Janielle Lucas is an author, a speaker, a wellness innovator, and a partner at a mutual fund advisory firm. After overcoming serious health challenges, she developed a pioneering wellness practice that combines extreme heat exposure, breathwork, movement, meditation, and sound frequency healing.
What began as a personal path to recovery ultimately led her to a series of events that challenged her safety, identity, and life’s work. Her memoir chronicles a remarkable journey of healing, perseverance, and the determination to reclaim her voice in the face of extraordinary adversity.
She lives in Miami Beach with her eighteen-year-old soul cat, Baby, and believes that our greatest challenges can become the catalyst for our greatest transformation.
Q: What motivated you to tell this story, and why now?
A: I never intended to write a book. This story found me.
It began with a deeply personal journey. At twenty-one, I experienced early menopause, along with joint issues and interstitial cystitis, after years of training as a junior Olympic gymnast. I wasn’t willing to accept that my body had reached its limit, so I began experimenting with extreme heat, humidity, movement, and sound to see what would happen. I’m not a scientist—I’m a wellness innovator. My laboratory was my own body, and my body is my proof. It is the evidence that inspired me to keep asking questions.
Over time, I experienced profound changes in my health. Today, at almost forty-three years old, I feel better than I did as a teenager, and I haven’t had a cold or any other illness since the fall of 2018. Those results inspired me to develop an entirely new approach to yoga that blends movement with a carefully designed healing environment and sound frequencies.
I probably never would have written about any of it if my studio hadn’t been stolen. That experience changed everything. It made me realize that if I’d discovered something that had transformed my life, I had a responsibility to share it. The theft also exposed me to what I believe are serious failures within the Philadelphia justice system, and I knew that story deserved to be told too.
Why now? Because I think we’re living in a moment when people are looking for hope. They’re looking for new ideas about health, they’re asking harder questions about the systems they’re expected to trust, and they’re looking for people willing to speak up. This book is about both healing and courage. If my story encourages someone to reclaim their health, stand up for what’s right, or simply believe that change is possible, then sharing it was worth it.
Q: What was the most challenging part about writing your book?
A: The writing was actually the easiest part. It poured out of me. I often joke that it felt like I threw up the entire manuscript. Within two weeks, I had a complete first draft because I’d been living the story for years.
The real challenge came afterward. I’d never published a book before, so suddenly I had to learn an entirely new industry. I signed with a literary agent, and we went through the traditional publishing process, but I realized we didn’t share the same vision for the book.
There was a lot of pressure to separate my story into multiple books and reshape it into something more commercially marketable. But I didn’t write this book to maximize sales—I wrote it to tell the truth. The healing journey and the fight for justice are inseparable. One explains the other.
That realization gave me the confidence to walk away and find a publishing partner that truly understood what I was trying to accomplish. Working with Ballast Books has been an incredible experience. Their editorial team helped strengthen my voice without trying to change my message, and I’m so grateful I trusted my instincts. Looking back, taking the longer path was absolutely the right decision.
Q: How does your personal or professional background influence your writing?
A: My personal life is my writing. This book is incredibly vulnerable because I share my experiences with illness, my frustrations with the medical system, and the journey that ultimately changed my life. There were moments I wasn’t sure I wanted to include because they were so personal, but I realized that authenticity is what gives the story its power.
Professionally, I probably surprise people. I’m a partner at a mutual fund company and hold securities licenses, so I’m trained to think analytically, evaluate evidence, and communicate responsibly. In fact, because I discuss financial topics in the book, my firm’s compliance officer reviewed the manuscript before publication.
I’ve also been incredibly fortunate to work with an exceptional team. Their encouragement and support gave me the confidence to tell this story exactly as I wanted to tell it.
In many ways, my professional and personal worlds complement each other. One has taught me discipline, accountability, and critical thinking. The other taught me resilience, curiosity, and the courage to question what I thought I knew. This book is where those two worlds meet.
Q: Who do you hope this book will resonate with the most?
A: More than anyone, I hope this book reaches people who are struggling with chronic illness or pain and feel like they’ve run out of options. I know what it’s like to feel trapped in your own body and to believe that this is simply how the rest of your life is going to be.
I’ll never forget lying in bed, in excruciating pain, wondering if that would be my forever. There was a time when I couldn’t even stand comfortably for ten minutes, and I truly believed I had tried everything.
What changed my life was the decision to stop believing that “no more options” meant no more hope. I began listening to my body, asking different questions, and trusting my own intuition alongside my determination to keep searching. That journey led me somewhere I never expected.
I don’t believe this book has all the answers, but I do hope it gives people permission to believe there may be another path they haven’t discovered yet. Sometimes healing begins the moment we stop assuming our story has already been written.
If someone finishes this book feeling even a little more hopeful, a little more empowered, and a little more willing to trust their own inner compass, then I’ve accomplished exactly what I set out to do.
Q: What advice would to give someone thinking about writing a book about personal experiences?
A: DO IT. Seriously—just start writing.
I never imagined I’d write a book. I used to wonder how people even did it. It seemed like something that would take years, and I had no idea where I’d even begin.
