Digging in with Joan Fernandez” is a weekly newsletter with ideas for you on shattering limits to reaching your true potential, told through bits from the life of Jo van Gogh (the woman that would not allow Van Gogh to die twice). Please sign up here.What difference can one person make?
Do you know the Top Five Regrets of the Dying? Palliative nurse Bronnie Ware created the list after many years caring for patients in the final three to twelve months of their lives.
In this last passage, her patients reflected on the life they’d lived. When asked if there was anything they would have done differently, the No. 1 Regret caught me up short:
“I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”
Yikes. Looking back, I still feel the stark truth of it. At the time, I knew I was no longer being true to myself. I was hanging onto a routine and a career that had once been fulfilling but had lost its luster. Others expected me to stay in my “safe lane,” keep up the executive pace, and be grateful for the tenure.
But once that veil is ripped away, you know the feeling: Game over. I eventually pivoted. After a seven-year trek, I published a “live a life true to myself” book, Saving Vincent: A Novel of Jo van Gogh. That was one year ago this week.
To think I may not have chosen this path feels like a near miss with a major life regret.
It turns out my original “business plan” was written in 1970. On the back flap of a fifth-grade school “book” project titled Lisa, I wrote:
“Joan Snyder... is a born traveler... This is Joan’s first book. She hopes she will be able to write many more.” LOL!
That 10-year-old girl was the most visionary CEO I ever worked for. She had a clear mission statement, but this “VP of Corporate Life” tabled the project for over four decades. It took a long time to divest the identity built in Corporate America—to stop measuring worth by a title and start being accountable for my own creative “coulds.”
This week—on April 15—is the one-year anniversary of my book’s release.
It was a moment born from that seven-year pursuit—a pivot from the structured mandates of Corporate America to the uncharted territory of curiosity. I traded the 'shoulds' of a boardroom for the 'could' of a blank page, battling the inevitable imposter syndrome along the way.
All along, the word “could” was my North Star. There was no one telling me what I should be doing. And it’s carried a lightness: pursuing a hard thing simply because I could choose to do it.
I’m thankful, especially for all the people who have appreciated and supported Jo’s story along the way 😊. As a token of this gratitude, I’m holding an anniversary sale this week ($0.99 for the ebook) in a gesture to pull the book into a “let’s check this one out” category.
But a book doesn't exist in a vacuum, and this milestone isn't the only trajectory I've been tracing. As an author, I’ve realized that celebrating the power of my own voice compels me to use it against the gathering shadow in our public square.
Let it be written down: I am an American who repudiates hate speech. Refutes genocide. Opposes mass incarceration. Despises concentration camps. Forswears ethnic cleansing. Spurns senseless criminal rants. We—readers and authors—understand the visceral power of words. We cry, laugh out loud, feel a lump in our throat, shiver down our spine. . .all because of words.
So, let these emphatic, authoritative words be written down: I am an American who champions the dignity of every soul. Validates the sanctity of life. Advocates for transformative justice. Upholds the refuge of the weary. Affirms the beauty of our shared humanity. Welcomes the vigorous exchange of divergent ideas. Embraces the discourse of reason and compassion.
These statements transcend political party; this is about a shared common humanity.
Our world is not perfect; we have so much progress to make; yet, brilliant, creative, compassionate minds and hearts are right here for healing. And what if, what if,—from this painful fracturing—we can craft, together, a society renewed?
In the future I intend to look back once more with no regrets.
Gratefully,
It’s like The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray because it centers on a woman’s hidden influence in a male-dominated world, specifically how her intelligence and strategy shaped a famous legacy that the world now takes for granted.
And it’s like Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell because it takes a legendary male figure and shifts the lens toward the domestic and emotional life of the wife/family left in the shadows, highlighting the profound grief and the labor of love required to sustain a legacy.
Curious? To celebrate my first-year milestone—and for those ready to trade ‘should’ for ‘could’—I’m running a special Anniversary Sale.
Premonition from 10-year-old Joan 👧
In 1970, on the back flap of my fifth-grade book, Lisa, I wrote:
“Joan Snyder, born in a car in Virginia, is a born traveler. . .This is Joan’s first book. She hopes she will be able to write many more.” That girl knew what’s what.
If you were to look at your own 'Founder's Intent'—that dream you had before the world told you what you should do—how far have you drifted from the original mission statement?
Thank you.
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