I can't believe it's been so long since I last posted, but life, book/writing coaching others, writing my own someday book babies, and, most wonderfully, bringing LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER to the community anyone who knows me will tell you it's no secret I love, has taken over. Also moving. Also the holidays. And most recently a most exciting endeavor, my husband's soon-to-embark food truck, Baja Gringo Tacos! Yes, someday there'll be a cookbook in our future, too. But for now, we've been eating a LOT of tacos as he experiments and perfects the recipes that have filled our boy since we lived in San Diego. The story of what this means to my husband, to our family, is on simmer. But for now I'll just say that it makes me very happy to once again bear witness to the dimples that won my heart in the first place. 

This chilly Easter weekend, with night-time temps that are still a bit too cold for making tacos in the truck, spring cleaning in preparation for a long overdue visit from my stepdaughter and her husband has me counting the numerous books cluttering my coffee table and about every other flat surface. Is Evelyn Woods speed reading still a thing? Because I need to invest if I'm going to keep up with the many prolific authors I'm blessed to know personally, even if in some cases, it's only online. Getting to know authors is something I've felt driven to do as I battle my own writing doubts, demons, and dragons. We all have them. Some of us are simply farther ahead in the conquering department. Holding their books, ruffling the pages, taking a whiff, and brushing my hand over the signatures of authors I've met in person and built friendships with online makes me feel that one day publishing a book--sooner rather than later--is possible for me, too. And you all know how I feel about POSSIBLE. 

I know that my own "authordom" is about managing my time and prioritizing the completion phase of those projects on which I'm already so close I can smell the ink. But I also know that the same drive in me and my family that makes my husband's irreverent, anti-establishment, stick-it-to-the-man, cleaner eating and naturally gluten free taco truck a reality that makes sense for us, will open my work and my life up to critique and criticism. I have to acknowledge it: that fear is a part of what's held me back. There's so much nastiness and judgment online. It can be downright scary to put yourself, and by default your kids, out there. 

What Amazon doesn't tell us is why Galit set out to write this book in the first place. The author, herself, was a victim of online bullying and downright heartless cruelty. Breen published a beautiful piece on Huffington Post entitled, "Twelve Secrets Happily Married Women Know." In it, she shared a beautiful snapshot of her and her husband on their wedding day. The post went viral. What followed was a troll-fest rife with vitriol and hate directed, not at her words, but at her weight. One of the reasons (besides the fact that one of the wealthiest women in the world doesn't believe in paying writers who publish on her website) I, myself, have never published on HuffPo is the reputation that played out right under Galit's original post. Check out what Galit had to say about the experience and what became her book here, on her Twin Cities Live appearance. Kindness Wins releases this Tuesday, April 7th, and is available for preorder. I can't wait for my copy to arrive!

Next on my to-read list is another book that releases this Tuesday, April 7th. This one features a topic that's near and dear to my heart, and it's brought to us by a woman who shares the mission of online and in person kindness, compassion, and understanding. That has to be what's at the motherhood heart of the national, 39-city movement that in it's sixth season also celebrates the book, "Listen to Your Mother: What She Said Then, What We're Saying Now." Ann Imig, founder and national director of the live stage show and social media extravaganza, has compiled and edited a selection of some of the amazing stories that first graced Listen to Your Mother microphones and stages across the country. Yes, you can watch over a thousand archived videos from past seasons, but there's something truly special about lying in bed and reading the words as they were originally authored, dog-earing your favorites, and revisiting them time and again. The stories remind us as mothers, as humans, that we share so much more than separates us. The stories remind us how resilient we are, and that we are not alone in this world. 

Okay, technically? I've already read this one. But Patty Chang Anker is one of the storytellers represented in the Listen to Your Mother Book. She is a warm, witty, and delightful author I've had the pleasure of meeting, twice! Her book, "Some Nerve: Lessons Learned While Becoming Brave," is now available in paperback, and sports a beautiful new aqua blue spine. And it's clearly (see second paragraph, above) one I could stand to revisit. I had the honor and pleasure of introducing Patty when she visited Forever Books last summer. And then I met her again in New York when I drove there for #BinderCon just three days after moving last fall! Crazy, I know! But I had a free conference pass I'd won, the promise of meeting several online friends IRL, and a welcoming friend with a comfy sofa whom I'd met at a prior conference. So nothing was stopping me! The opportunity to see Patty again was just too irresistible. Her book and her experience with Listen to Your Mother had so much to do with me auditioning and garnering a spot in the Northwest Indiana show in 2014. And it certainly helped me find my brave and pitch my community as a new city in 2015. 

As tender, green, delectable shoots emerge from the earth, "Eating Wildly: Foraging for Life, Love and the Perfect Meal," is a perfect spring read by another lovely and vastly talented author I met at #BinderCon in New York. Ava Chin and I shared deviled eggs and conversation as we sipped Chardonnay and chatted with other authors at a bar in Manhattan. (An event that prompted me to ask whether this was my life!) Her beautiful book has been on my to-read list for far too long, and now is the perfect time to move it to the company of my currently reading list! Without a kitchen since moving into our house in October, I must confess that the idea of reading about food as the world around me was going to sleep felt rather torturous. But I've decided to think of it as inspiration to recommit to cleaner eating, and to get my GANE Possible kitchen moving in the right direction. And I'm hoping to convince Ava to visit southwest Michigan for a foraging tour and book signing this summer. Be sure to Subscribe--->so you'll know when & if it happens!

I can't mention authors I've met without reminding you of my time in spectacular Whitefish, Montana, with Laura Munson, author of "This is Not the Story You Think it Is...: A Season of Unlikely Happiness," and Haven writing retreat host. I mentioned how happy I am lately to see my husband's dimples again, but back when I read Laura's book, those dimples were a far off memory. Laura's book spoke to the pieces of my heart that felt desolate and alone in the aftermath of my husband losing his job, leaving California, and returning to Michigan with no prospects. I truly believe it not only had a significant part in my marriage surviving its darkest moments, but the book, Haven, time spent in Laura's company and in the company of other women writers inspired my participation in Listen to Your Mother, as well. Laura's book and Haven helped me to focus on the future I wanted to create, and it helped me to live as an example for my husband. Even though he never read a word of Laura's book, I honestly believe that without it he wouldn't have the opportunity to heal the loss of our restaurant by living his dream of opening Baja Gringo Tacos. Life is feeling pretty complete for us these days. And I owe a big piece of that to Laura and to Haven. My project has changed a great deal since Haven, but it's growing and it's becoming closer to the book I dreamed of writing when our daughters were young. 

This has turned into a post about being brave, which really wasn't my intention. But I suppose a short month away from showtime, it's what I needed to remember at the moment. There is little braver than reexamining and correcting a lie as an adult that began in childhood. In "Cinderland," Amy Jo Burns has done so in smooth, warm, amber words and turns of phrase, recalling small town America in eloquent, and in turn beautiful and ugly ways to which many of us can relate. In her gripping memoir, she holds herself and others accountable, while exploring the impact secrecy and speculation had on her life, and the lives of others who told, ignored, assumed, and judged the truth. In Burns' book not a single word is out of place or wasted, each one carrying the weight of their topic impeccably. And I think it sports one of the most beautiful covers ever. I've gotten to know Amy a bit online, and hope for an opportunity to meet her and hear her read in the future.

