I grew up on Boston's South Shore. I used to walk the beaches and from town to town singing the song, "Love is in the Air." I learned two lessons at a very young age that would shape my life. First, that we are all brothers and sisters and, second because of that everyone is deserving of love; that you should never hate anyone though you can dislike or disagree what someone stands for.
I could have never known that in order to experience these truths I believed in my heart, that I would be presented with my biggest challenge. At the age of 11, I lost all of my hair to a disease called Alopecia Areata. This is a stress triggered, auto-immune disease that can happen to people of all ages. It can cause partial to total hair loss that can be temporary or permanent. I wore wigs for 19 long years at first becoming extremely introverted and miserable. For ten years I never looked in a mirror at myself with out my wig on. My self-esteem was shattered. Slowly I realized that I was gaining a sense of love, understanding and compassion for humanity that I would not trade for my hair.
I attended Boston College for 2 years before transferring and graduating from University of Maryland with a degree in Sociology. I became a champion for many causes and specialized in African-American and Women's Studies never being able to understand why people would be judged or limited by their race, gender, age or religion. It would still be years before I would give up judging myself and feeling that others were judging me for my hair or lack of it. Upon graduation in 1991, I moved to South Beach, Miami where my mother jokes instead of using my degree in Sociology I practiced being social. I thought I would stay for just a few months but seven years later I found myself bartending and caught up in a late-night lifestyle I wasn't sure how to get out of. I was working on Ocean Drive at the world famous Clevelander Hotel but knew this wasn't what my life was meant for.
In November of 1997, I found myself praying for my sister, something clearly answered me and said, "Your sister is fine, pray for your nephew." As I began praying for my nephew Tyler I was filled with an experience of Divine Inspiration-white lights and a sense of flooding energy. That prayer was answered with the words to my now best-selling book I Love You More. It was a prayer that would change my life and lead me on an intense path of self-discovery. It took me awhile to figure out how to go from being a bartender to a best-selling author. Though, I am clear it was that prayer that led me to exactly where I needed to be.
The following year two major breakthroughs
occurred. First, two weeks before my 30th birthday in July of 1998,
from completely out of the blue, I decided that I would no longer
wear wigs. Shedding my wigs was never even a consideration. But
there I was, inviting all of my friends to celebrate at the nightclub
Life in NYC, what we now refer to as my "coming out" party as "The
Bald Chick." I began to realize how much of my life had been consumed
by the fact that I wore a wig. I was constantly worrying about
what people were thinking, when or how should tell them or what
would happen if it fell off? I was now free, free of my wigs and
free to create and discover myself. I also decided that the bar
business wasn't for me... I quit my job and moved to Fort Lauderdale.
It was there, one day on my couch that I said, "there must be something
better to do with my life?" I began surfing through the stations
and found Wayne Dyer, who I had never heard of. That was exactly
what I was looking for. I watched his Wisdom of the Ages special
over and over and a few months later went to see him speak. It
was January of 1999; that night was the beginning of my new spiritual
path and what would become an insatiable quest into self-discovery. I
met Gary Steele and John Castignini who introduced me to John
Demartini, featured in The Secret, who became my first
mentor. It was at his Breakthrough Experience that I was shown
the power of love and gratitude. It became clear that our biggest
challenges always become our biggest blessings and I no longer
had to be stopped by things that had happened in my past.
After working with several of the top transformational teachers, I found myself taking seminars at Landmark Education. It was inside of one of these programs and after a phone call with, "The Book Coach," Jim Donovan that I decided to self-publish my book. I had teamed up with a former friend from my bartending days who felt that she could illustrate the book. Karen took a bag of pastel chalks that she bought at a yard sale for 50 cents and drew the perfect pictures for my text. Together we would become known as the author and illustrator team, Hippie and The Bald Chick. We had sent our book to a handful of publishers and agents and got as many "No's." So, with 10,000 dollars borrowed from my mother, I Shine Inc. was started in August of 2001. On September 11, 2001 our original prints actually got grounded in Alaska on their way to the printer. Standing in that day we asked ourselves if we should push forward with our project, not knowing what the world was going to look like in 3 weeks or 3 months. We had declared the mission of our company to be "to generate the conversation of love around the world." We decided that now more than ever the world was going to need our book and its message of love. Even with the heightened security measures we received our advanced copies by the end of October and our first 3000 books arrived shortly after.
