narrative. One of the most important topics I will cover in this book is how to
address trauma. For now, I will equate mental and emotional trauma to a wound.
Prior to doing this hard work, my
“way” of dealing with a wound would be to immediately cover it with dirt and pretend
it never happened. You can imagine how that turned out. While I have been
navigating the deep infections and twisted scars that evolved on the
uncared-for wounds of my life, I now spend much of my time gathering the tools
that will help me make the inevitable next wound a cleaner and quicker heal.
Societally, we put a pretty hefty
emphasis on our physical health, focusing so much time, money, and thought into
how we can make ourselves look good. I’ve taken that energy, once
reserved solely for physical health, and shifted it to mental health, where I
put time, energy, and money into making my brain look good (feel good).
Every week, every day, I do something to make it cleaner, stronger, and better,
and it is working. I hope that with this book, using my secret weapons as the
fuel, we can keep encouraging each other to put in the effort and find the
solutions that work for us. We all deserve it. You go to the gym for two weeks,
start seeing the benefits, and then quit and expect it all to stick. Mental health
is the same as physical health. It requires effort, but the payoff is so worth
it.
My name is Ginger. I am the chief
meteorologist at ABC News, the first woman to hold that title at a major
network. I have covered nearly every recent giant weather event from Hurricane
Katrina to the latest Category-5 hurricane, Michael, and Category-4 hurricane,
Laura. I’ve had the honor of taking people around the world on amazing
adventures like paragliding off the Himalayas with vultures eating out of my
hand, to most recently telling a climate-change story in Africa at Victoria
Falls. I was on Dancing with the Stars, I have a spectacular husband,
two young boys, and I have attempted suicide. Twice.
That last part is not the most common
component to an introduction and certainly doesn’t make it into my bio at work,
but it has become an important part of my personal prologue for the past few
years. Three years ago, I finally found real healing in a place I did not
expect. I wrote a book, not just about my first suicide attempt, but about my
decades’-long battle with depression and the tools I have learned in order to
live with it. I didn’t have a clue how much more mental mending it would bring
me, but now that it has, I want to share more. And I want to share it with you.
I’m still a little surprised I became
a memoir writer. Memoir. What a strange word. There was no part of me
that wanted to write one, that’s for sure. My entire life I had told myself I
wasn’t a writer. However, when I was pregnant with my first son, we looked high
and low for a good baby book about weather and just couldn’t find one. I
figured I could handle writing a baby book, twenty pages of large font and mostly
pictures, especially with my platform as a chief meteorologist. I fortuitously
met with a wonderful woman named Wendy Lefkon and her team at Disney
Publishing. When I told them about the character and stories I wanted to tell, they
told me that they fit a preteen, chapter-book audience better. As we discussed
how the trilogy of Helicity would play out, I began sharing my personal
stories, since many of Helicity’s adventures would be based on my own life.
When talking about my experience covering Hurricane Katrina, I said, well, that
was when I was engaged and became a runaway bride. Oh, and that blizzard was
when a homeless lady chased me under a bridge in Chicago.
Through the self-deprecating style I
usually tell stories with, Wendy and her team convinced me that the book I really
needed to write was a memoir about my life, the storms and adventure. As soon
as I started writing, it was impossible to ignore my mental-health challenges.
So yes, I went to write a baby book
about rainbows and sunshine and came out first with a book for adults about
suicide and depression.
I was really surprised at how much I
enjoyed the entire process of writing the book. But the night before Natural
Disaster went to print, I started thinking about the opening line, in
which I write about checking myself into the psychiatric ward at Columbia
University Medical Center. My husband and I were lying in bed and I couldn’t
sleep. I turned on the light and nudged him awake.
“Bean, I think I should call this off.
I think I said too much in the book. What if I lose my job?”
He saw that I was panicking, but he
didn’t miss a beat. He reminded me that it was good to be nervous because it
meant the book wasn’t just going to be some nice story about a nice girl. This
book was going to be about the true me—messy, deeply faulted, and fallible. I
thought back to the moment I had told Wendy’s team that I really didn’t want
this book to have the typical cover: a photo of me, smiling in a pastel sweater.
Because that was not what my book was about. That would not be a book
worth sharing. This was.
After remembering that and listening
to my sage husband, suddenly I could breathe again. For the first time in my
life, I was letting go. Letting go of caring what other people think and
letting go of working so hard to be the person I thought everybody wanted me to
be.