I can't thank Ruth Curran enough for sending me a copy of her important book to giveaway this spring. I'm currently reading my own copy of, "Being Brain Healthy: What my recovery from brain injury taught me...," and I'm finding it wise, well written, and hopeful. Together with the brain training games she's developed and offers on her website, Cranium Crunches, Ruth's mission is to help everyone understand, no matter their stage in life, "harness and use neuroplasticity to live a richer, deeper, more fully engaged life." Ruth's empowering message of self care and self responsibility is one, A) I needed to hear, and B) we share. Though I'm reminded that I want very much to be able to walk and function later in life, which means I want to conquer that exercise portion of wellness she writes about. I'm going to need all the stamina I can build, and spring is the perfect season to do it!

During the time I've gotten to know Ruth online, and having been interviewed by her recently for a podcast, I never guessed she suffered a brain injury until I became aware of the topic of her book. I'd have to endorse what she teaches as impactful for those with brain injury, and for those who want to optimize their own neuroplasticity. One of the most important things I've found to help lessen my self-diagnosed ADD is writing, which Ruth talks about in her book. I'll keep doing it. And I'll add more purposeful exercise to my list of empowered wellness activities.  

At the end of the month (April 2015), I will randomly select one winner from among the comments I receive on this post to receive Ruth's book! So tell me about a memoir, novel, or work of nonfiction I should put on my to-read list this summer! 

Like Tom Hanks' character in Castaway, I want to shout to the seagulls, "I [former aimless flake who talked and wrote plenty about doing it but just couldn’t seem to finish]—WROTE A BOOK—this summer!" A shitty first draft, at least. There is still much editing to do.

But it’s true. I wrote the first draft of a whole, complete book this summer. I never dreamed I would finish something. And now? I’m hooked. Because let’s face it, not everyone wants to schlepp pennies for clicks for conglomerates. Some of us have shit to say. We have stories and memoirs that burn black, ashy grooves in our brains until we finally let them out into the world. 

Once we finish, edit, polish, and publish, in order to reach our audience, we must promote ourselves. According to the brilliant and savvy Rachel Thompson of Bad Redhead Media, what's often missing from the streams of shameless self-promoters is the work of other awesome writers and interaction; give & take, aka conversation.

I don't promote the work of other writers without thought or care. I do it strategically. I do it for authors whose platforms I support, and yes, agree with. I do it for individuals that work to spread positivity rather than judgment, or I do it for interesting, likable people with whom I hope to sit on a panel someday. People like New York author Patty Chang Anker, who I’m introducing when she visits Forever Books this Thursday, August 7th, at 7:00 PM. She will sign copies of her book, Some Nerve: Lessons Learned While Becoming Brave. Patty surfed for the first time off the coast of Silver Beach in Lake Michigan, after renting her surfboard from Third Coast Surf Shop (see chapter 7). No biggie for them, they surf in winter all the time, because that’s when the waves are totally rad. But Patty was a newbie. And FYI, Lake Michigan acts a LOT like an ocean, complete with rip tides. Several people who haven’t spent a lifetime learning to respect the lake are at risk of drowning, and some do drown, each season.

Another for instance, I can’t thank my co-facilitator, Ami Hendrickson of @MuseInks enough, from the bottom of my procrastinating, doubtful heart for bringing me along for the #Write2TheEnd ride of a lifetime this summer.

            While co-facilitating our maiden 8-week session of #Write2TheEnd, I was talking, you see, to myself about giving ourselves permission and casting out our doubts and claiming our worth (thank you, coaches Nancy & Nicci). Funny how that works. And what a delicious, evil brain Ami has for thinking up #Write2TheEnd and inviting me to co-facilitate the course with her.

As I was teaching, I was learning beside our participants and listening to Ami share amazing tools that actually make writing a book possible. And those who know me know I’m all about possible. But we humans can’t always see what’s in front of our faces. We throw up walls and excuses and what ifs and we let fear get in the way.

And we let the judgment of others who use terms like “humblebrag” make us question ourselves and feel icky about an essential aspect of getting our work out there: marketing and self-promotion. Even if you get a publisher these days, you’re doing your own marketing. And the current climate makes that a difficult and delicate balance to strike.

Investing in a course like #Write2TheEnd, or gifting yourself with a writing retreat like the Haven Retreat that changed my life when I took a train from Michigan to Montana in the middle of the coldest winter in decades, is so much different than talking about writing a book. This is actually taking meaningful steps toward DOING it with purpose and with a plan and with accountability and with amazing support, if I do say so myself. ~blush~

And I will be the first to champion #Write2TheEnd alumni the moment their stories are no longer tentative, private, wistful ideas. The success they have achieved already, just by investing in the work and in themselves, and accomplishing their goals, means they've already earned Ami's and my eternal support.    

So this is me, humblebragging all over my students, and all over Ami & myself, too. Because I did what I feared was impossible, and she helped me get there. And now I know how to do it again & again. 

I picked the “low hanging fruit” method, to kind of fool myself into submission. I started our eight-week session with the goal of turning blogs from a site I had shut down into a book. Easy peasy. It’s already written, right?

Ha! Silly me. One thing led to another, reading and tweaking my old blog posts prompted more writing and the need to fill in holes, to connect the bits and pieces, and include more data about what I’ve learned and whom I’ve learned from along the way. So what began as maybe a 50,000-word book, will likely end up closer to an 80,000-word book. And I’m not even getting $100 back at the end. Because…teacher. That wouldn’t be fair. Buy wow! I did that!

I’m pretty geeked. But my pride and joy in my own accomplishment doesn’t begin to compare with how my heart is swelling with pride and joy and amazement at the progress our participants have made, in the breakthroughs they’ve experienced, and in the success they’ve achieved.

It’s obvious to me from the process of writing my book this summer that I have indeed overcome and achieved a great deal: I have three amazing kids and we’ve held our blended family together for over twenty years through a lot of struggle. But building and supporting writers ranks in the top ten of my greatest achievements thus far.

As we wrap up our summer session and gear up for our fall session, which begins September 15th, I’m looking back with the amazement and pride of a momma bird watching her flock take flight.

Sooo…perhaps I am bragging about writing a book this summer, but there’s nothing humble about it. And well, it’s just too bad if I am humblebragging anyway. It’s amazing to me that I finished something, and I’m damn proud of myself. And I’m damn proud that I’m a part of something that can help make that happen for others. Shoot me. Call me a braggart. I don’t care.

It isn’t an understatement to say that if I can do it, you truly can, too. I hope you’ll join us. Even if you’re not local to southwest Michigan, be sure to get on the mailing list for the newsletter. We’re working on offering online options and on expanding the site in 2015, which, it freaks me out to say, is right around the corner.