But when something deeply emotional happens in your life, you have a choice. You can let that experience consume you, or you can create something from it. Pain is energy. You can let it consume you, or you can create something with it. For me, writing became a way to transform pain into purpose.
The words came much more easily than I expected because I wasn’t inventing a story—I was finally telling one I’d been carrying for years. In many ways, the writing process felt like therapy. It helped me make sense of everything I’d lived through and turned some of my hardest experiences into something that might help someone else.
So my advice is simple: Write the book. Don’t worry about whether anyone else will ever read it. Write it because you need to. Write it because your story matters. And if you eventually decide to publish it, that’s wonderful. But even if you don’t, the act of writing can be incredibly healing.
Q: What’s one thing readers might be surprised to learn about your journey?
A: I think people might be surprised by just how lonely the journey was.
From the outside, it may seem like I had a clear plan, but I didn’t. For much of the journey, it was just me, my intuition, and a willingness to keep experimenting. There was no blueprint to follow, no road map, and certainly no guarantee that any of it would work.
In fact, I had plenty of failures before I found something that truly changed my life. Each setback taught me something, but it also required me to keep believing in myself when there wasn’t much external validation.
Looking back, I don’t think I’d change any of it. The loneliness forced me to sit with myself in a way I’d never had before. It forced me to reckon with myself and my own demons. It taught me to trust my own judgment, confront my fears, and discover a resilience I didn’t know I possessed. Sometimes we think our greatest breakthroughs come from finding the right teacher. Mine came from learning to trust the quiet voice inside myself. That loneliness taught me something I couldn’t have learned any other way: how to trust myself.
Q: Do you have a writing routine or ritual that keeps you focused?
A: I don’t really have a writing routine—I have a curiosity routine.
I’m constantly thinking about health and wellness, asking questions, and experimenting on myself. Healing wasn’t the end of the journey; it was the beginning of an even bigger one. I’m still learning every day.
When an idea strikes me, I text it to myself before I forget it. Sometimes it’s just a sentence, sometimes it’s a question, and sometimes it’s an observation from one of my own experiments. Over time, those little notes begin connecting to each other until they naturally grow into chapters or new ideas.
For me, writing isn’t something I turn on and off. It’s an extension of how I live. Curiosity has become a way of life, and I honestly don’t know any other way to be.
What excites me most is that this journey isn’t over. I’m fascinated by how the body changes as we age, and I plan to keep learning, experimenting, and documenting what I discover. I think curiosity is one of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves, because every question has the potential to lead somewhere completely unexpected.
Q: Is there a particular quote, motto or piece of wisdom that guided your writing process?
A: The phrase I come back to over and over is “Just keep going.”
It sounds simple, but it’s how I’ve approached almost everything in my life. Whether I was trying to heal my body, writing this book, or navigating difficult circumstances, I learned that meaningful change doesn’t happen all at once. It happens one small step at a time.
I don’t believe everything has to be finished in a single burst of inspiration. I like to make a little progress every day and trust my own natural rhythm. Some days, that means writing several pages. Other days, it means thinking, reflecting, or simply letting an idea mature.
The deeper lesson, though, is one this journey taught me: When we turn inward, we discover that we already have an inner compass. Learning to trust that voice has guided every major decision I’ve made—including writing this book.
“Just keep going” gets me moving. Trusting my inner compass helps me know which direction to go.
Q: Are you working on another project or book?
A: I’ve definitely been encouraged to write another book—especially one focused entirely on the yoga and wellness methods I’ve developed. Even my former literary agent thought there was a book waiting to be written there.
Right now, though, I’m letting the next project reveal itself naturally. I’ve learned not to force these things. My best ideas have always come from following my curiosity rather than chasing a deadline.
What I can say is that I’m still experimenting, still learning, and still documenting what I discover. Whether that becomes another book, a new wellness program, or something I haven’t imagined yet, I’m open to wherever the journey leads.
If this first book taught me anything, it’s that sometimes the stories we’re meant to tell find us before we find them.
Q: What are five books that have had a lasting impact on you?
A: It’s hard to narrow it down to just five, but these books have stayed with me long after I finished reading them:
1. The Gift by Edith Eger: This book taught me that even after unimaginable suffering, we still have the power to choose how we respond. It’s one of the most hopeful books I’ve ever read.
2. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho: This book reminds me to trust the journey, follow curiosity, and believe that life has a way of guiding us when we’re willing to listen.
3. Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés: It deepened my appreciation for intuition, the feminine spirit, and the wisdom we carry within ourselves.
4. The Search for Hidden Sacred Knowledge by Dolores Cannon: Whether or not readers agree with every idea, I admire books that encourage us to ask bigger questions and explore beyond conventional thinking.
5. The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield: This book opened my mind to the idea that synchronicity, awareness, and meaningful connections can shape our lives in extraordinary ways.
And if you’ll let me sneak in one more:
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson is probably my favorite novel of all time. I connected with Lisbeth Salander on a deeply personal level. Her resilience, independence, and refusal to be defined by what had happened to her resonated with me in a way I didn’t expect. Reading her story felt less like discovering a fictional character and more like recognizing a part of myself.
Janielle Lucas' new book, Taking Heat, is coming soon October 13, 2026!