Between My Sheets—Episode 14: The BeComing

A performer needs the spotlight. A beacon just shines.

What if the one person who could stop you . . . can’t anymore?

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New here? You may want to start at the very beginning . . .

Because it turns out I’m writing a book disguised as a literary business model, disguised as a memoir unfolding in real time.

Between My Sheets is a living memoir of ReWriting a word-life one Friday at a time.

And if you’re reading this because I finally shared . . .
Hi there. This is where I’ve been.

Sink into this Friday moment—roughly an 11-minute read.

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Welcome, you.

A lifequake.

That’s the only word for this week. The ground didn’t wobble—it moved. Clean out from under me.

So I took the week off. Not to rest. To survive it.

That’s a promise broken.

And promises matter. Trust matters. And I matter.

This is the first one I’ve let myself off the hook for.

Last week, the promise I kept was to me.

I had to sit with myself.

And something utterly profound happened.

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I’ve spent nearly 30 years writing other people’s stories. Sharing their truth while I got to do what I do so well—remain hidden, in the shadows, just out of sight.

I’ve loved it.

I think because it’s so much more than writing. See, when I write for you, I see you.

Deeply.

When someone is in front of me, talking, telling me their story—I see the truth.

I see them—fully.

Not the side they present to the world.
Not the one they might be glamming up for me.

I see between the stories, between the words, between the surface level half-truths.

And once a person realizes they are truly seen, utterly exposed, we begin the writing process.

It’s always been a ReWrite.

Their ReWrite.

And that’s why the books I wrote resonated with so many.

The vulnerable truth is more powerful than any polished version could ever be.

And the reason I never wrote books for politicians.

I met with one once. But she was so deeply rooted in the story of her that to face the truth of she would have meant ending the career she’d spent decades building.

Living a deep lie can do that to a person.

It can make them sick, exhausted, depleted.

I’ve been living one for fifteen years . . .

One I share now because it’s the tangled sheets around my legs—wound all the way up to my throat—that keep me down.

That keep me quiet.

That keep me from sharing, from shining bright.

And in the current wreckage, I realize I no longer can pretend it isn’t slowly killing me.

Like the former ghost(writer), I have a whole other secret side.

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Alongside the writing, the teaching, the raising of my husband’s two children for several years each, I’ve also had a full time job.

I’ve been in the role of administrator for a property management company my husband and I own.

Tenants. Termites. Toilets.

The three headache-generating “T”s.

Instead of pushing Between My Sheets pages all the time, and focusing on what I do best . . . ReWriting people’s stories—or just plain writing—

I’ve been pushing spreadsheets, lease agreements, bills and invoices around a digital desk.

So. Not. Me.

Dealing with property, taxes, buildings, leases, contractors, and renovations.

So not my circus. And it is a circus.

I could never explain it to him—The Frenchman—why a thing I was capable of doing felt like drowning.

All that paperwork, quietly draining the life out of me.

I mean, how dramatic, right?

But maybe you can relate, Lovely Reader.

I’d sit down to the admin duties and feel the light in me go dim.

Then quietly—over weeks, years, a decade—fully fade out.

For the longest time, I thought something was wrong with me.

But now, in the middle of this lifequake, I know nothing was wrong with me.

I was never built to maintain, to manage. I’m built to transmit, to write.

Which is why I can no longer do the thing I’ve been doing on the side now for nearly fifteen years.

In the name of love and partnership and being responsible—I donned a hat that simply doesn’t fit.

One that suddenly weighs a ton.

A hat that, once donned, dimmed my light to the point of nothingness time and time again.

No wonder sickness followed me like a lost puppy.
No wonder I have a start-stop pattern.
No wonder my energy waned.

And now, facing a huge loss of something we’ve spent more than a decade building—that lifequake—I am realizing something utterly profound.

The loss is showing me what I am actually built for and is finally giving me permission to let the rest go.

Which is oddly freeing.

And such a juxtaposition to the financial hit which should have taken me to my knees.

Not in prayer but in utter horror. Okay maybe both . . .

But it didn’t. It’s not.

Instead, I’m not in the rubble alone. The Frenchman is in it with me.

And he doesn’t blame me. I don’t blame him.

We’re standing together, hand-in-hand, surrounded by the wreckage of something enormous and not turning on each other.

Instead, we’re turning to each other and choosing us, again, without a single word of if only you had . . .

At any other point in my life I would have said a love like that would be a lie.

Turns out it’s as good as the French kiss kind of steamy, hot love—if not better.

Here’s what I’m learning about myself through my own ReWrite—
and through what should be a devastating loss.

I’m supported. So supported.

And I know what it’s like to not be. Or to believe I was not.

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There was a moment in time when I was called a liar when actually I told the absolute truth.

And the one calling me that—she was supposed to be the one to protect me, to support me, but instead she turned on me.

When all I was doing was trying to help her, protect her.

Yet, it’s a mother’s job to protect her child, is it not?

I want to be careful here as this isn’t a tell-all and she’s not a witch in black swinging a villain’s broom.