On Monday, August 25th, 6:00 – 8:00 PM, at our offices, 420 Main Street, St. Joseph, Ami and I are planning an evening to introduce ourselves to a new batch (or returning batch) of local writers, share a little about our program, and share a little about the Midwest Writers Workshop in Muncie, Indiana, we recently attended. We will hold a mini session open to your questions with answers to help you meet your goals and build your writer community. If there’s time, we may open it up to a read-around during which you can share a short work of your own.

I hope you’ve done something as amazing and outside your comfort zone with your summer as I have. If so, I hereby invite you to humblebrag about it in the comments.

AUTHOR NOTE, 05/20/14: Wrong? I was wrong?! A friend pointed out that the narrator in The Book Thief is not God, as I--I can only say--hoped, but is the Angel of Death. I'm leaving my original post as is, because A) it's not the first time I've been wrong, and it certainly won't be the last, and B) I think it brings up an important discussion about art and interpretation. Each of us appreciates and interprets what we, as individuals, need to receive when we take in art. When we put something out there for the public to consume, it becomes theirs to read into what they will and what they need.

Clearly I need to watch The Book Thief again. Better yet, I need to read the book!

Knowing the truth, hope still lives for me: I mean, if we can make Death appreciate life, then writing books is something we need to keep doing. Which is--I could be wrong, but I suspect--what the story is all about.


Writing has become my way to salvation--my way to myself. I can no more imagine my life without writing than I can imagine my life without my family, or without an appendage I've been accustomed to using my whole life.

For those of you local to southwest Michigan who have followed my journey as a writer and thought, "me too ... someday." That day is here.

Editor, full-time working writer, and friend, Ami Hendrickson, and I are here to support you, inspire you, light a fire under you—to help YOU make someday today.

We're holding a free, no obligation informational meeting to introduce you to our joint endeavor, #Write2TheEnd Writers Workshop™. On Wednesday, May 28, at 6:30 pm, in the old Masonic Temple, downtown St. Joe, at the corner of Elm & Main (420 Main St.), we will give you an overview of our syllabus and answer any questions you may have. In addition, you will leave with a small sample of what's to come; a mini-tool you can employ immediately to help move your writing from parked to forward.

I've overcome and come to own the permission and the soul pieces of writing for myself, and I believe I can help you do the same. I can assist with transformational writing, with essays, persuasive writing, blogging, and memoir. I can also help you see the value in being open to coaching, which I believe is one of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves. It’s difficult to be objective about our own creative endeavors. It’s easy to fall in love with our own words. Someone who truly has our best interests at heart—who believes in us—is invaluable in helping us see our goals to fruition. And seriously, Ami blew my mind when she introduced me to our first get-it-done tool. The tools, the HOW, the discipline, the next steps, that's what I need and I look forward to digging in to what Ami has to share, right beside you.

If you're thinking, "this summer just isn't the time," then perhaps you need to either give yourself permission to let go of your dreams of being a writer and move on to something else wonderful & fulfilling—but please do move on and actually do something else—or give yourself permission to take this course and see what you can accomplish right now. Chances are, if this opportunity appeals to you and you let it pass, someday will never come. The excuses only get better, believe me. 

But consider this: how many summers have gone by since you first dreamed of writing that great American novel or memoir or screenplay or stageplay, or since you’ve let a completed project fester in a drawer? This is the summer you could turn dreaming into finishing--into writing to The End--Your End. If you could do it yourself, you would have by now. You need a team, a tribe of like-minded individuals to help you succeed in the goals we share.

Is your life worth less than mine? Is it worth less than your mother's, your father's, than your child's? There are many ways to support and to parent and to care for others. Ami and I agree that caring for ourselves—that leading fulfilling, joy-filled lives—is an important way to care for those we love, and provides a beautiful example for our children, and the joyful lives we hope they grow to lead.  

Nowhere else will you get such a powerful combination of tools, know-how, practical and functional writing advice, combined with the coaching and inspiration that will help you overcome your writing hurdles. There's a reason Ami and I have found one another. We each fill the other's gaps in ways that can help turn YOU into a powerful FINISHER where your writing goals are concerned. 

We want this for you. We want this for you badly enough that we’re willing to give you back $100 at the end of the eight weeks when you meet the goal you set on the first night. But we can't want it more than you want it.

Have you seen the movie, The Book Thief? I strongly recommend it, particularly for writers.

"She was one of the few souls that made me wonder what is was to live"..."The only truth I truly know is that I am haunted by humans." –God, “Himself,” as a truly omniscient narrator in, The Book Thief.

If we are to believe the story, God's effort to know all life’s ups and downs lives in our suffering and comes alive in our writing. It is only through our words that He can know the sun on His face, the persistent ache of losing a loved one, the consuming bliss of loving, being loved and making love. God can only feel the wretchedness of love lost through our writing.

Our compulsion to write, then, serves God--or the Universe, or whatever you wish to call it—or not. Regardless of any higher power, through our story we gift others. 

God giveth and He taketh away. We suffer and we write: to help God know what it is to live and to help others navigate their lives through their struggles, to fully experience and relive and lend a frame to their joys. Or perhaps we write purely to entertain, but that has value, too.

I can't recall watching a movie that moved me as much as The Book Thief. Framed in the expected horrors and the unimagined gifts of Nazi Germany, it tells the story of a girl who experiences so much loss and death, but in whose writing humanity lives. The acting is as glorious as the writing, and they play together, haunting and true like a cello in the hands of a master.  

The Book Thief celebrates books and writing and it makes me wear the title of writer like a badge of honor, like a testament to a life lived. It makes me eager to keep doing both.

Liesel was meant to write for Max. You were meant to write for someone. I was meant to write for someone. There will always be those with more experience, more education, or someone loftier for whom the words appear to come more easily. That's fine. They will write for their someones. Don't let that keep you from writing for yours. Know that it is only through writing for ourselves that we can impact, transform, and truly haunt others in all the best ways.

The human experience is rife with layers and levels, with soaring catastrophe and bottomless joy. It is our duty as writers to paint our understanding for others—for humanity to experience through us. I hope you will consider completing your dream project with #Write2TheEnd this summer.

Join our Facebook group, even if you’re not local to southwest Michigan, for free writing tips, engaging discussion, and inspirational posts. And please, if you’re able, join us in person on Wednesday, May 28th. We look forward to welcoming you, and any writer friends you’d like to bring along.

Here’s to writing to The End. Your End. 
--Kim Jorgensen Gane, (c) 2014, all rights reserved


#Write2TheEnd Writers Workshop(TM) is a MuseInks / GANE Possible Production, Copyright (C) 2014, All Rights Reserved.

Join the Facebook group for writerly info & free writing tips:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/Write2TheEnd/
Check out the #Write2TheEnd Blog:  http://write2theend.blogspot.com

My Grandfather's Table is a story that flows between the nurturing, love, and nourishment that was freely given me as a child, against the shame and struggle of untold secrets.  I suppose it's fitting that my trip across country to attend a Laura Munson Haven Retreat would be a story of contrasts as well. 

The train ride out wasn't so bad, despite the fact that I was planted in coach for thirty plus hours. Thirty-four, to be exact. Which would prove nothing compared to the trip home, but that was only a whisper in my mind at the time. 

