In Still on Fire (Pink Skeleton Publishing, Inc., August 16, 2022), Renee Linnell shares hard-learned lessons from her years of bad choices, bad breaks, and crushing blows. Writing from a good place at the age of 49, she encourages her readers to trust their instincts and the Divine, follow their heart, and find gratitude and joy in the present. Renee’s definition of living happily ever after? “It’s being present in and appreciating all the tiny moments that we miss right now when we’re continuously looking forward to living a happy life.”
Renee knows loss—her beloved father died on Thanksgiving Day when she was 15. Then, after more than a dozen years of conflict and estrangement, she lost her mother—who went missing and turned up drowned in a hotel bathtub. Renee knows devastation—when she was 33, she joined a Buddhist cult, got brainwashed, burned almost everything she owned, and nearly lost her sanity and her life. Six years later, she went into business with a guy she met in a karate dojo in New York City, and, after a nasty lawsuit, lost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Renee stuffed down plenty of shame. But eventually, she shook it off, made peace with her flaws and failures, and got busy living her life to the fullest.
“We shouldn’t be afraid of our stories,” says Renee. “And we shouldn’t see anything that happened to us as ‘wrong.’ We are in these human bodies for such a brief period of time. Why hide who we are?”
In Still on Fire, Renee Linnell looks back on her life’s wild ride (so far), reflects on her decisions, opens herself to love, pleasure, and mystical possibilities, and considers what it means to be whole and to be free. With honesty, courage, and her signature dynamism, Renee is happy to talk about:
· The pointlessness of continually trying to get others to see the world, or any issue, from our point of view. “There are billions of us, each with a unique perspective, so there are billions of simultaneous realities,” Renee observes. She provides a reality check for our polarized times.
· Why so many of us attract people who treat us badly, who tell us exactly what a damaged part of ourselves—the part that feels stupid or ugly—truly believes, and why the only way to get the good love we deserve is to stop compromising and abandoning ourselves to please another.
· The simple, amazing fact that no one on earth is all alone, why it’s healthy and makes sense to believe in magic, miracles, and divine intervention, why everything and everyone is a mix of “good” and “bad,” and why happiness is wonderful precisely because it is fleeting.
· Why life is an ongoing adventure, packed with surprises, and we need to have faith that something bigger than ourselves has our back. “All we can do is take the next step that feels right, that feels thrilling,” says Renee. “And trust.”
RENEE LINNELL is a former surf model, a professional Argentine Tango dancer, and a serial entrepreneur with an Executive Masters in Business Administration from New York University. She made her publishing debut in 2018 with The Burn Zone, a memoir of her experience as a cult survivor. She divides her time between Colorado and South Florida.
Energizing, empowering, and reassuring, Still on Fire will resonate with many and all kinds of people who feel tired and need a push to ignore the voice of self-doubt in their head and keep walking forward.
