Kalaheo resident for four years, Hawai‘i resident for seven, Jo Ann Lordahl, PhD, has built a career on helping people through her non-fiction writing. Inspirational, self-help, and psychological affirmation meditations could describe the genres that Lordahl has chosen to publish.
Kalaheo resident for four years, Hawai‘i resident for seven, Jo Ann Lordahl, PhD, has built a career on helping people through her non-fiction writing. Inspirational, self-help, and psychological affirmation meditations could describe the genres that Lordahl has chosen to publish. What was once an intention to help people through one-on-one clinical psychology, became a desire to reach a wider population through published works. She will be speaking at Unity of Kaua‘i, Cafe Coco this Sunday.
Writing for over thirty years, Lordahl’s target demographic reflects her peer group of women, who in the mid-seventies pioneered feminist independence and financial sovereignty. Titles of works “Finding A Partner, And It May Be You,” “The End of Motherhood: New identities, New lives,” and “Money Meditation for Women,” clearly speak to a generation of women who were faced with balancing the freedom of social and financial independence with traditional roles of womanhood (motherhood, marriage, etc.)
Lordahl’s foundation in clinical psychology gives her the credibility in working as a creative and emotional coach, using tools of verbal affirmation and journal writing for self-empowerment and spiritual growth. Her books are meant to help people become more self-realized, fulfilled and in essence, happier.
While Lordhal has a specific interest in the feminine journey, her work can be just as helpful to the masculine — perhaps in this day, the challenges of career and family are equally complex for both sexes, and Lordahl’s writings can be translated across gender lines. “Reflections for Busy Educators,” “Reconnecting the Healing Circle,” and “100 Affirmations for Creative People,” are equally as relevant to any “inquiring or seeking” reader.
In Lordahl’s fiction writing, she continues to source content from her own prowess in human psychology, relationships and life’s challenges. Purposefully using the first person, though in multi-dimensional ways, remains consistent with her non-fiction work which ultimately is about healing, understanding and creating a “whole self.” “Secrets,” and “Wolf World” are two stand-alone novels within a trilogy of fiction Lordahl has published.
Lordahl’s up coming work “Spiritual Gold: Be a Prospering Woman” makes the spiritual-financial connection, addressing the true essence of prosperity. She is a member of Kaua‘i Writing Group, which meets each Wednesday from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. in Kalaheo, and has thanked her peers for their feedback and insights in the introduction to “Finding a Partner…”.
Lordahl feels blessed to live on “Kaua‘i, my small gorgeous island-home continues (to be) highly enjoyable. Me, who routinely killed all my plants by over- or under-watering them now has four happy, blooming orchids. And volunteer an afternoon a week at the Botanical Gardens while visions of a coming novel set in old Hawai‘i dance in my head,” writes Lordahl.
Her books are filled with practical exercises, advice and daily affirmations to follow. Lordahl consistently espouses the mantra “live it yourself before you write about it,” and her work reflects this personal and heartfelt desire to learn from her own life’s journey. Having been married and divorced, a mother and a grandmother, and lived all around the country and world, Lordahl has followed her own advice, and continues to draw from a deep source of inspiration.