I arrived in Whitefish, Montana after midnight, and secured my rental car key from the little honor-system lock box inside the early twentieth century, sturdy and somehow familiar brick of the train station. I hit the unlock button on the keyfob, the lock button, and caught sight of lights waiting for me less than half a block away. I slogged, slipped and slid my way through the alleyway. The task was complicated by my heavy laptop backpack/purse and the tether of large suitcase and smaller matching carryon my seasoned business traveling husband had rigged up for me. 

I am not seasoned for business travel in the least, though here I was doing it. I was sweating beneath my layers, at the same time each intake of breath felt like menthol against my teeth as I hauled too much gear, alone, in the dark, in a strange town, to a waiting rental car, to drive myself about twenty minutes to a Super 8 in Kalispell that I prayed would be clean and ready for my arrival. And it was, despite Laura's disappointment at my interim location. "You're here to experience Whitefish," a town she promotes and features with tangible and deserving pride in her book, "This Is Not the Story You Think It Is." 

This whole trip was a Candid Camera exercise in giving up control and attempting to shift some focus to myself and my writing: a mammoth task. I've been a stay-at-home mom for over ten years. I have been the chief decision-maker, gluten-free, non-toxic food-chooser, taxi-driver of my long-sought son's destiny, for nearly every moment of his eleven years outside of my body. It took six years of loss, disappointment, surgeries, charting, research, self-teaching & self-deprivation to bring him to existence. Letting go, leaving his admirable, albeit vacillating, sweet positivity at the prospect of Mommy being away for eight days for the first time in his or my twenty-seven year old daughter's, and twenty-five year old stepdaughter's lives, at times felt like he was being ripped out of me again. 

I've been a mother my entire adult life. It's my job, my joy, my lifeblood. The only things I've been longer than I've been a mother, are a daughter, a sister, a singer, and a sometimes writer. I haven't even been a wife longer than I've been a mother, because my husband and I met when our girls were five and three. And I didn't figure out the writer piece of my puzzling ADD brain until I was forty-five years old.  When, as our oldest two embarked on their individual tentative forays into adulthood, taking one to New York and the other to Florida, for the first time, what was a necessary choice (a move across country, briefly to California) for our youngest didn't feel like a good choice for the older two. 

Once again, here I was torn. This trip and the two weeks leading up to it felt like I was conjoined twins trying to keep one foot in what's always been--motherhood, wife, safe, control, not claiming my soul as a writer and not holding myself accountable to finish a book--and the other foot reaching forward to Destiny, to what has niggled, and at times shouted at me ever since my fifth grade teacher encouraged my writing. Occasionally it was loud enough to actually get me to sit down at a keyboard and do the work; to write the vortex of words and stories that swirled within me. For a time the ADD would be quelled, my sometimes quiet, sometimes feverish release finally giving up it's hold on my mind. But doubt and self-criticism and responsibility and disdain for the preposity, the frivolity of the idea of my non-collegeate self being a *Writer*, would inevitably return to reign once again. 

And the fear: the thought of writing about what's kept my story locked within me has seized me with steel-tipped talons. I know it's precisely what I must do to release the power it's had over me since I was five years old. Five is also when I sang my first solo in church. I was a very small singer with a big voice who couldn't form the words to tell my parents of the sadness that singed my memories of an otherwise happy childhood, that tinted them with the lens of shame and knowing too much. I can't see my story through, and therefore move forward without doing something big, something uncomfortable and unfamiliar, something that makes my skin prickle and my hackles raise at the financial nonsense of it, even as the other part of me plants its feet, crosses its arms and says through gritted teeth, "You must."  Another moment she’s gentle; she places her hands over mine, looks into my eyes in the mirror and says, "You know what you must do, you just don't want to face it." Words I've said to a friend before. I had to be my own friend, when as usual I didn't fully express to anyone the conflict that plagued me about taking this trip. 

The Friday before the Sunday I was to leave, I placed my first real paycheck in eleven years, for a new part-time endeavor as director, communications and media for Upright Farms, an exciting startup, on my husband's desk. I hadn't told him it was coming. He got choked up. I did, too. We embraced. With my family's intervention and unyielding support, pride and encouragement at the front end, I paid for my own travel expenses along the way. It felt a little Thelma & Louise. Like having choices. Like driving off a cliff but having one of those giant cushions meeting me at the bottom. I know that more will come. I know that I have the skills, the talent, and that I can deliver. 

And after this retreat that is Haven, that was a haven for my writer's soul, after placing myself in Laura Munson's, her business manager, David's, the other brilliant, open, talented attendees', our very capable and supremely talented vegan chef, Emma Love's, and Walking Lightly Ranch's grower, Wes's, warm embrace--after challenging myself with stepping away from what's comfortable and pressing through what's scary as hell, after learning about silence (a condition I always feel compelled to fill with too many words), and brevity (something I may never conquer, but awareness is the first step), I know that I can deliver on this memoir, on the many books that, when I grant myself permission to write, can't spring from my fingertips to meet ruffled and bound pages fast enough. 

Patience is key for me. Knowing and plodding and doing it despite what does or doesn't make sense is essential. Between writing, work compiling my first GANE Possible Publication which I hope to release late spring, blessed work, an audition and BEING CAST in Listen to Your Mother (our performance is this Thursday in Valparaiso, Indiana), it's taken me all this time to fully process my reentry into reality--to process what this chapter really meant to my life, to my future, to my family. It felt like I was away for a month. It's crazy that after two welcomed spring-like days, Michigan pines drooping with a March snow weeks later, these words finally began to release about a journey that took me to where conifers climb the sky.  I found myself at home as I wandered the Flathead Valley of northwestern Montana. A wrong turn in the glorious sunshine took me around glistening Flathead Lake, her gentle ripples revealing pebbles beneath a bit of lapping shoreline particularly close to the road. My heart sighed. Lake is so comforting to this Midwest girl. Much like Michigan, the entire Flathead Valley around Whitefish, Montana, is full of them.

I was eventually brave enough to set out to Glacier National Park, though not brave enough to walk alone into the woods.  There were a couple of cars, and two cross-country skiers eventually met me back at my car, but the creak of soaring cedars and icicles thawing kept me close to the lodge and to Lake McDonald, itself. I took a walk around, listened to timeless echoes of children playing among the now empty cabins, jumping off the dock into a lake that was currently hidden by snow and watched over by me and a lone, tilting, wordless snowman. I forced myself to breathe, to take it in, to revel in my new tentative and unfamiliar moments of freedom.  And silence.

Safely behind the wheel again, I drove to Whitefish, and enjoyed a delectable sushi dinner at Wasabi, where a beautifully framed review Laura wrote, watches over their entrance like a proud momma.  She should be proud.  Whitefish is a wonderful, throwback little town.  It’s people are warm, Huckleberries are everything they’re preported to be, and it’s home to warm gluten-free buckwheat crepes, at the crêperies, where I enjoyed them stuffed with smoked salmon and dill havarti, not once, but twice.  The second time a deserved bonus and a hearty, protein rich meal when my train was delayed from its morning departure.  I wouldn’t know until much later how fortunate I was to have enjoyed it. 

