‘If I could come back from disasters and bad decisions, you can too’: How Sheree turned her life around

When we’re little, everyone tells us we can achieve anything we want with a bit of hard work and a lot of imagination.

But as we grow older, we realise this isn’t quite the case. It’s a lesson Australian author Sheree Joseph had to learn the hard way. 

In her debut memoir Juicy, the 38-year-old reflected on living in “the wreckage of expectations” after facing setback after setback, that included grief, matters of the heart and health issues.

“I’d see people struggling, but they would also have good experiences,” Joseph tells nine.com.au. “I would always just think, why am I having such bad experiences?

“Is it because it’s just not meant to happen and I’m not learning that lesson?”

Questioning her every move made things worse, and Joseph found that every time she fought for the life she wanted, she was left exhausted.

“At some point, my brain and body just couldn’t keep putting myself through that,” she explained. “So I had to make a choice to try to shift the narrative for my own sake because everything was just going so wrong.”

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That included a change of scenery.

After a reflective sojourn through Europe, Joseph returned to the shambles of her life in Australia. It was only then she found the solution wasn’t to solve her problems, but to change her mindset and accept the cards she was dealt.

“The minute I moved away [from my life goals], everything went right,” she said, explaining she felt that was what she was always meant to do.

“Now it just seems like the most natural choice because the alternative only ever brought pain. I just can’t bring myself to care for that any more. It’s like I’ve just turned myself off from those expectations and those things I thought would happen.”

Instead, she’s built new expectations and decided to “redefine life on her own terms”.

Joseph says a mindset shift like that involves asking yourself some serious questions.

“Like, what actually matters to you? What are your values? What would make you happy? What would make you fulfilled? What are your dreams? What’s going to make me feel in control of my life?”

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With so much in life outside our control, she says it’s important to focus on what we can control.

In taking this slow and considered approach, just one step after another, Sheree’s new path revealed itself.

And a dream she once had became a reality: She wrote a book.

Joseph never imagined her debut novel would be anything but fiction, but every time she tried to write, nothing would come out.

Then she started thinking about her own life story.

“It felt like a no-brainer,” she said of the moment she landed on writing a memoir.

Joseph knew she had a story worth telling when her friends thought that her life experiences and the resulting change in her mindset were unique.

She hopes her story will reach the people who need it the most.

While writing Juicy, she recalls thinking, “Are you really going to be that honest about yourself?′

“I was like, ‘Actually, I have to be, [because] that’s the one story I can control and be okay with.’

She says the “person who comes off the worst in this book is me”.

“There are some decisions I make and things I do that, when [I was] writing them, I was laughing.” 

“Even if it’s embarrassing, I’m willing to die on that hill because I want to show people the truth and say, if I could come back from various disasters and bad decisions, you can as well.

“There’s something there that can help people, and that’s more important.”