She’s a woman who was living her life the best she knew how.

And I was a child shaped by what she said.

So I did what a child does when the truth gets her called a liar. I stopped offering mine.

Instead, I grew up and published under pseudonyms—in the proverbial dark.

I went and found a thousand other truths to tell instead.

Safer ones. Other people’s.

Because if their story got questioned, got rejected, got called a lie—it wasn’t mine on the table again.

Thirty years of ghostwriting, Lovely Reader, and I thought it was a career.

Instead, I’m finally calling it what it is . . . was.

A perfect hiding place.

And now, as I ReWrite my stories . . . I’m realizing I’ve been dimming in a different way.

I’ve cracked the front door open and allowed people in—quietly.

So quietly, so toned down that a sailing ship would never see my light shining nor hear my too-soft call.

I have been bracing for a knock that isn’t coming.

Like maybe I was bracing for The Frenchman to blame me for this lifequake loss.

Like maybe I’ve imagined her at every gate, at every turn, ready to call me that word again—liar.

She isn’t.

But even if she did show up, does it even matter?

Am I really willing to live another moment of my life dimming my light because of a word she uttered some forty-odd years ago?

I’m letting her and that story go—finally.

Not finally as in it took you long enough, Jill.

Finally as in—I’m ready. It’s time. And it feels safe to let her and that tall tale go.

Being seen doesn’t have to feel dangerous, instill fear.

Sharing doesn’t mean I’ll be branded a liar once again.

I know I’m not alone in holding onto a story that no longer suits me, fits, perhaps never even belonged to me.

I’ve watched the realization hit each and every soul I have written a book for.

That moment of letting go, of transformation, of their ReWrite rewiring their very life.

This is my ReWrite.

This is the ReWrite. Of her.
This is the BeComing. Of me.

I have nothing to fear, nothing to lose by allowing my light to shine bright.

In fact, I have so much to gain that even in the midst of the rubble, the loss, the mess, I’m smiling wide.

And swinging my front door wide.

Starting with me sharing Between My Sheets today with the list of people who want to hear from me and have not.

Which fires me up.

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Almost as much as Woolley Lamb Chop has been fired up these last two weeks. Her voice is fully tuned to the highest volume.

Her range from high-pitched Maah screaming, when I’m out of sight, to disgruntled low-notes when I put her in her pen is somewhat amusing.

It would be more so if she could lower the volume a notch or two.

Who knew I’d become her beacon of Maah light.

Right now I’m simply grateful she’s on her doggy bed, sound asleep, just on the other side of the glass door.

Oh yeah, she’s no longer allowed in the house. Not sure if I ever shared that she received her eviction notice a few weeks back.

It was an adjustment. For both of us. Hence the raised urgency in her tone when she loses sight of me.

I was worried she’d go hoarse again but she hasn’t.

A thought lingered as I watched over her.

There is something so powerful in being seen, being witnessed.

That’s what happened to me this week.

I was witnessed.

And it reminded me that witnessing others is what I’ve naturally been doing for more than thirty years.

Naturally.

I give people back the relationship with their own words that the world took from them.

I am a voice restorer.

Just Jill “no longer dimmable” Stevens

💜

P.S. If any of this stirred something—if you want to be seen, witnessed, ready for your own ReWrite—Flip the Script on You is where it starts. Right here.

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A Sneak Peek

The Balance Sheet

Because the numbers tell a story too.

This week, there are no big numbers to share, although sales did come in while I was in the thick of reading a 63-page lease.

My focus was mainly on the other business—hence my long and firmly held belief that this business requires a humming machine in the background.

A build it once and allow it to go-go-go.

Meaning sell. Like those two audios did and still do.

I didn’t launch. I didn’t actively sell. I barely worked on my words.

However, I did write every day before first light because that’s just what I do.

And, I opened the front door on my website.

Next, I’ll start to promote this version everywhere else online.

So even though I took a week off and had a lifequake—I did something important.

I opened the front door.

I pressed publish on this episode.

I shared both.

You can’t put a dollar figure on any of that but I’d say it’s priceless.

But here’s the quiet-tally that got me brave enough to press it:

Week after week, the same quiet story.
Five-figure weeks.
311 orders in 48 hours.
Then 547—and I never fully shared.
121 copies sold in a week, while my body said rest.

And this week?

The front door opened. The beacon no longer dims.

While I rested, 72 testimonials rolled in. Automatically. The machine humming while I had my lifequake.

I’d call that a win.

Every one of those numbers happened while I was dimmed…

While I was still hiding just enough to not be seen.

If that’s what the light did, turned down low . . . what happens now that it’s all the way up?

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The Balance Sheet—the paid extension of Between My Sheets—
and opens next season.

Inside: the full numbers, the real systems, the deeper behind-the-scenes of building this word-business in real time. First access goes to readers who are already here.

Watch this space for details.

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you can subscribe below.

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Just so you know: This is my slice of the web where hot flashes meet cold wine, neck waddles are real, and birthdays feel more like breakdowns. Step into my word-world as I ReWrite my word-life in real time.