Despite the delay, which was ruled by a less than perfect $#!+storm of Montana's version of "blizzard,” 40-car freighter derailment and an avalanche in Glacier National Park all of which botched up all manner of travel from points west to Seattle, I made it home. Despite feeling more like livestock than passenger on an Empire Builder that had already traversed the frozen miles of tundra between Chicago and Shelby, Montana, where laden buses met from all points west to finally board--meaning things like the barely tolerable hygiene (sorta like camping clean, only worse) of a train on the way out crumbled to filth, empty soap dispensers, and insufficient food stores--I crept closer to Chicago, where my bleary-eyed son and coffee-fueled husband would collect me at 4:30 am, instead of 4 pm the day before, I am here.  

My two lunches in the dining car provided a chance to sit and talk with other passengers without guilt, without feeling like I was *supposed* to be writing on this train--a task which proved more difficult on the ride back. The combined lurching and noise induced a rare motion headache despite adopting earplugs as part of my permanent ensemble by around Fargo.

Even so, because of every bit of it, I am perhaps more here than I've ever been in my life. I couldn't wait to sleep in my own bed. I couldn't wait to make love to my husband. I couldn't wait to hug my son again and again, to talk to my daughters on the phone. 

My husband's prolific home cooking greeted me, leftover and spilling from the fridge.  He made crock-pot(?!) chicken into soup, pork BBQ, another grilled chicken and then turkey meatloaf upon my return.  Although I'm sure they didn't eat as many vegetables as I did, thanks to Emma Love, and as suspected they both had mild colds when I got home, they too survived and grew even closer. And I am reassured that one thing they wouldn’t do if left to their own devices for too long again (like when I'm on a book tour someday) is starve. It all tasted so much better than cardboard gluten-free crackers and tinned emergency meat made into chicken salad from mayonnaise, mustard and relish packets on a grimy, insufficiently stocked train. But even that tasted good at the time.

The sun, when it manages to shine this spring, is brighter. The day is new.  

Thank you, Amtrak, for bringing me home. I am better for having made this trek. Though if I am brave enough to revisit your mode in the future, or brave enough to apply for a do-over via #AmtrakResidency (they would’t be interested in my small potatoes—they’re looking for much bigger fish), which I still believe has legs, a sleeper car will be involved. I will not miss not sleeping among the roughnecks. Nor will I miss trying to find a non-existent soft spot for my hips, over a bar my coat can't possibly cushion between two coach seats. This warrior MommaWriter is too damn seasoned, now too worldly a "business traveler" for that nonsense, ever again.

What about you? Always dreamed of writing on a train? Did you? Would you apply for an #AmtrakResidency??  Do tell me about it in the comments!


Yours in Wellness Always,
--Kim Jorgensen Gane, (c) 2014, all rights reserved


I'm participating in a Blog Hop with Laura next week with a new post, but couldn't let another moment pass without acknowledging everything the experience with her in Montana has meant to me. So many brave, beautiful hearts!

Dear Sheryl (I can call you Sheryl, right?):

You were a keynote speaker at BlogHer ’13.  You celebrated the influence and the power bloggers have.  We cheered for you.  You asked us what we could do if we weren’t afraid.  You impacted the words and homes of over 4000 women bloggers in attendance and countless others who listened after, now that we're talking about whether or not to refer to girls as bossy. (I'm not into banning, however. I'm more for empowering. I'm in the #OwnBossy camp, myself--why fight a battle we can't win? Let's reframe the word, and grow girls who know how to lead effectively.)

Yet just a few short months later, you’re using your Facebook muscle and multitudinous mulah to pi$$ on bloggers by making it very difficult to get traffic to our posts—many of us for whom not a penny is made from blogging.

I don’t get it.

You have our attention.  But I’m afraid it’s not in a good way. I mean, when is enough, enough?

I’m glad I'm a procrastinator and didn't immediately buy your book in the post BlogHer '13 glow.

My love affair with Social Media began in earnest when I was living in San Diego.  Three time-zones and an entire country separated me from my daughters, my mother, my friends, my posse.  Facebook was all I had when on many days I felt as though I lived in a foreign country.  I was the too large, too short, not blond enough Midwestern Interloper who often didn't garner enough interest for people to remember my name, or that we'd met before.

Enter Twitter: Facebook's racier, hipper, #twerkier cousin, who it turns out a) teaches a writer-type to be more judicious with her words, and b) much more quickly breeds (do it organically) contacts, promotes fantastic writing and business tools, promotes opportunities for learning, and promotes one another. But Twitter isn't known for conversion rates, that is, converting from delivering free information to putting dollar$ in your pocket.

And then there's Google+.  Social Media powerhouses like Guy Kawasaki, also a BlogHer ’13 keynote speaker, and the woman behind the man, Peg Fitzpatrick, encourage folks to use the platform, and thus it looks more and more appealing all the time.  Here's the rub: like it or not, Google is the algorithm ruler of Internet Kingdom, and if you wish to have any kind of a presence, be any more than a microblip on the a$$ of humanity, have any kind of influence--staying power--apparently this is something equally, if not more, necessary.  Yeah, yeah…we’re grudgingly on board.  Maybe soon to be gratefully so, with the introduction of friends, Lisa L. Flowers' & April Welch's, Google+ Newbie Group, where your questions are actually answered. You might want to ask to join.

You know where I mentioned INcome?  Despite the odd day when I may spend as many as 16 hours at my computer, I haven't actually found a way to make income happen on any of those magical pathways to...all I'm NOT accomplishing.  I’ve had a couple posts picked up by Yahoo!—and made four whole dollars.  I need balance in my life.  It’s time to work smarter. Because it turns out actually BE-ing obsessively on social media doesn't put ca$h in your pocket unless you're willing to sell your (soul) web space to the devil, or you agree to write meaningless words on topics that don't matter about companies with deep pockets that lack any manner of good social intentions. 

I haven't yet mentioned Pinterest, but since it's where I share all my favorite gluten free and GANE Empowered Wellness: GANE Possible resources, including recipes, brands and products, it more than earns mentioning.  Again, however, I've yet to turn all that pinning into income for Momma to help pay for expensive gluten free grub for my growing tween. Good gluten-free gravy, what in the world will I do when he does meet teenagerhood?!  

So, Facebook, fan of yours though I was, I need to start EMPLOYING all the articles I've read and teleseminars I’ve watched.  I need to maintain some sort of Social Media Free Zone.  I need to actually produce, choose one of my umpteen projects, finish a book, APE it, or query and SUBMIT, rather than merely hope someone Stumbles upon me (SO not ready to go there).

I hope you understand.  And I hope you will still be there for me, ready to help me pass the time waiting for my kid in line at school, or when I need a good laugh, or when I miss my cyber friends too much.  We'll still hang out.  But my smart phone will spend less time in my hands. They'll be too busy typing words that matter.

So, all those ad$ you’ve schnockered businesses into paying for?  That’s not where I’ll do my shopping, thank you very much, or ever have quite frankly, which might actually explain a lot.  I’ll likely do that on Pinterest, or most habitually via a Google search, where a much higher conversion to dollars spent actually occurs--because I'm looking for it! And maybe that will prove true for image-driven Google+, too. 

