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GANE Insight: Kim Jorgensen Gane's Blog

I'm no longer directionally challenged--I have a clear vision to celebrate #MOREin2014 via GANEPossible.com. Preempting my novel in progress, Bluebirds, I'm very close to releasing my first GANE Possible publication (prescriptive "Dr. Mom" nonfiction), Beating the Statistics: A Mother's Quest to Reclaim Fertility, Halt Autism & Help Her Child Grow From Behavior Failure to Behavior Success. I'm also working on completing my memoir, My Grandfather's Table: Learning to Forgive Myself First.

It took a lifetime to get here. This blog documents my quest to self-fulfillment through my writing, and ultimately to shifting my focus to Beating the Statistics & My Grandfather's Table and speaking about them. They are the wellness and the memoir parts of my journey that had to be told, so that Bluebirds can one day be the meaningful, but fictional *story* it aspires to be.

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My Cup is Full with Author Friends: Books I've Loved, My To-Read List & a Giveaway!

4/5/2015

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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. 

Which brings me to the topic of the first book on my to-read list, Galit Breen's, "Kindness Wins."   
From Amazon: When freelance writer Galit Breen's kids hinted that they'd like to post, tweet, and share photos on Instagram, Breen took a look at social media as a mom and as a teacher and quickly realized that there's a ridiculous amount of kindness terrain to teach and explain to kids―and some adults―before letting them loose online. So she took to her pen and wrote a how-to book for parents who are tackling this issue with their kids.
I have a twelve-year-old boy who suddenly thinks he's made of stuff that warrants his own Instagram account. I'm listening!

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. 
From Amazon: Listen to Your Mother is a fantastic awakening of why our mothers are important, taking readers on a journey through motherhood in all of its complexity, diversity, and humor. Based on the sensational national performance movement, Listen to Your Mothershowcases the experiences of ordinary people of all racial, gender, and age backgrounds, from every corner of the country. This collection of essays celebrates and validates what it means to be a mother today, with honesty and candor that is arrestingly stimulating and refreshing.
If you're in or near St. Joseph, Michigan on Saturday, May 9th, our adorable little indie book store, Forever Books, will be on hand selling these at our inaugural Listen to Your Mother: Southwest Michigan show.  
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. 
From Amazon: “A compelling story of everyday courage” (Elizabeth Gilbert).
Inspired and inspiring, this book draws on Anker’s interviews with teachers, therapists, coaches, and clergy to convey both practical advice and profound wisdom. Through her own journey and the stories of others, she conveys with grace and infectious exhilaration the most vital lesson of all: Fear isn’t the end point to life, but the point of entry.
You have to read it for Chapter 7 alone, in which Patty describes her adventure of surfing for the first time on Lake Michigan, off the soft white sandy shores of Silver Beach in my hometown. In the middle of WINTER!!! While I don't feel the need to try surfing in winter myself, there's abundant wisdom worthy of revisiting here.
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!
From Amazon: In this touching and informative memoir about foraging for food in New York City, Ava Chin finds sustenance...and so much more.

Urban foraging is the new frontier of foraging for foods, and it's all about eating better, healthier, and more sustainably, no matter where you live. Time named foraging the "latest obsession of haute cuisine," but the quest to connect with food and nature is timeless and universal.

Ava Chin, aka the "Urban Forager," is an experienced master of the quest. Raised in Queens, New York, by a single mother and loving Chinese grandparents, Chin takes off on an emotional journey to make sense of her family ties and romantic failures when her beloved grandmother becomes seriously ill. She retreats into the urban wilds, where parks and backyards provide not only rare and delicious edible plants, but a wellspring of wisdom.
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. 
From Amazon: By the time Laura Munson had turned 40, her life was not how she thought it would turn out. Career success had eluded her; her beloved father was no longer around to be her biggest cheerleader; and her husband wanted out of their marriage. 

Poignant, wise, and often exceedingly funny, this is the moment-by- moment memoir of a woman who decided to let go-in the midst of the emotional equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane. It recounts what happened as Munson set out on her spiritual journey-and provides raw, powerful inspiration to anyone searching for peace in an utterly unpredictable world.
Before finding a publisher for This is Not the Story You Think It Is, Laura had written fourteen novels. Her's is the story of persistence and resilience. 
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.
From Amazon: A riveting literary debut about the cost of keeping quiet

Amy Jo Burns grew up in Mercury, Pennsylvania, an industrial town humbled by the steel collapse of the 1980s. Instead of the construction booms and twelve-hour shifts her parents’ generation had known, the Mercury Amy Jo knew was marred by empty houses, old strip mines, and vacant lots. It wasn’t quite a ghost town—only because many people had no choice but to stay.
 
The year Burns turned ten, this sleepy town suddenly woke up. Howard Lotte, its beloved piano teacher, was accused of sexually assaulting his female students. Among the countless girls questioned, only seven came forward. For telling the truth, the town ostracized these girls and accused them of trying to smear a good man’s reputation. As for the remaining girls—well, they were smarter. They lied. Burns was one of them.

