The Adventures of Miss Twiggs and Company by Lucy Forsting

In this week’s Smart Conversation, I had the privilege to talk to Lucy Forsting. Lucy is a practicing psychotherapist in Florida (and was one in Wisconsin, too) who works with both adults and children.

We met via LinkedIn (don’t I always say LinkedIn is the place to be to make great connections?) when Lucy was kind enough to introduce me to her book, The Adventures of Miss Twiggs and Company.

This book integrates Lucy’s love of children and animals with her desire to help all people create happy and rewarding lives. The artwork in Miss Twiggs and Company is stunning! It’s part of why I think the book will go on to be wildly successful. The artist is Michael Woodcock, Manager, Graphic Fabrication & Implementation at Universal Orlando based in Orlando, Florida.

An illustration from "The Adventures of Miss Twiggs and Company" by Lucy Forsting. Illustration is by Florida-based Michael Woodcock.

An illustration from “The Adventures of Miss Twiggs and Company,” drawn by Florida-based illustrator Michael Woodcock.

All parents should buy this book and read it to their children. Grandparents can do so, also. There is an inspirational message throughout the book, helping children, especially, deal with difficulties and issues they think are out of their control.

Lucy currently hosts The Synergy Connection Show which is a podcast found on Apple Podcast, Spotify , Google Podcast and iHeart Radio. (image: Miss Twiggs and friends)

The show helps listeners connect the dots between their physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual aspects. In the video, we talk about the making of the book which took 30 years! Not the ‘making’ making, just the getting over the hurdles Lucy had to jump. Listen to her tell it as the video gets started.

Part of what we discuss is the way too many people are out there – in the world – living lives of quiet desperation, a la Henry David Thoreau. People who don’t know how to break the cycle of despair and worry. Because it’s all they’ve ever known.

Lucy talks about the children in an orphanage she worked in, dropped off by parents who could no longer care for them. Or chose not to. Sometimes saying, “We’ll be back,” when they never intended to return. At just five minutes in, Lucy mentioned the “stories we tell ourselves” – in order to pretend happiness or to feign joy.

She calls some of the people she’s worked with the “walking wounded” because of the traumas they’ve endured in their lives. Even people who, to the rest of us, seem happy and content. It’s not a secret that many people suffer in silence. Many people hide their trauma, perhaps because they feel their pain isn’t worth sharing or acknowledging.

Lucy believes we spend too much time ‘intellectualizing’ – and isn’t that the truth? I know I spend a good bit of time justifying my behavior and the behavior of others by thinking it through, rather than allowing my ‘intuition’ or my ‘heart’ dictate how I should feel about a situation.

We have to “connect the dots” – from our physical/emotional/intellectual/and spiritual selves, in order to be happy, is what Lucy tells me. Happiness comes, she says, from going to our heart’s desire.

The biggest thing I learned is that as human beings, we all need to be in alignment with our chakras. Divine energy can only help us, enter us, when we are grounded in mother earth and balanced from root to crown. It’s the divine energy that will guide us to our most joyous state. BTW, did you know that our heart has over 40,000 brain cells? Which is why we should give our heart more credit when it tries to steer us one way or another. (Visit the heartmath institute to learn more)

By embracing our heart’s center. Watch the video below to see our whole conversation.