After my book was published, people
started divulging their stories to me, sharing their deepest secrets and their own
personal storms. These people also had more questions. I started to write this
follow-up book aimed to help answer those questions, but as I started writing I
figured out that I was far from “cured.” I decided to go back to therapy
full-time so I could learn more to share with all of you. I also realized there
was a major part of my life I did not share in the first book but that was
integral to my story.
That’s why this book is called A
Little Closer to Home. When I got the job at GMA, I knew I was going
to need a cue phrase to toss to the local affiliates. I had grown up watching
Al Roker say in your neck of the woods and I put a lot of thought into
finding just the right slogan that I would want to say forever because I
intended on having the job for a very long time. I came up with a little
closer to home.
When I was struggling for a title for
this book, my husband suggested my catchphrase, and it is the only title that works.
But this book isn’t just a little closer to home. It is a lot closer to
home.
The real impetus for going back to
therapy came at a surprising time. I had started my morning like any other, met
with the weather team, discussed our headlines and what images we would share to
tell the big weather story, got through hair and makeup, did promos for our
affiliates, and settled in at my makeshift desk on the studio floor. It’s
actually more of a piece of glossy whiteboard that is almost flush with the
back of a large wall on the set in the wings of GMA. It is right where
all correspondents, producers, and guests enter the studio. With my back to
that door I didn’t need to see, I could feel that this was a busy news day with
the number of people that were crowding near the entrance.
Christine Blasey-Ford had given her
testimony at the Kavanaugh hearings. The top of our show, the part we call the
“cold open,” featured part of her chilling statement on the stand. The first
story was full of her words:
“I am here today not because I want to
be, I am terrified. I understand and appreciate the importance of you hearing from
me directly about what happened to me and the impact that it has had on my life
and on my family.
“I don’t have all the answers and I
don’t remember as much as I would like to. I drank one beer. Brett and Mark were
drunk. I was pushed onto the bed and Brett got on top of me. Brett groped me
and tried to take off my clothes. They were drunkenly laughing during the
attack. I was too afraid and ashamed to tell anyone these details. I convinced
myself that because Brett did not rape me, I should just move on and pretend
that it didn’t happen. I did the best to ignore the memory of the assault.”
I heard Christine Blasey-Ford’s voice
echo in my ear and then worm deep into my brain and memory. Her intimate description
of date rape was so vivid and hit more than a little close to home. My cheeks
flushed, I looked around to see how many people were in the studio because I
knew I was going to cry. The tears started flowing and I couldn’t stop them. I
didn’t want to. I knew in that moment it was important to feel. No matter what
happened at the hearing, I felt that testimony evoke emotion and trauma in me
that I had not addressed but knew I needed to. I realized that my experience with
date rape was not only never dealt with but spiraled into years of other
traumatic events and a horrible habit of ignoring them all.
I didn’t mention my second suicide
attempt in the last book because I wasn’t ready to talk about what happened right
before I tried to take my own life.
I had an abortion.
There, I said it. It’s definitely not
included in that work bio. It’s not something any of us talk about, but I kind
of feel like we need to. Especially because it’s what precipitated my second
suicide attempt and was a powerful part of the mental health spiral I rode to
the bottom during the following ten years.
I am one of millions of women who have
and will have abortions. Nobody talks about it because it’s not an easy
discussion, and no one is allowed to talk about it before it automatically gets
political. I don’t want this book to be political. I want this book to be about
a young woman who was forced to make a choice that would impact her life
forever. I want this book to be about my abortion’s physical and emotional toll
on my life. This is not a story shared to shame others nor is it in an effort
to promote the choice. No one talks about what can happen to you after “the
choice”—for me it was a postpartum hormonal nosedive, the heaviest shame I have
ever felt, and the lifelong guilt, acceptance, and forgiveness that I have
needed to curate in order to survive. Not everyone has the same experience. But
for those who might, I want them to have the education and support for options
I didn’t even know I had. I want everyone to know there is a simple step you
can take to protect yourself from it ever happening to you. I am ready to be
that person who finally talks about it and makes it okay to share so other
young women don’t have to be forced to make that choice.
While the number of abortions each
year in America goes up and down and reporting is not mandatory, it is
estimated that in 2015 (the last year numbers were available at the time of
this writing) more than six hundred thousand abortions were performed. Shouldn’t
the numbers alone give us permission and even a responsibility to talk about
it?
