This essay was a finalist in the How We Saved the World essay contest, where people wrote as if it was 2050 when the world was working, saying how we got there starting with something they did. Here's the intro to this presentation of results, with links to the other finalists and an invitation to make comments about the contest.

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The Grassroots Gamechanger

The Chain-Book Phenomenon: A Grassroots Game Changer
25th Anniversary Celebration & Retirement

As most of you know, I am retiring on this, the 25th anniversary of the publication of my flagship book, Castles. I leave my entrepreneurial legacy in the hands of my daughter whom you all know quite well by now. I have nothing but the utmost faith in her, and in you, too. Without everyone doing their part, you out there especially, we would not be where we are today: celebrating a cooperative world built on the interconnectedness and sacredness of everything and everyone. By taking a moment to reflect on how we got here, we honor our collective journey to this point, comprised of the sacred individual journeys each of you traversed yourselves.

Twenty-six years ago, in 2024, a good friend of mine, Suzanne Taylor, held an essay contest. The essay was to describe how we saved the world by 2050. I had been envisioning and dreaming of a better world my entire life and I settled on working on myself and on my neighborhood as my contribution to that better world. Although there was a generous prize, the true reward was the act of the writing itself, as the essay led to the book – blueprinting the adage from Mahatma Gandhi, “If you want to save the world, first start with yourself.”

You all have heard me repeat, know your purpose. I’ve always known mine; I was born to write, to write and to speak. I knew from a young age that I would become a writer and a life coach or motivational speaker, if you will. But, as Morpheus tells Neo in The Matrix, “There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.” Failure after failure, I finally let go of knowing the path, and naturally and unknowingly, I began to walk it. I began to participate in the world instead of projecting my knowledge and expectations onto it.

This participation allowed me to see myself mirrored in the world I experienced as well as partnered with the world in the future we collectively created. The nature of my participation depended on how well I plumbed my depths of old wounds, misguided beliefs and unhealthy behaviors. Before my participation truly began, I had to begin deeply healing myself. And to begin deeply healing myself, I had to clearly see myself.

It was during young adulthood that this clarity of sight began to emerge. At the age of 21, as you all know, I experienced my first healing journey. A scene from a movie – Pretty Woman – triggered repressed memories of two sexual assaults during college, and the existential crisis and questions that followed sent me on an underworld journey to heal. Synchronistically, the world participated in this wounded healer journey, as my college classes suddenly included prerequisites on philosophy and religion, which would be the cause of my later matriculation to California Institute of Integral Studies from where much of my material is sourced. For over a decade, I worked at healing myself in therapy and in school. After graduation, I worked for a non-profit, working with the severely mentally ill and homeless, and every night, I slept well because I knew the work I did during the day – serving others from 9-5 and then doing therapy from 5-6 – made the world a better place.

It was during my 9-5 that I realized I had also healed myself of the PTSD from the assaults. There were two incidents that confirmed this healing. First, a man in a wheelchair grabbed me and pulled me onto his lap, and I immediately fought and got away. Afterwards, I realized I remained embodied the entire time and I had responded with full cognizance. Second, I was writing a letter on behalf of one of my clients. I advocated for him with full strength and deep compassion. It occurred to me that this client had been guilty of serial rape, and yet my eyes saw past his charges to his humanity. My history didn’t cloud my ability to have compassion. If anything, the journey I had made in healing myself had enhanced my compassionate nature.

I was walking the path.

I realized it was time to share my story with the world, and I began writing. My first article, “Cold Hands, Warm Heart,” was published by the Journal of the Peace and Justice Studies Association. I then tried to write Castles, but it just wouldn’t come. I had too much space for my creativity; I needed more structure in which my creativity could play. Then, thankfully, Suzanne’s essay contest came up and it provided me with the structure to take my next step. I was one of the winners, but what was more important than winning was the turn in my life that occurred as a result of winning. A series of fortunate events, and more importantly, relationships, birthed. My longtime editor, Sarah, who was working at a midsize publishing house at the time, found me through Suzanne’s friend. During our first talk, Sarah had the vision to see the potential impact of Castles and signed me right away.

Sarah knew exactly what I needed. She gave me deadline after deadline for just the right amount of pressure to help me produce. She gave me pushback when I offered complacency. She asked me questions when I presumed acceptance. In one day, we could be arguing all morning, shouting and gesturing, huffing and puffing, and by night we’d be eating dinner, laughing, and celebrating the outcome of the argument. She was my support, and she was my opponent; and, if I had to choose, I am more grateful for the latter than the former, because the latter was the one that made me better.

My relationship with Sarah was the perfect accompaniment – she was the perfect midwife – for Castles. You all know that in that book, I write about how to heal yourself and your relationships with others, how to find forgiveness and compassion within, and how to reduce othering in favor of partnership with your seeming adversaries. That was the easy part. The hard part was being brave in asking my readers to do the chain-book.

It’s one thing to share with the world my story of going from rape victim to a forgiveness and compassion advocate, but it was a whole other thing for the little girl inside me to come out and share her dream of a global chain letter turned book.

For those of you too young to remember, way back in the day, chain letters were sent in the postal mail on paper, and if you were lucky (or unlucky) to receive one, the letter asked to be copied several times and sent to several friends of yours to receive a windfall. If you didn’t send it – if you broke the chain – you’d get bad luck. It was through conversations with Sarah that my courage to start a chain grew. In the book, I confidently asked the reader at the end, that if they felt moved at all my book, to please buy 2 more copies and to gift one to a friend, which was the easy part, and to gift the second to an adversary or someone whom they “othered” in some way, as a gesture of bridge-building.