We set up a project to sell 3000 books in 3 months and soon realized that we would need to order another 10,000 books to be ready for Valentine's Day. I Love You More had found its niche in American Craft galleries and children's specialty shops across the country. Galleries were ordering 12, 24, 40, 80 books at a time and selling them just as quickly as they put them out. Our first shop, The Seldom Seen Gallery, on Las Olas Blvd in Fort Lauderdale has now sold nearly 5000 copies. It seemed as long as we could get ILYM displayed we could sell hundreds of copies. We began doing signings at Art Festivals all over Florida, where at one event we sold 437 books! We also created a school program called, "Self-Esteem through Love: Empowering our Children to Shine!" We have presented this program to 1000's of students all over the country. I also began speaking at publishing, marketing and charitable events. Wherever I went you could be sure that everyone I came in contact with would hear about our book and the commitment we had to getting our message out in the world.
After selling 179,000 copies of I Love You More self-published we knew it was time to find a publisher. Some people argued that we could continue doing it ourselves but I realized that the publishing side of it was not where my heart was. That I wanted to be able to go out and present and promote but not necessarily run a publishing company. It was great experience; we had tremendous success and certainly made our share of mistakes along the way! So we set off to find an agent and publisher. Our book landed in the hands of
Cathy Hemming an agent who had been in the business for nearly 30 years. She loved the book and its message and was excited about helping us get it into the hands of a publisher who could help us flourish in the traditional markets. Our 179,000 copies were done with no bookstore distribution. I will admit we sent our book out to several publishers, we thought people would be jumping at the chance but one publisher wanted to completely change the illustrations, another wanted to make the book 5x7 and crop the images to about 2 inches on a colored page. It was a little unnerving…we asked,
“What part of 179,000 copies sold mostly in art and gift galleries did you not understand?”
But finally, Cathy got our book into the hands of a young editor Lyron Bennett at a new children’s imprint at
Sourcebooks called Jabberwocky. He reacted properly, doing back flips over the treasure he had just found. He over-nighted the book to the CEO of the company and
she called to make an offer as soon as she received it! That was more like it. As soon as we found them it was clear our path had once again been divinely guided. Sourcebooks has a phenomenal start up story, having achieved tremendous success along with having many serendipitous connections to our company I Shine Inc. Their symbol is a light bulb and our is a candle, their # is 800-43-BRIGHT and ours is 877-I SHINE-4 and their mission is
to enlighten the lives of their readers and ours is to generate the conversation of love around the world. A perfect match…and it turns out they just began their children’s imprint in 2006. People often wondered what took us so long, why a publisher hadn’t scooped us up sooner? But I believe with all my heart and soul that we were waiting for Sourcebooks/Jabberwocky!
Our publication date was November 6th and it has been magical. We were flown all over the country to the Independent Book Seller Regional meetings and I attended the Books-A-Million Managers meeting in Alabama. I have done at least 30 radio interviews including ones with Whoopi and Sally Jesse Raphael. We have received all sorts of accolades and have been featured in over 150 blogs throughout cyberspace. We were recently picked as a BookSense Winter pick which is an organization of over 1200 independent bookstores. We’ve had displays in Barnes and Nobles across the country, etc, etc. Our numbers are now soaring above 225,000 copies sold. It is quite a new experience having a team of 100’s of independent distributors, and an in house publicity team and sales team. You can follow
The I Love You More Book Tour at
www.MySpace.com/ioveyoumorebooktour. The adventure continues...
