Meet Stephanie Roth Sisson

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Stephanie Roth Sisson. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Stephanie, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?

Resilience is a process for me – a process I am becoming more practiced at the older I get. It is a learned skill. Let me add right here that although I am resilient as an individual, I am also lucky to have supportive family, friends and community. All of these people help to lighten the load as I’m figuring things out.

Right now I am getting ready to leap again after life event that completely gutted me- divorce after almost seventeen years of marriage. At first all I could do was hold my breath. Then, at one point sip in some oxygen and then next breath, and then the one after that. I went through trying to understand what had happened that had gotten me to that place where I felt so adrift, so far away from my values and boundaries… I filled reams of notebooks where everything just poured out of me… then a period of sense making…coming to terms with things.

Then there is the redesigning, reimagining, prototyping and creating a plan… I tell myself that the only direction to go is onwards and it’s true. I ask myself , ” Who are you becoming? ” I want that person to be someone I am proud of, who may not be getting it all right, but who keeps showing up and trying…

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

What’s that Pablo Picasso quote? The one about everyone being born as an artist, but the trick is remaining as one? I’ve managed that. There is a straight through line that goes from grasping a crayon in my chubby baby hand and making marks to now…

I have illustrated over seventy books for children and written and illustrated two- everything from American Girl books to chapter books and my own picture books. I’ll confess that I began just trying to make pretty pictures (nothing wrong with that), but it has evolved into wanting to tell things about the world. My illustrations are now much less about the pretty picture and much more about nuanced layers of meaning. I begin with the emotion and then go from there. I try to use every trick in the book to convey what’s happening.

I get excited about showing the wonder of world to the next generation. To explain about things…share…I try to show the things that I find fascinating about the world, or just convey and emotion.

I invite you to take a look at my work at www. stephanitely.com, you can find my books on Amazon, your local library or indie book shops. Also check out my NEW Etsy shop at https://www.etsy.com/shop/StephanitelysSHOP.

I also launched a Substack. https://stephanierothsisson.substack.com. It’s all about reinventing yourself . I spent 10 years in a strange limbo living on the other side of the Earth and for the last three of those ten years, my then husband was unlawfully detained by a foreign government. I sold everything we owned to help get him out. When we finally won his freedom, he came back traumatized. Then, he left me. It’s a surreal story, but it’s true.

My newest book releases on February 18th, 2025 and is written by Laura Gehl . The name of the book is ORSON and the World’s Loudest Library. It’s about a kid who loves books and quiet, and he used to love the library but now it has changed and Orson is not having it. You can pre-order it now wherever you like to buy your books.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Mood follows action. You have to take action first and not wait to “feel like it”. Once you start doing something that action gains momentum. If you wait to feel like taking action, it’s not likely to happen.

I look for mentors and teachers…people who have come before and who have something to share. I often meet them in books.

I journal. Journaling is surprising…it’s crazy how when I start writing about something or asking a question that insights and answers will come. There is the freeform sort of method where I just write and write with no particular goal other than to get whatever it is I’m working on out.

When I was living on a little island in the middle of the Indian Ocean with my then husband, we were in constant survival mode- constant stress. When you are in the state for a prolonged period of time, one effect is that your visual field literally shrinks. Your world becomes smaller. and you just focus on the threats….The antidote to this (for me), has been to slow down and engage some practices to calm down the nervous system (heart coherent breathing, vagus nerve stimulation…yoga). Then the next thing is to make the world bigger again…find possibilities, explore, see what ideas are out there. I look at what others have been creating. I research things that interest me. I cultivate the possible. I let it all percolate . I try things…

Asking for help from true friends and family and seeking out a therapist has been crucial. People want to help and learning to accept help means you have energy to put into other positive things. These relationships are reciprocal, so you know that one day you will be able to return the kindness.

The previous point relates to this next one- don’t let ego get in your way. Ego can stop you from what you need to do and can keep you stuck in a false assumption. If you need to bring money in the door and there is a job available that isn’t in line with your image of yourself try it. The next right thing to do, doesn’t mean that it’s a permanent solution and you might just gain some unexpected positives from the experience, plus take the stress off while you figure something else out.

Something important I’ve been working on for myself since my husband left is to face the things head on. It’s so hard but necessary. Sometime the smallest thing can become a big block if I’m avoiding it, then I’m stuck.

Pay attention. Notice when you have energy and when you feel drained. Notice how your lifestyle choices are effecting you. Notice what interests you. Notice how you feel after you do a hard thing.

We humans have neuroplastic blains, we have bodies that can heal themselves when all to, we can learn new things and we can reinvent. How amazing!

If you knew you only had a decade of life left, how would you spend that decade?

I’m reinventing myself after a recent divorce . One chapter closed, but now I am starting a new one. I am figuring out who I want to become now…I’m starting to explore my newly found freedom (which is also scary at the same time).

All of my possessions are sitting in a storage locker . I’ve been packing up what I will need for the next few months on the road for both work and life. Next week I’m hitting the road for an across country road trip to figure out where “home” might be and where I might want to explore more for awhile. I’ve never done anything like this before – going on a trip without a destination. And it is forcing me to do several things- pay attention, be intentional and face things head on…. but also leave room for serendipity.

A big part of this is standing on my own two feet. What happened to us on the little island left us completely drained financially. So, I’m coming up with ways to be self sustaining while still being able to share what I have spent a lifetime cultivating. My word for this year is “agency”.

Something that has been true for me throughout my life is that when I try things, put myself out there and leap that that’s when the really interesting, rich stuff in life happens. Here I go! You can follow my journey through my Substack https://stephanierothsisson.substack.com

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.stephanitely.com
• Instagram: @stephanierothsisson
• Other: https://stephanierothsisson.substack.comhttps://www.etsy.com/shop/StephanitelysSHOP