I, and many of my multitude$ of #MidlifeBlvd, highly-influential-demographic blogger friend$, have all but abandoned our pages, and many of us will not PAY Facebook to sponsor, boost or otherwise promote our posts.  You have made more than enough money from all the ads (for singles? I’m married.  To play GAMES?!  Who has time?) we can’t avoid.

And most of all, I require human, face-to-face interaction like I require air to breathe.  I'll teach humans and small businesses that deserve a shot how to use and derive benefit from social media all day long, but to me there is no substitute for doing that in a way that allows me to look them in the eye, maybe even a la Google Hangout one day soon.

Which is why my website saw an overhaul in the first quarter of 2014, when West Coast Posse—my effort to make a dent in the B.S. gang$ta attitude toward women that is so disturbingly prevalent in popular and social media—became GANEPossible.com.  

My focus is positive. It's on my local community, which I love so much that my family and I came back to Michigan after being in San Diego just less than two years (even though it’s friggin’ freezing again right now!).  I will do community outreach, I'll speak, and I’ll host healthy cooking demonstrations.  I feel we are on the cusp of some very important wellness messages spilling over, and that's a difference I hope to promulgate. I’ll be networking with other businesses both in person and online to achieve that end. I've adjusted and readjusted my strategy, and am working hard to complete my first book which I hope to have published at the beginning of May 2014. 

My belief is that small businesses need to band together.  We need to collaborate, share with and promote the gifts we all possess--we need to support one another.  We are so much more powerful together than we are on our own.  I know this from my beautiful Midlife Boulevard friends.  I know this from when my husband and I owned our restaurant and I co-created the Benton Harbor Marketing Initiative (BHMI) among downtown Benton Harbor, Michigan, businesses, back around the turn of the century—and look at what Benton Harbor has become since!  

Patience and supporting one another is how we will survive and thrive, despite what the government, the economy, healthcare or Crackbook decides to do, TYVM.  I am no longer afraid.  And I will be an influencer.  I hope you’ll get back on board, Sheryl, and stop making life so hard for the bloggy buddies we almost were in 2013.  

A la Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, maybe we will soon hold up our glittering bags full of time and better-invested effort and say, “Big mistake.  BIG!”

I’m so sorry, but I have a feeling that in the end, 2014 might hurt just a little for ya.

Signed,

--Kim Jorgensen Gane of
GANEPossible.com

I wrote an end of the year wrap up post similar to the one I wrote last year, but it didn't feel honest, sincere or meaningful.  It actually felt a lot like recycling, so I didn't publish it.  

What is honest?  FEAR:  I’m scared $#!+less, every stinking day.

So when, thanks to blogging buddy, Blogger Idol 2013, THE Lois Alter Mark, whom I intend to meet IRL in 2014, I discovered the book, “Some Nerve: Lessons Learned While Becoming Brave,”  

The stakes were so, so very high, that I became so, so very careful.  Afraid to fail, but just as afraid to succeed.  Certainly afraid to put myself out there to be judged, and yet I yearned for the accolades again.  I yearned not to be ignored and stigmatized as a single mom.  I didn't feel welcome in the church I'd grown up singing in.  In fact I was stricken from the membership rolls because I wasn't tithing.  Tithing?!  I had to return bottles and cans from my dad's office for the deposit to buy bread and milk and eggs to feed my child!  One heaping paper bagful was $4, give or take ten cents.

Life was hard.  Life was a state of constant fear.  And I began to believe that would be my reality forever.  Even after I married, it still proved our reality, because together we seemed to suck the joy out of everything.  Life was so hard as we worked to recover from our respective single parenting and divorce, we knew only hard and we kept living it.  I see it in our daughters still sometimes, which is what makes me ache to prove to them, to prove to my husband that life can be joy-filled.  Not easy necessarily, but that a time will come when we can relax and ENJOY all our hard work.  Maybe just a little?

That's been our story:  Hard.  Work.  Plodding.  It's what has defined us.  But it hasn't served us, and it sure as hell hasn't made us rich--the harder we work, the more we seem to struggle.  Whatever we've each "done wrong" which determined that we don't deserve joy and happiness is what we've allowed to define us.  That's been our story.  Single mother, divorced father, job losers, failed restaurateurs....  ENOUGH!  I think this is the year that we will choose how we define ourselves.  At least I intend to!

Patty has a chapter in her book about surfing the Great Lakes.  I don't think it's an accident that it was my hometown, St. Joseph, where she took such a plunge.  In winter!  She says, "Michigan folks must be made of heartier stuff than New Yorkers."  While I don't know about that, I do know we are hearty, indeed.  We take a lickin' and keep on tickin'.  We're right smack in the middle of one of the longest, coldest winters in decades.  If I could see that lake through the blizzard we’re currently weathering, I wouldn’t be able to imagine for a moment surfing it.  But as Erica said from Third Coast Surf Shop, where Patty & Patrick rented their surfboard, "I'm from here, I can surf in the summer."  

Patty asked me on Facebook whether I really live in St. Joseph.  I proudly display a picture by Mark Parren of our little red-roofed light house as one of my cover photos.  But Patty probably didn't recognize it because it was likely encased in a feet-, not inches-, thick sarcophagus of glacial ice at that time of year.  So, yeah.  I've been on a quest to overcome my fear of success as well as my fear of failure over the last two years, but I don't feel the need to surf Lake Michigan in winter to prove it.  I sure as hell, however, want to meet the woman who did and lived to write about it!

Patty quotes her surfing coach, Patrick, as saying, “Strength and courage has always been there, you're just uncovering it in different ways."

I think strength and courage can hide behind hard work.  Taking a licking and perseverance doesn't equate to happiness and fulfillment.  And in 2013 it barely equated to food on the table.  I make an effort to regularly be positive, or I keep my fingers to myself.  There’s enough negativity among social media outlets.  But that’s the truth.  As wonderful as it was in many ways for me personally, 2013 was our scariest year yet financially.

I have to admit #SomeNerve has made me feel a little feisty, a little defensive perhaps about my choices over the last two years.  Patty describes Barry's near-death experience on a plane.  This makes me think of our near death financially, which has spurred in me an "ef-it" attitude about what I choose to do to contribute to my family.  I simply can't abide the idea of waiting tables or tending bar or being someone's administrative assistant.  Been there, done all those things.  

Maybe some would say I've had a responsibility to do those things to bring in cash--that I should have done whatever it took to pay the bills, but my husband was already doing that.  We can't both be miserable and unfulfilled and disbelieving, what then would that do to our son?  And maybe I can have an influence on his actions and desire toward living a fulfilled life rather than just plodding through—he has taken up photography, and I think I might have inspired that just a little.  And I've felt a deep calling to do something very different from what I’ve done that didn’t fulfill me in the past.  

