pain bending

Julie Renae Smith takes you beneath the surface of everyday life - past soggy towels of shame, sideways decisions, and the high dives of courage - to discover what happens when you finally see the whole elephant instead of just the piece you’ve been handed.

With humor, honesty, and science-backed insight, Julie offers stories of identity, loss, leaping, floating, and finding your lane again. Her Pool Rules are not rules for swimming - they’re rules for living deliberately, choosing differently, and reclaiming the parts of yourself you didn’t know you’d handed away.

Whether you’re carrying borrowed beliefs, resisting change, or running on autopilot, this book invites you to pause, notice, and shift... one ripple at a time.

Once you see the elephant in the pool, you’ll never move through your life the same way again.