Miriam has now branched into the world of non-fiction with her new book Social Anxiety Revealed (due for publication on 22 August 2017). I had the great pleasure of working with Miriam as editor of Social Anxiety Revealed - and, believe me, it is a book which everyone should read.
Welcome, Miriam! Please tell us more about Social Anxiety Revealed.
Thank you, Sue!
It was over thirty years after I left school (US: grade
school) vowing never to connect again with any of the girls I’d spent the past
seven years with. I put my name on a social media site, a forerunner to
Facebook, that reunited school friends. Friends! I thought with a humph. The
only schoolfriend I remembered wasn’t on the list. Still, I added my name, not
expecting anyone to contact me. Perhaps I wanted them to know that I’d done all
right for myself, despite them.
Yet, one of them contacted me and I came to a decision.
There was no point in continuing to communicate with her without mentioning our
joint past. Surprisingly, she didn’t disappear when I brought it up. She even
apologised for her past behaviour and also introduced me to another of the
gang: Gill.
Gill had more time to write. We wrote every day. She asked
the right questions and I was ready to open up. After a few months she told me,
hesitantly because she wasn’t sure I was ready to hear it, about social anxiety.
I probably wasn’t ready then, because it took a few more months for me to look
up the term. That was when I realised that social anxiety was a thing, and that
it included everything I’d been writing to her about. I joined a forum for
people with social anxiety and took a group therapy course.
Then the tables were turned, somewhat. I realised Gill
carried a lot of guilt for the way she’d treated me all those years before. I
tried to assure her that I didn’t blame her at all. I told her she was only a
girl who didn’t know any better at the time, and that I didn’t see the lovely,
kind woman she had become as the same person as the girl I knew once. I don’t
think I succeeded.
My new book, Social Anxiety Revealed, released on
August 22, explains all the aspects of social anxiety. It has been created by a
lot of people who know much more than they’d like to about social anxiety. It
is dedicated to Gill, someone I’m now proud to be able to call my friend.
In a later guest post, on Jennifer Wilson’s blog,
I write about the process of coming out about social anxiety. In the meantime, you can find out a little more about me - and the book - on YouTube, by clicking here.
About Miriam
Miriam Drori is the author of a romance, Neither Here Nor
There, and co-author of The Women Friends: Selina, the first in a
series of novellas based on a painting by Gustav Klimt. She is married with
three adult children and enjoys folk dancing, hiking, touring and reading.
Miriam sees the publication of Social Anxiety Revealed
as an important step in fulfilling an ambition that began in about 2003: to
raise awareness of a condition that’s very common yet little known.
Miriam has struggled with social anxiety for the past fifty
years, although for thirty-five of those years, she didn’t even know the name
of it or that a name existed. Only recently has she come to the conclusion that
she shouldn’t have been struggling at all, but rather making friends with it.
In order to introduce this book and as a place for
discussions with readers, Miriam has begun a blog that’s devoted solely to the
topic of social anxiety: http://socialanxietyrevealed.wordpress.com/.
Everyone is welcome to visit and comment.
Miriam Drori can be found all over the Internet, including Miriam’s website and blog,
a blog devoted to social
anxiety, Facebook
author page and Twitter.
Social Anxiety Revealed will be available from Amazon
from August 22 in paperback and ebook formats.
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