My Big Head

MY HEAD IS GIANT.

Really. I’ve never seen my face so big, in so many places, ever. The irony? I put it there.

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When I opened my first business, The Massage Studio, in San Antonio, Texas, my face was nowhere. Totally absent. It was not on a business card, not on my website, I was completely removed. When I moved to Florida, the company name changed to Simply Massage, but still no Erin. Why? I thought I had to be 100% corporate to be taken seriously. It was the logo, and only the logo (and a mighty fine logo it is). After several years, an acquaintance in the marketing field said to me, “Erin, where’s your face? I don’t see YOU anywhere. People want to see you!” Insanity.

Or was it? She wasn’t wrong. I was hiding behind a logo.

So I hired an amateur photographer to take a few pics of me. A smidge of do-it-myself make up. No hair stylist. A logo on my shirt (I needed something to hide behind). And I snuck a thumbnail size pic on my massage website. I didn’t die. I joined Jasmine Star’s Social Curator group to learn about getting visible. I dipped my toe into the social media pool of visibility (are you following me on FB @erincopelan and IG @erin_copelan?). Again, I didn’t die. In fact, people liked it. A lot.

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Yet, as I sit here formatting my new email template for my new newsletter (THANK YOU for being brave enough to allow me to enter your inbox!) I wonder exactly when I crossed the threshold to a place where I have my face EVERYWHERE (I really did try to make that header smaller, but I haven’t mastered this new ConvertKit template system, so I hope you got to have a sip of coffee before my face filled your phone screen). It wasn’t in the moment I decided to write my caregiving story; that was a Sunday morning calling from the Universe. A dream. Maybe it was after I wrote my first check to hire an actual writing COACH and another check for an actual, real, live EDITOR. Because I’m all in y’all. I don’t want this to suck so I hired people to help me. A book coach (with her team), a web designer, a professional photographer (and a make-up artist), and my long term graphic designer created a logo that’s all Erin. My heart sings every time I see my sparklefish.

I’m. All. In.

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And that’s how Caregivers roll. We are all in from the moment our loved one receives a life-altering diagnosis. Yet even though we are all in, somehow we feel all alone. So I put my story out there. It’s not Jerry’s story told by me. It’s my story, from my perspective. The Caregiver’s perspective. Stories to make you go “Yessssss, that’s exactly how I felt,” and you can almost feel me reaching from the book to take your hand. Because I get it.

I’m. All. In.

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Mark your calendar for the March 29 book launch event. It’s gonna be a good time and together we are going to launch Caregivers to bestseller status. Stay tuned for next week’s newsletter topic: The Patient Handbook.