A mother’s wisdom: Musings while dog walking lead to book for local therapist

PALMER — Just about everybody in Alaska, it seems, writes a book. Most go about it with great intention and purpose to their craft, but for Valley therapist Shelly Jacobs, it came from walking her dogs.

“When I’d go for a walk with my dogs, I’d think about one thing. Then I’d go home and write it down, so the sayings were done before the writing,” Jacobs said. “After the sayings were done — I came up with 50 — I’d come back to it and write what I was talking about. I really drew from my experience as a psychotherapist, a meditator and a mom.”

Even then, Jacobs had no ambition to publish a book. She just wanted to share the pearls of dogwalking wisdom with her children.

“I was really just writing it for my children and they liked it, so I shared it with my friends and they thought it was great; that I should make it into a book,” Jacobs said.

The result was 107 self-published pages called ‘A Mother’s Meditations: Teachings of the Heart’. On the left side of each margin there’s one of her sayings, which are typically metaphors so hammered home from alternate perspectives that they’re not so much mixed metaphors, as blended.

Some of these include:

- Learning from my mistakes without self-compassion is like licking sandpaper. Not only is it a rough experience but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth

- Be wed to love and divorced from judgment. You’re more likely to live happily ever after.

- Life is an invitation to feel. No need to RSVP, just emotionally show up

On the right of each margin is her musings inspired by the original saying, accompanied by a piece of art drawn by her son Matthew, now 13.

“It was just things I wanted my kids to know about — love or gratitude or loss or pain or joy. There was so much I wanted them to know,” she said. “(Putting the book together) didn’t take very long. What I would do is try to get really quiet inside and when I got really quiet, I would find what felt true. Then it would just sort of come out.”

That ‘quiet inside’ Jacobs credits to her years of pursuing the meditative arts.

“I like insight meditation — focusing on breath and I really like the silent retreats a lot,” Jacobs said, adding that she doesn’t use it with patients. “I do teach people to meditate and that’s a little tricky. People have a lot of preconceptions. There’s a lot of science that talks about how it helps build resiliency and helps the immune system. If we had a pill we could pop that does everything meditation does, we’d all take it.”

In deference to her Jewish upbringing, Jacobs spells G-d at every mention in the book.

“Here I’m writing about God, my heart, my struggles. It’s a really weird thing to put out into the world, which I’m not completely comfortable with,” Jacobs said. “What I wanted my children to know the most was how absolutely miraculous and special they are.”

The writing part and publishing part of the endeavor came off fairly easily for Jacobs. The marketing part — not so much. Her book sells on Amazon for $6.99, but most of the purchases have been those of family and friends.

Saturday at Fireside Books in Palmer she took her first step into the world of self-promotion.

“Not so great at that,” she said. “It’s uncomfortable. ‘Hey, look at this thing I did,’ is just very weird for me.”

Already, Jacobs has in mind concepts for a sequel, maybe taking a turn into the world of relationships, romantic or otherwise.

“Relationship are tough. Maybe as I go for my walks I’ll think about stuff I want to know about relationships. There’s so much about conflicts and negotiations… they’re just struggles,” said Jacobs, who was recently married for the second time. “As I learn about it, I will write about it, but I feel I still have a lot of learning left to do before I write.”

As for the present, Jacobs, her 13 year old, and her grown son who lives in Soldovia, will be spending Mothers Day as they always do.

“We do our ride Bird-to-Gird — Bird Point to Girdwood on our bikes, get Ice cream and go back,” Jacobs said. “I’ve made them do that for many years.”