Submit Your Story

Hurray! You have decided to submit your story to Gotta Make Lemonade™! We are thrilled that you want to share your “lemons into lemonade” story on this site OR that you are here to share your TIPS/GO-TO’s on living the healthiest life possible, for Samantha’s new book.

Please read and follow the submission guidelines before submitting your story. To submit your story, please fill out the following form.  For questions, please email us at: submissions@gottamakelemonade.com. Submissions will be review by the Gotta Make Lemonade team and posted to the site upon review and approval. For those of you submitting material for Samantha’s book, she will review your TIPS with her book team and let you know if you will be published in the book. Exciting things are happening!

*You must read through our Privacy Policy and
Terms of Service before submitting your story below.

Submission Guidelines

We have four main categories for the website: Illness & Health, Injury, Career and Relationships. If your story doesn’t seem to fit into one of those – that’s okay! We will find a home for it. First, please remember our mission: Inspiring Positivity in the Face of Adversity. For the book submissions, we have lots of areas and likely can fit in your TIP FOR A HEALTHY LIFE somewhere. Some ideas include: nutrition, fitness, de-stressing, healthy relationships, “clean” living, and other ways you thrive.

We want to be certain that each inspiring story for the website also has a concrete “lemonade” element. Without that, it is still a wonderful story to share but just not the goal of this site. Please keep in mind when writing that when visitors are reading stories on the site, the goal is to share ideas and ways to take one of life’s challenges and turn it into something positive with an even better outcome.

Your story can be big or small, each has significance when turning something undesirable into something better. Whether your “lemonade” is finding your inner strength after a breakup, starting your own company born out of a bad business situation, or creating a charitable foundation after a health diagnosis – we want to share them all here!

The format and specifics below are preferred:

1. Submit your story in Word Doc format. If you do not have access to Word, then please type your story text into the email itself. We will put it into Word.
2. Ideal length is 1-3 pages (approx. 500-1800 words). If it’s for the book TIPS, then 1-3 short paragraphs is preferable. We can also help to edit it down, if needed.
3. Please begin your story for the website in the following way:
   “______ was my lemon. _______ is my lemonade” (i.e. “Breast cancer was my lemon. Building a website dedicated to breathing positivity into the world through shared stories of overcoming adversity is my lemonade.”)
4. PRIVACY is important to us. Your identity is safe here, if you chose that that is what you prefer. We do not need to publish your full name, but we do need to publish your First name, Initial of your Last Name and State (i.e. Samantha H., California). Click these links for more about our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.
5. Please Note: We must protect identities of persons or entities that if named in a published story could cause liability issues, defamation, libel or allegations. Therefore, we will change the names of people/institutions/corporations/etc. identified in any submitted stories when/if necessary, as deemed by Gotta Make Lemonade™. Again, please refer to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.
6. Once submitted, the Gotta Make Lemonade™ team will review your generously shared story to ascertain if it fits with our mission, make edits as needed and then let you know via email if the story will be published on this site. If we need to make any changes/edits, we will send it back to you for final review and approval before publishing it here.