Tattered Cover Colorado Author Program Honoree
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Finding Fantastic Joy: How Building a Self-Advocacy Campaign Led Me Out of Darkness
Do you struggle with striving to be perfect or obsess about achieving the next big goal? Yet you feel you constantly fall short? If you don’t know where these impulses and feelings come from or how to fix them, you are not alone. Author Leah Johnson, a former elected official, trauma warrior, and mom-guilt fighter, shares her story of how an all-consuming addiction to achievement can be stopped. Using her experience of over 20 years in campaign politics, Johnson shows us how building a self-advocacy campaign can create purpose and joy in all areas of life.
Join her inside these pages to witness her evolution through trauma and addiction to find her true self and embody important life lessons including how to:
Redefine the meaning of true success
Identify your values and prioritize happiness
Understand your trauma and how to thrive beyond it
Confront and break the cycles of addiction caused by trauma
Create a self-advocacy campaign to live your life with joy
About the Author
Leah Johnson’s résumé includes the words Obama, Kay Hagen, and City Councilwoman, but what she has come to find out is that “mom” is the best title she’s ever added to her résumé. After a career that fueled her addiction to success and other things, life was dark, and something had to change. Forced to take a step back, she re-evaluated her priorities and started fresh in many ways. Now she lives with a freedom to be herself and know how far from perfect she is. As an imperfect mother of two, she sometimes says bad words, frequently forgets to pack snacks for preschool, and on occasion, her kids eat popsicles for breakfast. But she knows she is doing the best she can, and that is all people can do on their journey. She had a whole lot of traumas early in life that made the middle part tough. But through an intense spiritual awakening, a reevaluation of priorities, and kicking a few addictions, Leah has confronted her trauma, found a way to pull herself out of the depths of sadness, and finds herself on a lifelong journey to build a self-advocacy campaign to constantly find fantastic joy.
Leah grew up in Loveland, Colorado, and has an undergraduate degree from Boston University, and half of a master’s degree in Public Policy and Administration from Northwestern University (because, well, sometimes you just don’t finish things). She has had a 20-year career in campaign politics and public affairs. Her little family unit is everything to her and she spends every free moment she can with them traveling the world or having dance parties in their kitchen.