My son will begin middle school this year at the middle school I attended. It’s the same middle school my brother, my eldest daughter, and two of my nieces attended. My son will likely be a fourth generation graduate of St. Joseph High School. And it is on that beautifully renovated and fully updated stage where I, and some 160 others from the 1950s through the 90s, will return this weekend for our ENCORE Variety Show to benefit the St. Joseph Public Schools Foundation. I’m among the very proud alumni of a school system in which I staunchly believe, and for which I am a proud advocate.

I haven’t sung in ages except for the occasional family wedding or funeral and alcohol-infused Karaoke. I’m mortified each time I recall when Jeff and I attempted to sing Islands in The Stream after neither of us had even heard the song since we'd rehearsed sufficiently and performed it with a band backing us for Showtime thirty years ago. There’s a reason neither of us volunteered to revive that performance for ENCORE. If you saw Sunday’s Herald Palladium, you are as excited as I am that Jeff is appropriately reviving a comedy skit, The Old Prospectors. He performed it back in the 80s with Jim Bartalone, and will again, hopefully to a welcoming and supportive full house.

Though he didn't graduate, Robin Williams was classically trained at Juilliard. Times are hard and cuts are prevalent for performing arts programs in schools across the country. Whether or not we shine brightly or fizzle hopelessly on our old stage this Friday and Saturday, it’s only a small piece of what this week means. It’s about supporting the future of St. Joseph Public Schools. It’s about continuing to provide programs that are sometimes the only lifeline for kids who desperately need to succeed and to shine and to have control of something when they often have so little control over what happens in their young lives.   

2014 has been a turning point for me. I wanted to stop being angry. I wanted more, so I decided, and I got it. I put myself “out there,” owning the title of Writer. In the winter, I took a train to Montana to attend a writers’ retreat. In the spring, I auditioned and won a spot reading one of my pieces for Listen to Your Mother in one of thirty-two shows across the US. This summer is almost over, and I am at the editing phase after completing a draft of my first GANE Possible Publication for release late this fall. I accomplished that through the #Write2TheEnd program I co-facilitate with my friend and fellow writer, Ami Hendrickson. We can’t wait to begin our fall session September 15th.  We hope you’ll join us and claim the title of Writer for yourself if that’s something you’ve always wanted to do. In 2015 I plan to learn to play the guitar my husband bought me over a year ago.

The idea is to stop dreaming, stop worrying about failure, and start doing. A foundation of my #MOREin2014 philosophy includes going back to my roots, to the things I enjoyed when I was young; before poor choices, responsibility, jobs, family, kids, new friends, or a spouse with different interests allowed me, little-by-little, to push my passions aside. Before I knew it, I'd allowed myself to make the choice to stop doing what I once loved: singing.

I can’t wait to grace my home stage with old friends and fellow alumni. The idea is thrilling. It’s exhilarating. And I especially can’t wait to honor the many years of Showtime and the teachers who made the spotlight, writing, comedy, music, and drama possible for generations of kids who desperately need the outlet and pure joy performing was and will be again. Whether it’s with us or at us, take time out to laugh this weekend, and do it while supporting a great school. 

Tickets are available online or in person at Edgewater Bank at the corner of Broad and Main streets. Get yours today! 

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!

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.