✨ MILESTONE NO. 1
LOOK HOW FAR WE'VE COME
From Caregiver to Bestselling Author
Sometimes life is writing the next chapter
before you even know there's going to be a book.
FROM HABAKA'S MEMORY BOOK
There are moments in my life when I look around and think…
How did I get here? 😂
Becoming a bestselling author is definitely one of them.
Because if you had told me while I was caring for my father that one day the experience would become a story published in an anthology, I probably would have looked at you and said, “What?” 😂
I wasn't thinking about writing a book.
I wasn't thinking about becoming an author.
I certainly wasn't thinking about bestseller lists, bookstores, book signings or libraries.
I was simply being his daughter. 💛
And sometimes I think that's what makes this part of my journey so extraordinary.
I was living the story long before I knew there was a story to tell.
📖 THE STORY BECAME A CHAPTER
Eventually, that experience became my chapter:
“I'm Not A Nurse.”
And that chapter became part of the anthology Voices of Care.
There it was.
My name.
My story.
My words.
Printed on pages inside a real book.
But the story didn't stop there.
Voices of Care became an Amazon bestseller.
And suddenly I had another title attached to my name that I never expected:
Bestselling Author. ✨
Sometimes even now I have to sit with that for a moment.
Because I know where that chapter came from.
It came from something real.
Something lived.
Something personal.
It came from being a daughter caring for her father.
And somehow that experience traveled from my life…
to the page. 📖
📸 A NEW KIND OF STAGE
For most of my life, people have known me with a microphone in my hand.
I've stood on stages and told stories through music.
But suddenly I found myself sitting with a pen in my hand…
signing books.
And I realized something.
My stories had found another stage.
The page.
The page.
✨ AND THEN THERE WAS ANOTHER…
One anthology led to another.
Another story.
Another chapter.
Another piece of my life preserved in print.
And there I was one day, standing inside a bookstore holding an autographed copy of Lanterns in the Dark.
📚 LOOK HOW FAR WE'VE COME
There are certain photographs that become more than photographs.
They become evidence.
Evidence that something you never imagined…
actually happened.
And when I look at these photographs, that's what I see.
I see the singer.
I see the storyteller.
I see the daughter.
I see the caregiver.
And now…
I see the author. 📚✨
My work is in bookstores.
It's in libraries.
Someone I've never met can walk over to a shelf, pick up one of these books, open it and discover my words.
That thought still amazes me.
🍯 THE HONEY
Sometimes we become something we never planned to become because life was quietly preparing us for it all along.
Not every difficult season arrives with an explanation.
Sometimes you simply live it.
You learn from it.
You carry it.
And years later, you look backward and realize:
There was something inside that experience that was meant to travel beyond you.
I couldn't have known while caring for my father where that road would eventually lead.
I couldn't have known that one day I would write about it.
I couldn't have known that people would read it.
And I certainly couldn't have known that it would help make me a bestselling author.
But here we are. 💛
So Honey Bee, never underestimate the chapters of your life that don't seem particularly remarkable while you're living them.
You don't always know what you're becoming in the middle of becoming it.
Sometimes you don't realize you've entered
a new chapter of your life until you see
your name printed at the top of one. 🍯📖
Look how far we've come. ✨
With Love & Honey,
Habaka 🐝
Habaka 🐝