Fear of death is a big one for many people, but I have longevity in my genes with a grandpa who lived to be 100 years old.  Patty’s book has inspired me to want to work harder not to screw that up.  And if I have half my life left to look forward to, I want to make the most of it, and I want to help influence the happiness of others.  The saying, Life is Too Short...not to grab every moment.  Yet, while we're raising kids, we spend many of those years in a kind of standby mode.  We hover and we put all our energy into our children, and often very little into ourselves. 

When I look back on my life, much like someone having a near death experience might, I can see that all the pieces have come together in this moment.  I can pull together all my life experience to have an impact on others, and that's what I want to do with the second half of my life.  That's the beauty of growing older:  Perspective.  Hindsight.  That's what I hope to take advantage of, and what I’ve been diligently self-teaching over the last two years.  

I said to Patty the other night as we were Facebook chatting, that overcoming fear is the path I've been on for the last two years, and her book articulates it so beautifully. Wouldn't it be wonderful to help people to be brave well before they reach midlife? Why does it take so many of us so long? I haven't answered that question yet. But I keep trying. We allow so many other things to define us, I suppose, maybe this is when we finally begin to seek to define ourselves. But why the hell can't we be nurtured and encouraged to do that all our lives?  Why isn't happiness and fulfillment always reason enough to do or to choose something?

Maybe it's because I've already been a mom for 27 years by the end of this month, but I've stood by long enough.  Now I wish to put as much energy into raising myself and others up as I have and will continue to spend, raising my kids.  And just as my husband continues to plod and to work, I will continue to seek that summit.  Which of us will get there first?  I hope it's me, so I can show him the light.

Previously West Coast Posse was largely directed at women.  You’ll note that I’m kind of in the middle of an overhaul here, and I've seen so many men, my own husband included, defeated and in pain over the last several years of economic uncertainty and job loss, that I feel compelled to bring everyone with me along on this glorious ride of self-discovery & fulfillment.  And I believe deeply that my grandfather's influence, his way of embracing people and life and food and gathering and celebrating every moment, can be key in seeing that to fruition.  I hope you’ll see evidence of that as my “GANE Empowered Wellness: GANE Possible” section develops.  That will be my #SomeNerve Challenge, by the way:  finishing that book (don’t worry, Bluebirds is still developing its wings), living it, promoting it, speaking about it, fully embracing the philosophy of MORE, doing cooking demonstrations (some together!) and teaching others to embrace MORE in 2014.  And I don’t think it’s an accident that my husband loved feeding people when we owned our restaurant—loved feeding the guys in the firehouse—or that we’ve since learned to do it in ways that help us maintain wellness, despite the stress we’ve been under.

The world needs MORE of us to feel happy and fulfilled--and you matter!  Yes, I'm talking to you!  If my path, if our path to get there can influence yours in a positive way, even when it’s bumpy, even when it’s scary, even when a positive attitude is at its most difficult to reach, I hope you'll hold on tight and come along for the ride.  

This time next year, when I’m creeping up on 49, I know the hindsight will be worth it!


This is posted as part of a Blog Hop over at Midlife Boulevard.  Our topic was: There's Nothing Wrong with Aging.

If politics remains a taboo topic in polite conversation, then racism in politics represents the equivalent of suppression, of something whispered behind closed doors in the dim light of one flickering candle.

I must believe an overwhelming majority exists today versus the brave few who, more than one hundred years ago, risked their lives to hide slaves under their floors.  If I didn’t, I couldn't live in this America, amid an undercurrent I can’t escape.  I think about it daily, and only more so during the last several weeks of looming and actual government shutdown.  Grateful for our momentary reprieve, I'm keenly aware that if we allow it, our country will soon be held hostage by insipid and racially motivated bipartisanship all over again.

We’ve come too far to watch our neighbors get away with not-so-thinly-veiled racism that has occupied the news over the last several years, certainly that which cloaked the recent government shutdown.  It isn’t acceptable in polite society, or in any society.  We are all human beings who must coexist on this planet.  I guess this is where Enlightened Middle Mom falls to the liberal side of things.  I don’t care what consensual adults do with one another in their bedrooms.  I want everyone who inhabits this earth to feel like they have as much right as I do to be here, certainly the same opportunity to be a school teacher, police officer or even president.  The hardworking middle deserves to be rewarded every bit as much as the entitled few.

My fear is that we haven’t seen anything yet.  If we continue to rubber-stamp this attitude, I fear a woman president will be subject to even more hatred and division than we’ve seen over President Obama’s terms thus far.  I saw hate delivered to the beautiful and deserving Nina Davuluri, as she was crowned Miss America.  I saw loathing and rape threats thrust at Lindy West, recipient of the Women’s Media Center’s Social Media Award in New York this month, because:

Freedom of speech extends to everyone, even those in possession of phones with higher IQs than their own.  The freedom to write about what we feel, to start and contribute to important conversations is an American constitution on which I place tremendous value.  And it’s more accessible than ever to anyone and everyone with a computer or a phone.  But allowing discrimination and hatred toward blacks, toward homosexuals, toward women of all kinds to pass without calling it out, is deeply troubling.  It’s no different than bullying that goes unchecked on the no-man’s-land of playgrounds and social media screens across America.  Just as we must encourage our children to stand up for victims when they witness bullying, to prompt the vast majority of others who find themselves ambivalent in that middle place to tug on a shirtsleeve and say, “Hey, not cool, man.  Let’s go,” we must set an example that calls out those who speak racism and hate, even when they do so in code or in microblog.  

Racism is something we all must check within ourselves.  Depending upon our upbringing or on the region in which we’re raised, conquering our fear and inherent tendencies toward racism or hatred might be nonexistent or it might take great effort.  It is an endeavor worthy of our sincerest efforts, more than perhaps any other.  

Not talking about what we’ve witnessed over the last several years won't get us anywhere.  Our silence won't help the future of minorities and women in politics.  Platitudes won’t tell the Tea Party that their thinly veiled propaganda absolutely will not be tolerated come the next round of budget votes.  We’ve bought a paltry few weeks before we once again endure the same threat to our economy and our place in the world.  

Those of us in the Enlightened Middle Majority might not be perfect, we might be works in progress where our own attitudes and mores are concerned, but we need to trust our inner voices and rumble a lot louder if we hope to further progress.  We can't keep holding our breaths waiting for the next guy to stop the ruckus.  Together with the likes of Senator John McCain, the “Sister Senators” and the rest of the bipartisan coalition that banded together in the interest of ever elusive progress, it will be up to the moderates, our voices and our midterm votes to prevent future economic catastrophes like the recent shutdown we witnessed.  I don’t know about your family, but mine can’t take much more irrepressible division.  

We have it on good authority there are more of us who have had enough than there are of them. 

I began my freshman year of high school as a girl from a seemingly solid Midwestern family who regularly sang in church, and ended it as a girl whose parents were divorced, who no longer attended church, or believed in anything.  I was instantly re-imagined from protestant good girl to hapless promiscuous girl.  So it came as no surprise when I was barely out of teenagerhood, and I suddenly had to reinvent myself as a single mom.  Later on, I met the man who would become my husband and my daughter’s daddy, and then I had to learn to co-parent, and to be a step-mom.  Some years later, my husband wanted to open a restaurant, and I became a restaurateur, and too soon a solo-restaurateur, when he accepted a job offer in his field that took him on the road for much of most weeks.

