Former Valley resident Teri Hofford has put her pen to paper again and is preparing for the release of her third book, Homecoming: Tales of Travel, Discovery, and Self-Acceptance. In this book, Hofford takes readers through a rollercoaster ride of her past and the evolution that led her to become who she is today. Much of the book talks about those young naïve experiences that many people have encountered, which later on become ones that bring a sense of shame or embarrassment.
“This one was a bit more challenging because it was me working my way through a lot of shame and trauma that I experienced in my twenties,” said Hofford. “As you know, being in your twenties is a time for exploration and figuring out who you are in the world. As such, we make some mistakes and put ourselves in a bunch of different situations, so I had to process a lot of it.
“I also had to process the grief of losing my dad in my twenties. There was a lot more emotional labour that went into this book.”
Hofford pens a candid narrative that is her story, which tends to draw connections from people who have found themselves in similar situations or circumstances in life. Homecoming is about drawing from those experiences, the reasons why they happened and are so uncomfortable to address.
“I always try to stay focused on the idea that I can’t be the only person in the world who has experienced or felt these things,” said Hofford. “While the details of my stories are mine, the overall experiences that I have are not uncommon. I hope that sharing my story, allows other people to feel less alone in their shame, trauma and things they are holding onto in their past. That’s the same approach I take to writing on social media and I just applied that to this book in the same way.
“Everybody has a story. Even if they don’t publish it or put it out, it’s important to learn the art of writing and process the heaviness of the feelings that we carry through in our lives. It gives it a different perspective when you can write about it and writing this book did that for me. Writing the general facts of the story based on my journals, as I was writing it, my brain was able to make connections and I was able to see those experiences from an outside perspective. I saw those experiences as more objective and it’s a lot harder to feel shame when being objective.
“I think a big part of it is everything I did in my past and continue to do now, is always done based on the information I have at the time and the identities that I carry or am trying to avoid based on how I was conditioned as I was growing up,” said Hofford. “That allows me to see it from a different perspective and see myself for what I was looking for. So, I was looking to be loved, accepted, belong and be part of something, and went about it in not such a great way to achieve those things.
“The actions themselves are not uncommon, a lot of people have done the things I talk about in my book, but the thing that brought the shame was the identities and labels I put on myself and the expectations that come with those. When I would do something in contrast to those labels, such as ‘the good one’ or ‘the smart one’, that’s when I would get shame. The shame didn’t actually come from the action, it came from the identity I was trying to uphold or avoid.
“It’s a visualization that I have on my YouTube channel and it’s something I walk people through,” said Hofford. “I tell people to give themselves what they didn’t have back then, such as what they needed but didn’t know how to ask for.”
Hofford is currently on the Homecoming Tour as she travels across Canada to share excerpts from all three of her books and connect with audiences on a personal level that helps them address those uncomfortable self-realizations.
“I just finished up in Calgary and am travelling all in the west, so I started in Winnipeg, then Calgary, Kelowna, Vancouver, Victoria and then Edmonton,” said Hofford. “Then I will take a couple of weeks off, then fly out east to London, Toronto, Prince Edward County and Halifax. At each stop, there is a two-hour event where I will be reading from my books and the common thread of shame.
“It doesn’t sound like an exciting night, but it is a good experience for people to be able to process their own experiences through using mine as a mirror to their own. It’s a book reading at the end with a little art exercise that releases the shame and calls in whatever they want to. The point is to have people feeling less alone and leaving better than when they came in.”