Think Dr. Seuss meets Wayne Dyer... Laura Duksta is author of best-selling book I Love You More. So far, it has sold over 200,000 copies. Laura calls ILYM a book about love presented as a children's book, when people ask the books age range she replies, "0-100." Its message is for everyone, love transcends gender, age, race and religion-people share ILYM with loved ones of all ages for all reasons and all seasons. There are several new titles in the works, including Purple Potatoes which spotlights her love of laughter, as well as an entire ILYM series, spawned by the numerous requests for daughters, fathers and grandparents versions.
Laura and illustrator Karen Keesler were featured in the 25th Year Anniversary issue of Boca Magazine as 2 of 10 people under the age of 40 making a difference in South Florida. ILYM was featured in Pregnancy Magazine's coveted Buyers Guide. In 2003 ILYM was voted Best Children's Book at the Do It Yourself Convention and I Shine, Inc. also took home top honors that year for Best Publisher. Laura was flown to and honored at a Gala celebration in Hollywood, CA. Laura and I Love You More have been featured in dozens of publications locally and nationally, as well as having appeared on several TV shows, including: USA Today, The Writer Magazine, EPregnancy Magazine, The Miami Herald, The Sun-Sentinel, The Patriot Ledger, The Palm Beach Post, NBC-6 in South Florida, The Rick Sanchez Show, Eye On Hilton Head, We the People. One of Laura's favorite achievements is having made the hard-cover fiction best-sellers list of a Massachusetts newspaper, The Patriot Ledger, ILYM was #6, right below The DaVinci Code and The Five People You Meet in Heaven and one ahead of Angels and Demons.
Laura enjoys nothing more than sharing her story with others, inspiring them to know that if she can do it so can they. Laura has presented her program, "Self-Esteem through Love: Empowering our Children to Shine" to 1000's of students, educators and administrators across the country. She is able to sprinkle her story of becoming an author with bits of wisdom that people of any age can use to achieve any dream. She speaks to all types of women's auxiliary groups, charitable foundations, support groups, etc., at which she shares how her biggest challenge, losing her hair, eventually became her biggest blessing. This helps people see what might be possible when they bring love to what's being experienced as a challenge or a negative situation. She inspires marketing and sales teams to know that there's nothing that can't be accomplished with a plan, a few prayers and a lot of love. And, she of course speaks to aspiring authors and publishers sharing her story of how she went from bartender to best-selling author. She prepares her audience for what might be at times a roller coaster of ride, but certainly one that's worth it.
Laura has spoken for The Learning Annex, The National Alopecia Areata Foundation, The Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, The National Association of Women's Writers (Florida chapter), Gilda's Club, Xango New School (network marketing event where she shared the stage with Keynote T. Harv Eker), emceed the South Beach Wine and Food Festival Kidz Kitchen (with Rachel Ray, Alton Brown, Emril and Giatta), as well as having had presented dozens of school visits and author workshops across the country.
Laura believes that love is the answer. She sees the world as a classroom where we have chosen to come and grow ourselves to the next level of awareness.. This world is one of duality and when we learn to embrace both the happiness and sadness, the good and bad, the war and peace, the challenge and opportunity, we will no longer be stopped by our circumstances but will be inspired to co-create with our Higher Selves. It is in this state that we are grateful for the events and experiences in our lives because we are able to see how they all serve our own personal growth and add to global evolution. What would happen if we understood that life is happening exactly as it was meant to, so that we may learn lessons of compassion, understanding, wisdom and contribution. If everything "worked" the way that we might envision that it "should" there would be no room for growth. We would no longer have to be here-you might say we would become "enlightened," when that happens we will have transformed into The Light. This is not to say that we are not working towards transforming and healing our planet, but when we do this from the space that there is something wrong we come from fear and force and things aren't necessarily transformed they are changed or fixed. Yet, when we can create and come from a place of love we will cause quantum leaps in consciousness. Love has the ability to heal the planet, though it will take a group of committed individuals to create a vision and take action. We are the ones and now is the time!