It’s been more than forty years since
abortion was legalized, and as of this writing, it’s still a lightning-rod
issue in America. More than one state has recently taken abortion all the way
to the Supreme Court. I want to repeat—this is not a book about politics or
morality. In fact, I have made it a point to listen to both sides and I see the
value in each side’s stances and opinions. But neither side sounds like they have
had an abortion because neither talks about what happens before and after to
the woman in that position. Everyone is focused on the baby, the group of cells
or whatever side you are on would like to call it. But absolutely no one
focuses on the woman carrying that embryo.
My hope with this book is to begin a
substantive conversation on protection and education. There are several highly effective
safe options for birth control including long-acting contraception, and it is
important that women feel safe and empowered to have these conversations with
their health care provider. I truly believe that if I had access to a nearly fail-proof
birth control like the IUD before I got pregnant, I wouldn’t have needed to
have an abortion. When a young girl is raped by her uncle, an IUD won’t save
her from the mental torture and PTSD, but it could protect her from having a child
born of that horrific start. Unfortunately, the knee-jerk reaction to providing
protection for young people is still the argument that it’s just going to lead
to more promiscuity. In fact, statistics on sex education in high schools bear
out the opposite conclusion.
Women need more counseling and
education about abortion as well. While I will not take a side on the morality
of abortion, I’m concerned that if it’s criminalized, women will go into hiding
even more and there will be nobody there to help them. Something as simple as
knowing about the postpartum drop in hormones after an abortion probably would have
prevented me from trying to take my own life. I had nobody to talk to about the
guilt and shame I would suffer from having an abortion that would affect every
area of my life for the next two decades. All that time I thought I had to keep
it a secret. My abortion was a giant lumbering elephant banging around in my
psyche. Who knows how much less self destructive pain I would have gone through
if I’d dealt with it earlier? Who knows what I would have done if societally I wasn’t
told it is impossible to be a mother and advance in your career. I believe a
big part of my damaging choices throughout most of my twenties was directly
related to the guilt I felt after the abortion. Not my chaotic family life,
parents’ divorce, date rape, etc. But the abortion.
We need to take this conversation out
of the closet and give all women a chance to find the healing that I found in writing
this book. Healing, forgiveness, and grace no matter what trauma someone has
endured. I’ll never be fully over it, but I have finally addressed it. In
writing this book I actually had to stop and focus on the therapy surrounding
this choice I made seventeen years ago. Now I have given it the attention it
deserves.
My first book was full of
embarrassing, hopefully funny stories, and believe it or not, I still have more
of those for the pages ahead. I’ll also be bringing back my therapist, Dr. Wilson,
because he has been my greatest teacher on my road to recovery. It’s hard to
find the perfect therapist, and if you haven’t yet, please don’t give up. It’s
worth the search to find that perfect combination of chemistry and faith that I
have with Dr. Wilson. I worked with at least ten therapists before I met him
after I was at an inpatient hospital at Columbia University Medical Center in
New York City. Even a good therapist can’t do the healing work for you, but he
or she can be a trusted guide who knows the way and can help you find peace.
And for me, hospitalization and
focusing on what type of therapy I needed was necessary. That’s something I
hope this book can do, too. I think we are all getting better about reducing
the stigma around mental-health issues, but now the focus must be on the action
taken after it is talked about and eliminating that stigma. We need to
make hospitalization less frightening and more approachable. When you have a
problem with your back, you go to your primary doctor, who then refers you to a
specialist. We need this type of structure and attention to our mental health.
I wish I could tell you that I’m cured
of either or both of the mental issues I’ve struggled with (anorexia and
depression). I still have both, but I am highly functional and managing in the
healthiest place I’ve ever been. I have a wonderful life and I am at peace,
which was never something I even considered as a possibility. I want you to
know you also deserve a great life, and you absolutely, without a doubt,
deserve to be at peace. I purposefully did not use the word happy here,
and you’ll read why later.
Maybe you’re reading this book because
somebody recommended it. Maybe you heard about it somewhere and thought it was
worth checking out. Maybe you just picked it up in a bookstore and two pages
into it you’re thinking Why the heck am I reading this? I’ll take
any of those reasons and I hope you’ll stay with me until the end.
