Powerful New Book By Emmy-Winning TV
Anchor Encourages Resilience In The Face Of Adversity
Job Loss or Career
Change. Health challenges. Financial struggles. The county is undergoing an
enormous challenge, on so many levels, because of the pandemic. But there is a
resource to help the nation recover.
A new book, This is Not the End: Strategies
to Get You Through the Worst Chapters of Your Life (Morgan James
Publishing, Trade Paper, 140 pages $14.95; ISBN: 978-1-6-4279-806-7), provides
an insightful roadmap for anyone who has suffered a moment that threatens to define
who they are, making them feel that life simply will never be the same.
How do you overcome
adversity, trauma, change, or life-altering moments? How resilient, optimistic,
or empowered are you to find a way to live with a significant negative event
and meet the challenges and opportunities posed by it?
“While today may be a
miserable part of a really crappy chapter in your life,” says author Nina
Sossamon-Pogue, “This is Not the End helps you see that your life
is not ruined. You’re just in a tough
plot twist, and better days are ahead.”
Nina (https://ninasossamonpogue.com/) knows firsthand, having
experienced a number of life-changing events that could have permanently put
her on a dangerous path. She has managed
to live a successful and happy life despite suffering some setbacks and
unexpected events.
Nina, since age 5,
defined herself as a gymnast. On the
United States Gymnastics Team with Mary Lou Retton, her dreams got derailed
when she fell short of competing in the 1984 Olympics. As a highly recruited
NCAA gymnast, her aspirations were crushed by a career-ending injury. But that
didn’t stop her.
She went on to pursue
a career in journalism. After being named Charleston’s Favorite Newscaster for
seven straight years, she lost her job due to budget cuts. But that didn’t stop
her.
Nina also got
divorced in her mid-30’s and was suddenly a single mom of two. But that didn’t
stop her.
She landed at another
TV station and went on to win the Emmy for Best News Anchor in the Southeast.
But while at the home of her co-anchor, a horrible accident happened. She ran
over her colleague’s 10-month old baby, crushing the boy’s skull. Miraculously,
he lived and made a full recovery. The event left her flirting with self-sabotaging
and suicidal thoughts. But that didn’t stop her.
Nina, who is promoted
by the PR firm that I work for, provides strategies and insights on how anyone
can get through the worst chapters of their life.
“No matter what has
happened, author your own script,” says Nina. “Losing the big game. Getting
fired. Suffering an embarrassing event. Suffering an accident, injury or
illness. Dealing with the fallout of
Covid-19. Bad things happen whether you are the victim, or the cause of them.
You are the author of your life story. All the pages ahead are still blank.
Your choices and the words you use will become your story. You can choose the words
you are ok with other people repeating when they talk about THIS. You get to
choose to share as much, or as little as you want. You control the conversation
and your emotions. Failure, loss or adversity often comes before achievement
and fulfillment. You get to determine that whatever has happened, this is not
the end.”
Below is a Q
& A with Nina:
1. Nina,
what inspired you to write This is Not
the End? Two things: (1) I remember standing in a bookstore searching for
something to speak to me when I felt like my life was over. There were lots of
big psych books, PTSD workbooks, and other people’s stories or books on
cognitive behavior, stoic philosophy and faith. They were too much. I needed a
quick read with simple language to tell me what to do. That’s the book I’ve
written. (2) Over the years I’ve mentored many young people and become the
go-to when friends, family or co-workers are struggling. I realized my
experience, my stories, and all the books and the research I read, added up to
something special. I could help people outside of my direct circle if I
organized those thoughts. I also wanted to be sure my college kids, and people
close to me, would know how to get through tough times if I wasn’t there to
help.
2. How
can one get past a life-changing event when the event seems so significant?
It took several
chapters to share ‘how’ in my book, but my Chapter Six thinking about ‘life is
long’ is the key. You see, a
life-changing event is just that - it is one event, in the long timeline that
is a full life. So, doing the math—and putting an event in perspective—resets
your thinking. For instance, when a college athlete suffers a career-ending
injury, their sport has been about 80 percent of their whole life. So, it feels
like they’re losing EVERYTHING. But, when you look at the sport when they’re
50, you realize it’s a small percentage. If they live to be 100, it is less
than 20. Same number of days training –
but days count less as you get older.
3.
As a promising athlete for the
United States Gymnastics Team, you thought you were heading for the 1984
Olympics with Mary Lou Retton, but then those plans got derailed by an injury.
How did you get past that disappointment? I was a teenager. I was
heartbroken and felt so bad that I let my coach and my family down. First, I
decided I would try to be a ‘normal high school kid’ and auditioned for a
musical at my school. I did that, dated a boy, drank some beer…but then I
buckled down and got back into the gym, so I could keep the scholarship offers
that were discussed before I didn’t make the team. College Athletics is such an
amazing thing to be part of…and I was thrilled to go to a huge SEC Powerhouse
and compete for LSU. It was something new to commit to, work hard for and get
passionate about.
4. How
can young people, whether curtailed by a sports injury, an accident, financial
circumstances, some life-altering event, a re-plotting of their college or
career plans?
