I’m Shelly L. Francis, a writer, speaker, and author coach-companion-consultant, helping aspiring authors unleash their creative courage. In 2020, I started Creative Courage Press, LLC with the mission of “creating more courage for the complexity of being human.” You can find me online at my Substack blog called Fortitude and on Instagram.
I was inspired by all the leaders I met while writing The Courage Way: Leading and Living with Integrity, a book that Spirituality & Practice named as one of the “Best Spiritual Books of 2018.” I wrote it as a leadership book on behalf of the nonprofit Center for Courage & Renewal during my time there (in Seattle) as the marketing and communications director. Before that I directed trade marketing and publicity for multi-media publisher Sounds True, Inc. Before that, well, you can see my career path on LinkedIn.
In 2023, I revived my inner artist with a book called Eleven Brave Pinecones, the 63-card deck Supposing: Reflections for Accessing Your Wise Inner Artist (in print and on the fantastic Deckible app called) and Emotikin World blog.
I have been a communicator in a range of business sectors from publishing to government to high tech and health care. Whether running my own business or serving organizations, the common thread throughout my career has been bringing to light best-kept secrets — technology, services, resources, ideas. I bring people together to facilitate collective impact and good work.
If you go way back, you could say my publishing career began in second grade as an author/illustrator of several series of books. The pages have been lost in the dust of time, or boxes somewhere still packed. I continued as editor of school newspapers and yearbooks from junior high to high school to college, and then into business communications.
I am also the author of a cancer-caregiving memoir, Damocles’ Wife: The Inside Story of Cancer Caregiving & Long-Term Survival in the Midst of Motherhood, Marriage & Making Life Matter. (I do love long subtitles!) But more importantly, I feel strongly about the well-being of caregivers–whether that means physicians, nurses, family caregivers, or other healers, and that means also caring about self-care of us and them. That’s a big reason why Resilient Threads became the first book for Creative Courage Press and why Caring for Self & Others came next in 2024.
Listen in to podcast conversations about courage.