Celebrate with me! My first book, Spirituality is for Every Body: 8 Accessible, Inclusive Ways to Connect with the Divine When Living with Disability, is now available for pre-order on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Target! In the interest of transparency, by pre-ordering my book, you help generate buzz around the book which encourages bookstores to order copies. I appreciate your support!
Next week, I’ll be engaging in the spiritual practice of rest and will not publish a new post. However, I’ll be back in two weeks. Have a wonderful two weeks! Naturally, this post is about the spiritual practice of Celebrating Your Achievements.
On June 3, 2022, I was relaxing when my phone rang. Surprised by the phone call, I looked at my caller id to see who was calling. There was no name, just an unfamiliar phone number. Curious about who was calling on a Friday afternoon, I answered.
“Hello,” I said.
“Hi! Is this Allison Thompkins?” asked the voice on the other end of the call. I immediately knew who it was and why he was calling. I had literally dreamed of this moment for nearly two years.
Although I had rehearsed what I’d say if I ever received this call, my perfectly prepared, calm response went flying out the window and instead I said, “YES, THIS IS ALLISON!!! IS THIS REID TRACY?!?!”
“Yes, this is Reid Tracy, CEO of Hay House Publishing and I’m happy to tell you that you are the grand prize winner of the Writer’s Workshop Contest! You’ve won a contract to have your book published by Hay House! CONGRATULATIONS!”
To which, I screamed for a solid 5 seconds. I only stopped because I became concerned that I might hurt Reid’s ear if I kept screaming directly into the phone. I proceeded to thank him and the entire Hay House family for deciding to publish my book.
I was so excited that I couldn’t get the words out fast enough to convey my gratitude and unbridled excitement that I was going to be a Hay House author and would have the opportunity to share my message with the world. Reid said how excited Hay House was to welcome me to the family, how much they supported my mission and how excited they were to help me get my book into readers’ hands!
You might be thinking, “This is awesome, but what led to this momentous phone call?”
Ever since I was a teenager, people have told me that I should write a book about my life. Once I had graduated from MIT, served as a consultant to various governments and landed a job as a full-time economist, I felt I had enough to write about. So, I sat down to write a book about my life, but the words simply didn’t come.
I wanted to write a book that would help people live more joyful and fulfilling lives, inspire people to dream huge dreams and give people the tools that would help them realize those dreams. Even though I really wanted to write a book, the time wasn’t right yet so I tabled it.
A few years later, the idea for Spirituality is for Every Body came to me. At the beginning of the pandemic, I had an epiphany: I could write a book about how my spiritual practices help me live a joyous life and teach people how to make spiritual practices accessible to people with all types of disabilities. By this time, I had studied spirituality for several years and had helped clients living with disabilities develop their own spiritual practices.
I remembered that when I was in college I wanted to read a book that taught me how to adapt spiritual practices to meet my needs and how to apply spiritual principles to situations that are unique to disability. As a twenty something, I looked high and low but couldn’t find a book that covered those topics. So, throughout the pandemic, I wrote the book that I wanted to read when I was 20 years old.
While writing my book, I received a newsletter from Hay House inviting aspiring authors to attend a virtual conference called the Writer’s Workshop. I attended the Workshop with other aspiring authors and learned about writing and publishing a book. Workshop attendees had the opportunity to enter a contest by writing a book proposal and submitting it to Hay House. Hay House would select a proposal as the grand prize winner, give the author a book deal and publish the author’s book. I entered the contest. Two months after submitting my proposal, I received that glorious call from Reid!
And now, that book, the book that I hope helps people experience more joy than they have before, the book that teaches readers how to engage in spiritual practices regardless of disability status, the book that gives readers examples of how I use spirituality to turn ableism and inaccessibility into opportunities for joy and blessings is available for pre-order!!! YAY!!
If you’d like to pre-order my book, you can click on one of the retailers listed below to be taken to my book’s page on that retailer’s website:
Anything we accomplish is a collaborative effort between ourselves, anyone who supports us and the Divine. Thus, when we celebrate our achievements, we are not only celebrating ourselves and the people who helped us, we are also celebrating and honoring the Divine energy that played a role in the fulfillment of our desire. That celebration ushers more Divine energy into our lives. As we celebrate, joy, love, and all the other wonderful qualities of the Divine flow through us into the world. So, let’s get our celebration on!
Love, blessings and purple,
Allison
You can do this exercise as often as you like this week. If you need modifications to the practice, scroll down to the section titled Access Notes.
Celebrating Your Achievements
Dancing can be a wonderful way to celebrate your achievements and the achievements of others. So, today I invite you to think of anything you have accomplished recently (or not so recently) and dance wherever you are, whenever you can, to celebrate your achievement. You can dance to music or in quiet. And, you can dance for as long as you like. Put a smile on your face and allow your body to move however it wants to move. Know that I am dancing with you!
The following modifications are intended to create equal access to the spiritual practice above. These modifications are somewhat general to be as useful as possible to as many people as possible. Please feel free to further tweak the exercise as needed so that you can participate as fully as possible while honoring your body’s needs.
1. If you are unable to smile, imagine yourself smiling as you dance.
2. If you’re unable to move your body, move whatever you can. Whether you blink your eyes, raise your eyebrows, bop your head, drive your wheelchair in circles or figure eights, raise and lower your bed, let out a scream of delight or imagine yourself dancing, do what you can to let the energy of celebration flow through you.