To start, they have to switch gears. Sometimes when young people are in the
thick of it, faced with a big event in their lives, it feels like everything is
ruined. I like to use what I call ‘five years from now thinking’ to get them
out of their own head. I might ask them, what kind of dog do you want to get
when you are successful? They may say ‘chocolate lab’ and I tell them, one day
five years from now when you are walking down the beach with your lab, you are
going to look back on this as one really crappy chapter of your life. It’s not
your whole life.
5. Act
two, for you, led you to becoming a journalist for 15 years and an Emmy
Award-winning news anchor. But another life-changing event took place that
forced you to see the world differently. What happened? I was a well-known news anchor and was doing three
shows a day with a guy who was both my co-anchor and a close friend. His wife
and I were friends too and one day while we were picking up our kids at the bus
stop her baby boy crawled toward my car as I left, and I ran over him. His
skull and facial bones were crushed. To jump the end – he survived but it was
touch and go for a long time. Neither of us did the news for a while. But he
got healthy, his mother and I love each other and stayed friends, and I went
back on the air with my co-anchor. He’s now a healthy, happy, handsome high
school teenager.
6. So
in tragedy, whether we suffer a loss, cause an injury, or are forced to
confront our mortality, how do we move past these nightmares? It is so difficult. I could not grasp not being an
athlete… and then worse, going from everyone’s favorite news anchor, to the
lady who ran over a baby. It was too much. I didn’t want to go on, go out in
the world. I just didn’t want to be ‘that’ and saw no way out. I talk about
that in the book – Chapter Eight – we need to talk about suicide openly. You
need support, to change the language in your head, a script to protect yourself
in public, (because even a quick ‘how are you’ has no good answer). You have to
re-assess the people, places and things around you too. You have to make
changes.
7. In
Charleston, South Carolina, you lead the first vocal newscast co-anchored by
two women. What challenges, in particular, are faced by women in the world
today? That is a loaded question. There
is so much going on with women’s equality, equal pay, the #MeToo Movement…gender
equality in general. Plus, many women today are fiercely independent and super
successful and that comes with its own challenges in parenting and having a
successful marriage. No one talked about the fallout when they told my
generation of young girls that we could ‘do anything’. When we started the
first newscast with two female anchors, we were also black and white. We felt
like we were paving the way for others in many ways. It helped that we were
such good friends. She is still on TV – Erika Bryant. She’s the longtime anchor
in Charlotte NC.
8.
Following your lengthy news career,
which included being named Charleston’s Favorite News Anchor ten times, you
began Act Three, joining a start-up software company where you helped grow the
company for a dozen years. The IPO was hailed by Forbes. What advice do you have for those looking to undergo a
major career transition?
Do it! I am a big fan of
lifetime learning and reinventing yourself. I call it ‘living life in chapters’.
I will caution that it is a ton of work. That first year jumping into tech and
not knowing the language of engineering, platforms or healthcare was
exhausting. My family life suffered, my husband was super supportive. It’s like
jumping onto a moving train. You are smart, so you want to contribute, but you
have to learn fast and embrace that you don’t know what you don’t know, and
only help where you can until you catch up. It is both frightening and
rewarding, but truly exhilarating! I think you need to be a bit of a risk taker
or adrenaline junky to survive it.
9. One
of your tips for people to move past a major event is to put it into
perspective that it’s only a tiny portion of your life’s timeline. What do you
mean by this? This is my Chapter 6, thinking about the math of our lives. I have a
graphic in the book to break down the math. You know how, when you are 10 years
old the summer seems so long, but when you are older it flies by? Well, that’s
because each year of your life is a smaller ‘fraction’ of your life, as you get
older. For the 10-year-old, it is one-tenth, for the 40-year-old parenting that
kid, it is one-fortieth. (2.5%). Same 365 days, but the weight of that time is
different. I think it’s fascinating. When I blew out my knee in college, I
thought my life was over because gymnastics was about 80% of my life
experience. By the time I was 50, gymnastics was 28% and 40% was parenting.
10.
Some people, when confronted by a
significant event, fear that life will never be the same. Are they wrong? Not wrong –THEY won’t be ‘the same’—so the story of
their life will adjust. Think of your life as a book. Big life events come with
character development and experiences alter the main character’s actions. Big
events start new chapters. We are never ‘exactly the same’ one day to the next.
We experience new things, good and bad. It’s like when people say – I can’t
un-see that!’. It is now in your head. But because something will never be the
‘same’ doesn’t mean it will never be good. Instead of being afraid your life will
never be the same, look at a significant event as an opportunity to take your
story in a new direction. People won’t even ask why.
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Brian
Feinblum’s insightful views, provocative opinions, and interesting ideas
expressed in this terrific blog are his alone and not that of his employer or
anyone else. You can – and should -- follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and
email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels much more important when
discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog
©2020. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester. His
writings are often featured in The Writer and IBPA’s Independent.
This was named one of the best book marketing blogs by Book Baby http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs and
recognized by Feedspot in 2018 as one of the top book marketing blogs. Also
named by WinningWriters.com as a "best resource.” He recently hosted
a panel on book publicity for Book Expo America.
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