Mindful lessons from the heart: senior Teri Williams self-publishes a self-help book

After a long day at school, her heart is weighed down heavily with stress and insecurity, and she cannot help but feel alone. A young Teri Williams opens her journal and every emotion she has been holding in begins to flow from her pen, each word helping her feel a bit lighter. Now as a senior, Williams has passed on this tradition by publishing her very own journaling book to help others with self-love.

As someone who considers her experiences with self-love and mental health a crucial part of her life, Williams was inspired to write her 150-page book “Steps to Starting a Self-Love Journey,” which includes interactive journaling prompts and tips on how to set personal goals and keep track of one’s mental health. The book encourages people to think about their aspirations and what inspires them on a daily basis so they can focus on making accomplishments rather than becoming absorbed by negatives in their life.

“I felt driven to write this book because social media has recently been taking over our generation, and a lot of people lack self-confidence in this world,” Williams said. “We need to start being more positive and changing our mindsets, and I think [self-love] has helped me see things in a different light. I want to give that message to other people.”
Mental health continues to be a major issue in today’s world, especially among youth.According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 42% of teens experience persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness. Williams sees this as one of the most evident problems in schools and seeks to reduce the stigma around having genuine, comfortable conversations about it.

“Mental health is definitely a big issue in high school. I think everybody should know that just based on proven statistics regarding suicides and kids falling to depression. Everybody as a teenager goes through so many more things than people know,” Williams said.

Williams herself is no stranger to the toll that mental health can take on a person during adolescence. Especially in her youth, she struggled with her well-being and felt lost on how to accept herself as a person. Like many others, she felt trapped by her negative thoughts.

“In elementary and middle school, I was a shy person, so I got bullied badly by the kids in my school,” Williams said. “I didn’t have the confidence to stand up for myself and didn’t have advice from other people on what to do, so I just stayed in my own shell.”

For a while, life felt dark. With no one to turn to, Williams had no idea how to regulate these feelings and deal with what was happening to her. However, she soon found an outlet in her notebook. What she couldn’t express to those close to her were instead jotted down on paper, a brand new way to release negative thoughts in her life.

“[Journaling] was so good for me,” Williams said. “I started journaling around middle school, when hard things started going on in my life. I would go out to the park near my house and just write [my feelings] down, since I didn’t have a lot of friends during middle school. My parents were busy too, so I felt like I couldn’t talk to them about certain things. When I had so much on my mind about self-doubt, I would write it all down and it made me feel better.”

After Williams got older, however, she started to notice the same problems that she experienced among her high school peers. Students who shared the same internal turbulence that she experienced when she was younger caught her eye.
“I feel like everybody can easily say they love themselves, but if I asked 100 kids at this school to tell me 10 things that they liked about themselves, a lot of people can’t really answer that question. That’s something I definitely struggled with too,” Williams said.

Even with the current mental health resources offered at school, Williams believes more can be done to make students comfortable with expressing their mental struggles. She thinks that young people might still feel alone—even if they are encouraged to open up to others.

“Yes, there’s counselors and your parents, but in reality, as a teen, I don’t always feel comfortable going to my counselor to talk about my problems,” Williams said.

With this in mind, Williams was inspired to share her experiences in a way that could help support and encourage others to open up. She began to design her personalized journaling book on Canva with no prior experience, working on her design and copy for three consecutive months before taking steps to self-publish on Amazon.

“There were about maybe 200 mistakes,” Williams said. “When it came to leading and color arrangements, I never even knew about these things. I had to do research on YouTube [about publishing] and was working almost everyday. Everything had to be perfect.”

Williams kept her project under wraps and created it independently, making her book a one-woman job. It was only until after she published that she received an immense amount of support from those around her.
“I got so much good feedback, which made me really happy. I didn’t think [publishing my own book] was possible at all,” Williams said.

Currently, the book can be found and purchased on Amazon. Williams hopes that in the future, she can continue to pursue mental health research. For now, she hopes that her words can continue to help others in any way possible.

“What I wanted my book to show [and inspire] other people [to do] is definitely to strive. Everybody should strive to be the best version of themselves. It starts with aligning yourself with certain goals and manifesting things for yourself, and it all translates later on,” Williams said. “Love yourself the way you love others.” Ω