Then a new reinvention came after we closed our restaurant and I became a somewhat (OK, maybe radically) possessed researcher of holistic healing which helped me to overcome my infertility and finally have the baby I’d longed six years for.  That success brought about another reinvention when I had to learn how to parent teenagers and a high needs infant at the same time.  All my thinking had to shift when I had to parent that infant in very different ways than I’d parented my girls.

Reinvention isn’t anything new in my life, though its process never occurred to me until recently with the ultimate reinvention:  Midlife Crisis.

Many of those previous reinventions occurred as reactions to the actions of others or to situations.  They didn’t happen from a place of self-discovery, and they weren’t in the least motivated by any sense of seeking, or of finding myself.

Looking inward began when we moved across the entire country from both of our daughters, and from any of the female support system I’d enjoyed and relied upon for much of my adult life.  Moving from Michigan to California wasn’t anything I ever imagined I’d do, and it wasn’t anything I wanted to do.  I pouted and I wallowed that first year away.  I was so desperately alone, and because transition of any kind isn’t easy for me, my brain got confused and I forgot how to function.  My son got sick, and I couldn’t remember what to do to make him well.  I couldn’t grasp the brands of my favorite supplements, foods, any semblance of an action plan wherein I could see myself ever feeling normal again. 

I was completely mired in this dull, marine layer version of my life.  

I had no confidence, I knew no one, and no one seemed to care to get to know me.  I couldn’t fathom what I might tell anyone about myself anyway, because I lacked any identity there, or frankly anywhere.

My marriage was at its most difficult point ever, I disliked myself and my husband, and I was barely worthwhile as a mother to my son, let alone as a human being in the world.  When I couldn’t stand myself any longer, I began to think about reinvention from within.

No one knew me in California.  This was my chance to become anything I wanted to become.  There were no labels, there was no family history to define me, and there certainly were no expectations, never mind the fact that absolutely no one cared or gave me a thought anyway—they were too mired in their own version of survival, too stuck in their own traffic.  

How did I want to be remembered, and how did I want to impact the future for my children beyond their day-to-day care and feeding?  I could no longer survive as that person who put herself down and put herself last and who disbelieved in herself, and my deepest fear was that my husband and I wouldn’t survive at all. 

I wanted to go back to Michigan, but I didn’t want to do it without him.  I didn’t have a choice.  I had to make a life for myself in California.  I didn’t have many friends, so I needed to be my friend, and I hoped that would allow me to once again be my husband’s.  

For me, the answer was and remains writing. 

When your soul is that of a writer who isn’t writing, the stories are swimming in your head, whether you write them down or not.  You feel like a crazy person.  You talk to yourself, you talk to your dogs; you can’t get your bearing.  Even if the lake or the ocean is always west, you get off on the wrong exit on the freeway because your mind is cluttered with all the stories--you forget to pick up your kid, or you forget to clean dog puke off the carpet.   

I seem to have lost my funny from when I first began blogging, in part because a dual midlife crisis while raising a young boy is hard, but also because I’m not as afflicted with self-diagnosed ADD anymore, so I simply don’t screw up as much.  I’m focused and I’m driven.  I have a purpose and I have goals.  The stories don’t fester in my head as much, because they’re alive and breathing on my computer screen.  I wish my sense of humor wasn’t the thing I had to give up…but perhaps when life gets a bit easier, I’ll find it again.  And even though life still isn't easy, I feel more fulfilled and more content within myself than ever before.

Tell me in the comments, where are you on your path to being your own best friend?

And actually there is something missing, and has been for over ten years...an income stream.  Not that I would trade a moment of the last ten years of being *just* a stay at home mom to the delightful, imaginative, remarkable boy it took six long years to brew, but I've definitely missed working and contributing a paycheck to our household--financial independence, choices, etc.  It's also put a tremendous amount of pressure on my poor husband. It's miraculous, in fact, that despite two job losses in the last seven years, he's managed to keep us going all this time, though it hasn't been without great cost. 

What a bum I've been!

There goes that Momma-guilt machine again, dammit!

We moms seem to be damned if we do and damned if we don't.  The incessant demands of the every-day life of the Stay At Home Mom leave us weary; fulfilled to a degree, but in ways that are so far removed from professional, we're sometimes left feeling broken and like the huge holes in our resumes have closed any portal to job fulfillment that may have once been open.  This leaves many of us paralyzed with fear that prevents any attempt to enter the workforce ever again.  

I've been reminded recently of all that we've overcome and all the *work* I have done over the last sixteen years, and things have happened since my last post to compel me to share them, and to create a business out of it, resume gap and Wage Gap be-damned! 

Scary stuff!

I haven't been a businesswoman since we closed our restaurant in 2001, and obviously that didn't exactly leave me feeling like I was a successful one.  I haven't been much of anything besides a tired, Warrior Mom who managed to heal her own infertility naturally, and then rescued her infant son from a probable future of profound neurological deficit, and then spent the next years of his life fixing the damage he'd incurred and discovering how in the world to help him become the best version of himself he can possibly be. 

Nah, I haven't done a damn thing. 

I couldn't have done any of it without the undying support and faith from my husband.  Sometimes he was just holding on tight and going along for the ride, but I certainly wouldn't be here without him.  It was just Father's Day and his birthday was yesterday, so I feel compelled to celebrate him--though it isn't nearly enough.  He took our son to the movies this weekend to allow me to make progress on the launch of my new program, GANE Possible: RECLAIM Your Fertility.  This will hopefully allow me to pass along everything I've learned in the last sixteen years and truly make a difference in our lives, by making a profound difference in the lives of others, and perhaps even someday in the world.

I must also thank Alissa Sheftic of Sheftic Communications & Imagery.  She not only did a beautiful job editing the great picture my husband (he was just learning the ins and outs of the new professional camera he'd procured) took of me around midnight in our dimly lit kitchen, but she spent a good chuck of time and effort to help me align my efforts, and to better develop my branding.  I've still got a ways to go and look forward to more assistance from her, but this evolution couldn't have happened without her amazingly wise and capable advice.  Anyone with similar goals would benefit fantastically from employing the services of her new company.

And finally, through the amazing coaching and instruction of Nicola Bird of JigsawBox, I was able to finally recognize her amazing education portal tool as the answer it is to the question, HOW can I possibly accomplish what I hoped to accomplish in 2013, beyond simply publishing a book that you read (maybe) and set aside, and to do it now?  

It's all been part of the process of self-discovery, of learning who I am, who I hope to become, and how I hope to change the world, or at least my small piece of it, for the better.  I believe that's what 2013 is all about: not accepting the status quo, using your innate gifts to better your own life by bettering the lives of others, and empowering yourself to build the future you desire.  Whether or not you believe the Wage Gap is a misrepresentation, as most media buzz words are, it doesn't matter if you put yourself in the driver's seat.

One thing I've learned so far this year, without a doubt...absolutely anything is POSSIBLE...if you only believe it, reach out, take action, and just do it!