Welcome to Episode 345 of Live Happy Now.

Making the world a better place and helping those around us begins with change from within.

And this week, we're getting the blueprint on how to do that.

I'm your host, Paula Phelps, and this week I'm joined by Shelley Tegelsky, author of the new book, Sit Down to Rise Up,

How Radical Self Care Can Change the Community.

Last week, you met Shelly and learned about her pandemic of love movement.

This week, she's talking about the book that tells each of us how we can affect profound change in the world if we first turn inward and care for ourselves. Let's find out more.

So, Shelly, we have previously talked with you about your fantastic mission and pandemic of love

that you created. Now I want to talk to you about sit down to rise up. And first of all, I wondered

if the pandemic of love played any role in you writing this book.

Well, it played a role.

It really changed the trajectory or I would say completed even what it was that I was originally setting out to write.

I actually sold the book proposal prior to the pandemic ever happening or it even being,

you know, a thought in anybody's mind at that time.

And the book was always supposed to be about self-care. And it was supposed to be in two distinct

parts. The me section, which is really the inner journey and the we section, which is the

section about how we can build communities of care and rely

in each other.

And what happened was is that after the pandemic, you know, broke out and pandemic

of love started and it started to grow, as I was sitting there struggling, I will say,

to write a book and manage an organization

and deal with just the emotional toll of being in the middle of the pandemic, I recognize

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