A Little Closer To Home by Ginger Zee

I am thrilled to be hosting a spot on the A LITTLE CLOSER TO HOME by Ginger Zee Blog Tour hosted by Rockstar Book Tours. Check out the excerpt and make sure to enter the giveaway!

Title: A Little Closer To Home
Author: Ginger Zee
Genre: Memoir, Mental Health, Self-Help
Release Date: January 11, 2021
Publisher: Hyperion Avenue
Book Tour: Rockstar Book Tours

About The Book:

In Ginger Zee’s follow-up to the bestselling Natural Disaster, the ABC chief meteorologist takes readers on a much deeper journey of self discovery.

When Ginger Zee opened her life to readers in Natural Disaster, the response was enormous. She put a very relatable if surprising face on depression and has helped lessen the stigma surrounding mental health issues. But Ginger tells us, Natural Disaster was “Ginger Lite” and only scratched the surface.

In this moving follow-up, Ginger shares her truest self. She spent most of her life shielding her vulnerabilities from the world all while being a professional people pleaser. Her stormy childhood, her ongoing struggles with crippling depression, her suicide attempts, and many other life experiences will resonate with readers who are likely to see themselves along the way.

In spite of its serious subject matter, Ginger’s positive, life-affirming outlook comes through loud and clear. Written with great heart and quite a bit of humor, Ginger normalizes issues and challenges millions of people face every day. A Little Closer to Home will broaden the conversation around mental health at a time we need it more than ever.

Excerpt:

This is a book about healing. A deep healing in a woman, who ten years ago found herself in a mental health hospital, but is now thriving and finding her identity.

She is me and this introduction changed just weeks before final print because after I re-read the manuscript and shared it with other people, I realized the book isn’t really about the healing itself, but about the process of healing and most importantly the hard work that is required before and after healing.

After my therapist read this book, he said something so poignant to me that I had to include it. Even he, who had been with me through this whole journey after my mental health hospitalization, had not realized how much I had been through and more importantly how much I have overcome. Reading it all in one sitting in such a condensed fashion changed the story for him and for me.

Instead of being concerned about releasing more deep, dark secrets for the world to know and to judge me on, I know that these “secrets” are my secret weapons.

Sharing these secrets is power and gives me an instant jolt of connection to other people who are on their own mental health odyssey. My transparency in my first book helped other people but also gave me sovereignty over my own narrative. It’s true that I will never be 100 percent cured of all of my issues, but I have proven that dedication to healing is effective. I am living proof! Goodness, I sound like an infomercial. But just like the Flowbee had an infomercial, this is one that works and will hopefully last you a lifetime (my dad still has the Flowbee he bought in the eighties to cut our hair and it still works. It is also back in style to have a Flowbee. I can’t believe it.)

Every time I charge myself with writing a chapter, committing more time to finding other ways to meditate or even forcing myself to sit on my couch and launch the zoom therapy session that I “don’t really need at the moment,” it uncovers something else I do need to work on. But that something else, I can now put in a HEALING, solution-based narrative. One of the most important topics I will cover in this book is how to address trauma. For now, I will equate mental and emotional trauma to a wound.

Prior to doing this hard work, my “way” of dealing with a wound would be to immediately cover it with dirt and pretend it never happened. You can imagine how that turned out. While I have been navigating the deep infections and twisted scars that evolved on the uncared-for wounds of my life, I now spend much of my time gathering the tools that will help me make the inevitable next wound a cleaner and quicker heal.

Societally, we put a pretty hefty emphasis on our physical health, focusing so much time, money, and thought into how we can make ourselves look good. I’ve taken that energy, once reserved solely for physical health, and shifted it to mental health, where I put time, energy, and money into making my brain look good (feel good). Every week, every day, I do something to make it cleaner, stronger, and better, and it is working. I hope that with this book, using my secret weapons as the fuel, we can keep encouraging each other to put in the effort and find the solutions that work for us. We all deserve it. You go to the gym for two weeks, start seeing the benefits, and then quit and expect it all to stick. Mental health is the same as physical health. It requires effort, but the payoff is so worth it.

About The Author:

ABC NEWS – Ginger Zee )ABC/Heidi Gutman)

Ginger Zee is the Chief Meteorologist for ABC News, forecasting for and reporting on the nation’s weather from Good Morning America to World News Tonight. Zee has been on the ground before, during and after almost every major weather event and dozens of historic storms including Hurricane Katrina. She watched as the eye of Superstorm Sandy passed over Atlantic City and then covered the devastated Jersey Shore; she was there for the 2020 California wildfires and for the unprecedented number of hurricanes on the Gulf Coast. Zee’s dedication to science began at an early age, watching powerful thunderstorms rush across Lake Michigan. Her passion for meteorology brought her to stormchase in college at Valparaiso University where she earned her bachelor of science in meteorology.