Supernatural and self-care: The value of escapism

(Author’s note: Join me Saturday, June 12 at 5 pm CT/6 pm ET when I celebrate the release of Serving Sin with Clif Kosterman, the bodyguard for Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki for the last thirteen years.)

Every time there’s a crisis in my life, I escape into pop culture. After 9/11, I read all three books of The Lord of the Rings and spent hours watching Star Trek: Next Gen. When my dad died, I got addicted to Bones (yeah, I know it’s weird).

And when a social anxiety disorder brought my fantastic son home during his freshman year in college, forced him to put on hold his dream to be a physicist and made me learn new skills to be parent and person, I turned to a little, weird show that my romance author friends had been talking about for years: Supernatural.

Sam and Dean Winchester. The boys. Baby. Chuck be with you. Or not.

“This bonkers, escapist show is my self care.”

This November, this little cult-ish show will air its final episode after 15 seasons. I was a late adopter and didn’t start watching until 2017. But when it bit – phew – it bit hard. I went to my first Supernatural convention in the fall of 2017. I went to my second in 2019, where I asked co-star Jensen Ackles to pose my book cover with me. The smoldering look he gave me has become famous in some circles (called my friends) and is the basis of my next book in The Filthy Rich series, Serving Sin. I am currently in the middle of my THIRD Supernatural re-watch. THIRD. And the show has more than 300+ episodes!

You can click the link here to view the Twitter thread about this ridiculous image.

I don’t know what the special sauce is that has made Supernatural such a phenomenon for myself and so many others (yes I do, it’s two hot good ol’ boys totally devoted to each other without love interests so there’s no chance of jumping the shark). But what I do know is that the show got me through a particularly hard and sometimes scary three years of my life. It didn’t “solve” anything. It didn’t teach me anything. It didn’t improve me.

What it did was allow my brain to rest and relax when I was overwhelmed and scared, when there was so much I couldn’t fix or control. Watching an episode – apocalypses and all -- before bed relaxed me enough to sleep. Reading the fanfiction kept me from fixating in the middle of the night. Adding the stars’ gorgeous images to my ridiculous Pinterest page “Supernatural is Lady Porn” gave me an endorphin shot and made me smile.

This bonkers, escapist show is my self care.

I learned the value of self-care in escapist form in the eighth grade. I’d just moved to San Francisco and it was my first experience with mean girls. I didn’t understand them. I couldn’t reason with them. I wouldn’t change for them. And I knew, for the course of that year at least, I couldn’t escape them. So I had to withstand them.

The way I did that was by going to B. Dalton after particularly rough days, buying a romance novel and a bag of Ruffles potato chips, and camping out on my bed for the next seven hours. My mom let me skip coming down for dinner. But those classic romance novels were the one thing that allowed my brain to relax and freed me mentally from a situation I couldn’t change and had to withstand.

To this day, I believe those books helped me to learn an important skill at an invaluable time.

Part of the reason I’m a romance writer is because I believed in escapist self care, of getting lost in fantasies that allow your problem-solving brain to relax. And, oh baby, there is no better fantasy than that of the handsome Jensen Ackles smoldering at you. I want to give adults escapist fairy tales because I believe they have value.

“The show got me through a particularly hard and sometimes scary three years of my life. It didn’t “solve” anything. It didn’t teach me anything. It didn’t improve me. What it did was allow my brain to rest and relax when I was overwhelmed and scared, when there was so much I couldn’t fix or control.”

Now, as an adult with two adult-aged kids, I feel like there’s even less under my control. Many of us Americans are feeling this way as we stare in shock and awe at the way our federal leadership continues to ignore this pandemic. I’m not advocating we be like them (him) – I’m not saying we throw up our hands and stick our heads in the sand.

I’m saying that after you’ve worn your mask and washed your hands and helped your kids and finished that Zoom call and registered to vote, you allow yourself to sit down with a good romance book and embrace it as one of the things that allows you to take care of you.

Or turn on the tube and start watching a weird little horror sci-fi show. With 300+ episodes, it’s that escapist fantasy that you won’t get tired of anytime soon.

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Join me Saturday, June 12 at 5 pm CT/6 pm ET when I celebrate the release of Serving Sin with Clif Kosterman, the bodyguard for Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki for the last thirteen years. Click here to learn more and register.

How to Find the Story of Your Business

What makes YOU special? This is the most important thing to know when communicating to attract customers because YOUR STORY is what distinguishes your business from others. Knowing your story will allow you to authentically communicate with your clients. How? When you know and embrace your story, you speak the truth in everything you say. 

Don’t believe me? Try this out:

A. I’m a professional organizer

B. I’m a professional organizer who loves to cook and has tons of gadgets and has spent years coming up with ways to wrangle my gadgets so I specialize in organizing kitchens and I’m REALLY good at getting your kitchen organized and anyone who doesn’t have their kitchen organized by me is really missing out. 

See?

Clarifying your story allows you to understand and embrace:

1. the value of what you have to offer
2. the fact that no one else can offer it (because no one else is YOU)
3. that customers need what you’re providing

Finding their story is the first step I take when small business owners want my help with social media and marketing. When I was a newspaper reporter, I had to practice the skills of uncovering someone’s story quickly and then re-telling that story in a compact, compelling way. How do I discover their story? I ask questions.

My Social Media Plan Questionnaire breaks down the difficult “What is your story?” question into four manageable pieces that explore the business owner, her business, her customers and her goals. Instead of asking for a person’s autobiography, I ask a person — metaphorically — where he grew up and who he played with. In this way, we uncover the good stuff that makes a business interesting and indispensable.

First in my Social Media Plan Questionnaire, we explore a person’s business, the reason they’ve called me in the first place. They need to market their business. I ask a lot of questions but listed below are the most powerful in each category. 

Next, I ask about a business' customers. We have our own goals and dreams, but we don't build our business in a vacuum. The need we fulfill for someone else is a HUGE part of our story. Who are the people you’re selling to? They define your story as much as your parents and siblings define your autobiography.

Then we investigate you. You're the person who woke up one morning and decided it would be a great idea to open a store or start a solopreneur business or write a book (if you'd only decided to sleep in that morning, amiright?). Why? Explore what dreams, gifts and problem-solving efforts you bring to your enterprise, and you'll be one step closer to finding your story.

Finally, we look at your goals. Our goals tell our stories like nothing else. "What do you want to be when you grow up?" was one of the first questions we were asked as kids. What do you want your business to be when it grows up?

Now take a step back and look at your answers. In repeated themes, in items you got excited about as you answered a question, and in realizations you only had in the process of the exercise, is your story. Embrace your story, include it in your messaging, and your customers-turned-fans will come flocking.

Want to find your story? Discover it on your own -- or contact me for more help -- by filling out this social media plan questionnaire.