When the book was published, I began traveling to do book tours and the occasional workshop. I continued my legal day job, working in my midwestern city advocating for mental health diversion, rehabilitation and restorative justice over incarceration. My focus remained: one small step in my neighborhood each day toward a better world for all.

Little did I know that, while I was busy working with my local indigent population, readers were not only gifting copies to friends and “others,” but they were starting book clubs. The members of those book clubs were, at the same time, inspired by my story to undertake their own hero’s journeys. Those that never thought of doing therapy sought counselors and began exploring Jungian analysis and depth work. Those that denied their childhood wounds explored codependency groups and trauma recovery support. Those that battled depression and anxiety booked mental health services and compared mainstream pharmaceuticals with plant based therapies. Not only were the book clubs a place to discuss the book, but clubs became sharing circles where individuals shared the turning points, obstacles and victories of their hero’s journeys. The members delighted in each others’ celebrations and learned from each others’ tribulations. The Universe spoke through them to each other, and when any of them felt they just could not go on any longer, they could not explore any deeper, they could not transmute any more darkness into light, the perfect message would come through to them so they could carry on. The synchronistic moments began to multiply exponentially so that practically every step of their journeys became imbued with magic and divinity.

Victims let go of their victimhood and became their own heroes, finding forgiveness and compassion for those that wronged them and peace within themselves. Enemies let go of the antagonism in their relationships and partnered with their opponents in process-based approaches. Abusers let go of insatiable need and tended to their deep, internal wounds.

Little did I know, but one of these book clubs was founded by a famous member – Taylor Swift. I was the last to know. I returned from court to the office one fateful Monday and my coworkers looked at me wide-eyed while I tried to see who was blowing up my phone. It was Sarah – the chain-book hit critical mass because Taylor Swift made it go viral! I became a global celebrity!

Do you know what I did? I went back to work. Many people ask me why I did that. It was for two main reasons: first, I was already happy with my life, as happiness is a state of mind and a state of being, not a consequence of fame or any external thing; second, change is scary, even change for the good. I tried holding on to my day job as long as I could, but the media attention was too disruptive. I gave in and my publisher pulled out all the magic they had and surrounded me with a team to help me handle the newfound spotlight of global fame. There were rumors about a Pulitzer, even the Nobel Peace Prize. My publisher expanded my tour and added a program that helped ignite the artistic flame in my readers. Workshop participants came together and created a renaissance of artistic expression, now ritualized in the annual, country-wide DAMS Festival – the Depth Arts & Music Storytelling Festival, where festival goers in every major city share song, poetry, spoken word, art and dance in collective healing concerts, bringing with them the darkness they dug up during the year and working it into light and gold for all to enjoy.

I also had multiple meetings with my old bosses on how to best capitalize on this attention to serve the public. As readers were bridge-building new relationships with others-turned-partners all over the world, the Democratic National Committee and I strategized on how to turn this light onto the dark world of politics. Without their platform, I’d have never run and won the 2nd US Senate Seat (D) for the State of Missouri.

During my term in the Senate, I partnered with the Republican Senator on prison reform promoting rehabilitation, restorative justice, and mental health diversion. The prison population is now 33% of what it was at inception, and arrests are down by 77%. I reached across the aisle again to draft META, the Monopoly Ending Trust Act of 2034, from which local, small businesses are flourishing while big multinational companies have been dismantling themselves slowly and transparently. I sponsored the MKS Act, the Mental Knowledge Saves Act, where mindfulness, meditation and mental health skills are taught in all public schools. Without the local support in piloting this program in the midwest back in the late 2020’s, we wouldn’t have gone 20 years so far without a school shooting nation-wide.

The success of these initiatives won high ratings and reelection for the public officials who supported them, and this encouraged other legislators to jump on the boat. I held a series of workshops in Washington specifically tailored to them. There, the new relationships and new way of thinking helped former adversaries come together to pen the Bamboo Instead of Plastic Act, where plastic manufacturers slowly shifted to bamboo production with major tax incentives over the course of a decade, and now we have a country free of plastic. With the seeds of newfound partnership and friendship blossoming in D.C., I completed my term and then, with the Secretary of State, UN delegates and other diplomats, I traveled to the Middle East to meet with heads of state and conduct workshops there, for the government bodies and for some of the masses. Without the help of Israeli, Palestinian, and Christian masses who helped pressure their governments to settle on a 3-state solution, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to help guide them in the collaboration that birthed the Abrahamic Tripartite Cooperative Council. We still need more access of thought to our future friends in Russia, China and states in Africa, but I hear readers are sending secret copies of Castles to them to overcome the ban on my books. The chain grows! It won’t be stopped! It’s only a matter of time before the entire world finally sees with clarity that underneath this world of illusory separation, we are all one – one energy, one consciousness, one being, one love.

It is with the utmost honor and humility that I leave you now, to retire and to formally receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Go out on top, they say; and, so, I am. You, the readers and participants that remain steadfast in growing a new world from the ground up, remain as steadfast to your purpose and all will be more than well. A new crop of leaders to guide you has emerged and my team and I have trained many of them. As promised, the first initiatives on deck are the free energy transition, the basic universal income program and the global health care system. I know that some of our nation-state governments are opposed to these. We have more work cut out for ourselves, but, as the past 25 years show, together we can accomplish anything. Let’s make these ideas a reality the same way we have made so many others real: by reaching out to those opposed to us and building a bridge with them to a new world, brick by brick, hand-in-hand.