My story will not be exactly like
anybody else’s story. We all have different lives and different experiences
that have shaped us into who we are. But I’m confident that we do share some
things in common. Chances are, somehow you have been affected by mental
illness. Maybe you’ve been diagnosed with anxiety, depression, or suicidal
ideation. Maybe you just have funky days and can’t pinpoint what’s wrong. Maybe
you have a friend or a family member who is suffering and you want to help. My
first book taught me that; it was called Natural Disaster, I Cover Them, I
Am One—because I am. But I am so not alone. Thousands of you have written
to me to say how much you felt like you were reading your own story. I hope
that happens again with this book and that we can all keep learning and healing
together.
It’s sad that my mental illness
affected our entire family worse than it probably had to, but that’s how mental
illness works. The person suffering isn’t the only one sucked into the darkness
of the storm. Everybody who loves them gets caught up in it, too. To this day,
I can’t think about my suicide attempts without thinking about the fear in my
parents’ eyes when they rushed into my triage room at the hospital. Years later
they shared with me how after the suicide attempts, they were in constant fear
of answering the phone because maybe somebody on the other end of the line
would tell them that this time I’d succeeded. Now that I’m a mother, I can
imagine how truly awful that must have been. But I no longer feel guilt for
that because I finally realize that I was sick. I didn’t choose to try to kill
myself. As Vonnie Woodrick, from the group I understand, and a leader in
facilitating and understanding suicide, says, “Suicide is a side effect of
depression, pain, or other mental illness.”
And that’s true; I was sick. I just
found a way to manage my illness. As Robin Roberts says, “Everybody’s got
something.” We certainly do—I just work hard every day to keep healing and
thrive (“not just survive,” another Roberts gem).
I’ve lived most of my life fiercely
protecting my vulnerabilities and weaknesses. I was a professional people
pleaser and perfectionist by the age of six, which helped lead to my anorexia
and depression. I was convinced my career would end if anybody found out about
my abortion. Just thinking about the amount of energy I expended protecting my
secrets exhausts me. But at least now I am free, and telling my story has
changed my life forever, and I hope it can for you, too.
I could keep writing and editing this
because I will never stop working to heal my narrative and make grand steps for
my mental health. We all have the power to do this . . . but since I can’t keep
writing and rewriting in this book, let’s get started with something signature
Ginger.
About Ginger Zee:
Ginger Zee is the Chief Meteorologist for ABC
News, forecasting for and reporting on the nation's weather from Good
Morning America to World News Tonight. Zee has been on the
ground before, during and after almost every major weather event and dozens of
historic storms including Hurricane Katrina. She watched as the eye of
Superstorm Sandy passed over Atlantic City and then covered the devastated
Jersey Shore; she was there for the 2020 California wildfires and for the
unprecedented number of hurricanes on the Gulf Coast. Zee’s dedication to
science began at an early age, watching powerful thunderstorms rush across Lake
Michigan. Her passion for meteorology brought her to stormchase in college at
Valparaiso University where she earned her bachelor of science in
meteorology.
Website | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Goodreads | Amazon | BookBub
Giveaway Details:
3 winners will receive a finished copy of A LITTLE CLOSER TO HOME, US Only.
a Rafflecopter giveawayTour Schedule:
Week One:
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1/1/2022 |
Excerpt |
Week Two:
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1/2/2022 |
Excerpt |
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1/3/2022 |
Excerpt |
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1/4/2022 |
Excerpt |
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1/5/2022 |
Review |
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1/6/2022 |
Review |
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1/7/2022 |
Excerpt |
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1/8/2022 |
Review |
Week Three:
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1/9/2022 |
Review |
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1/10/2022 |
Review |
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1/11/2022 |
Review |
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1/12/2022 |
Review |
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1/13/2022 |
Review |
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1/14/2022 |
Review |
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1/15/2022 |
Review |
Week Four:
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1/16/2022 |
Excerpt |
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1/17/2022 |
Excerpt |
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1/18/2022 |
Review |
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1/19/2022 |
Excerpt |
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1/20/2022 |
Review |
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1/21/2022 |
Excerpt |
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1/22/2022 |
Review |
Week Five:
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1/23/2022 |
Review |
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1/24/2022 |
Review |
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1/25/2022 |
Review |
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1/26/2022 |
Review |
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1/27/2022 |
Review |
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1/28/2022 |
Review |
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1/29/2022 |
Review |
Week Six:
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1/30/2022 |
Review |
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1/31/2022 |
Review |
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