And finally, for the Giveaway! 

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.  
From Amazon: The journey to wellness when coming back from a brain injury can be a long one. It is one that author Ruth Curran knows well. Faced with a myriad of challenges after her own brain injury, she decided to turn up the volume on the things that she loved and found ways to work through the discomfort and discouragement that can plague so many who are faced with this devastating diagnosis. Her own path – one that took 18 months – is one that she shares with readers in Being Brain Healthy. Being Brain Healthy is a book of hope. Curran shares insights on healing with readers and has the unique ability to explain complex neuroscience in a way that makes sense to even those who are just taking their first steps on the road to recovery. Convinced that everyone can work their way out of what Curran refers to as “the fog” and can build better thinking skills, the author shares how she turned her entire life into a better experience.
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! 
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REINVENT YOURSELF AS YOUR OWN BEST FRIEND

9/23/2013

9 Comments

 
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My writers studio is my space to define myself.
My husband and I are in the thick of dual midlife crises, so Reinvention seems to be a constant state these days.  It’s also the theme for my first foray into a Generation Fabulous Blog Hop, so I find myself dissecting once again.
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. 
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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.  
Here’s a secret of the Universe:  BECAUSE WE HAVE FREE WILL, at any moment, anywhere we can conceive it, we have the opportunity to reinvent ourselves.  We are the only ones that stop us from fulfilling our purpose, from becoming who we want to become.   --Kim Jorgensen Gane

So, what could I do if I wasn’t so afraid all the time?  

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.
For once, instead of reacting to the actions and choices of those around me, I sought myself in California.  I looked inward, I asked myself what I wanted to do and who I wanted to be.  And yes, where I hoped to do it.  My heart was healing, maybe it was even being born, but I knew if I didn’t leave San Diego when we did, I wouldn’t want to.  We came home after two years, because so far away from our girls and our foundation, all of our hearts were broken.   

The lesson is that I can be my own best friend here in Michigan or anywhere.  And I can choose to do it next to my beloved lake, where I belong.  
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Tell me in the comments, where are you on your path to being your own best friend?
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I'm in a Mind-Still-Blown Haze Post BlogHer'13--If I Have to Tell Me Again...!

7/30/2013

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It’s back to work, and I find myself still reeling, hung over, really, but not in an alcohol-induced haze, more in a mind-still-blown haze from my weekend spent with almost 5000 other remarkable women, and a few men, at #BlogHer13 in Chicago.

I say other, because one of the most remarkable discoveries, reminders, I got this weekend was that I, too, am a remarkable woman.  This is something I tell myself sometimes, but don’t really believe.

I go through the laundry list:  You had a child alone at the age of twenty, whom you raised alone for the first 7 years of her life, you owned and operated a restaurant as a white woman whose husband was only home on the weekends, in a 98% black, severely socioeconomically depressed city for three years, you usually successfully managed a blended family and raised two beautiful, loving, remarkable women, you healed your own infertility and successfully added a beautiful baby boy to the then teen his&hers daughters you already had, recovered him from and prevented further vaccine damage, and you survived a two-year stint an entire country away from said daughters, and used (half of) that time to grow and discover yourself and you didn’t (quite) manage to kill your husband (not my story to tell, yet).   

And then there’s the professional stuff that’s happened in the last two years:  you were featured on BlogHer 3.5 times, you submitted an essay which was accepted for inclusion in a book that’ll be out later this year, and the theme for that essay earned you a Voices of the Year Honoree nod from BlogHer.  You wrote and taught Creative Writing for Fourth Graders to your son’s class over three sessions, and spoke before the local Depression and Bipolar Alliance about the connection between gluten intolerance and depression, anxiety, bipolar, and neurodegenerative disease.  You have so much more in you, just busting to get out, and all the while, you’re working again on your novel about a woman dealing with infertility.  Almost forgot, you taught yourself and built two complete websites all on your own.

It’s everything, it’s so much, and yet it’s nothing compared to some women.  This struck me over and over again, particularly as I listened to the other Voices of the Year Honorees who read their beautiful pieces to us on a stage, emceed by none other than The Queen, Latifah, herself.

As I commented on Feminista Jones’ post about Queen Latifah emceeing the #BlogHer13 Voices of the Year Reception: 

“I have adored Queen Latifah ever since ‘Bringing Down the House,’ and probably well before.  For her heart, strength, humor, obvious intelligence, talent on SO many levels, and her spectacular beauty that is the antithesis of petite, she is a role model who tells me to be myself even when a huge part of me wants to hide because I'm not the size zero I once was.  My family placed far too much importance on looks.  It's been a battle to find the midlife value in my own heart and my own intelligence and my own voice.  In a moment of false clarity, my weight can wash away all I’ve gained.  I'm five feet tall.  It isn't difficult to simply look over me; to not see me at all, [or to not see myself]. 

This is my brain shit, not yours, and you probably have enough of your own shit and don't even think to look past.  When I write, when I blog, I perceive that people recognize my intelligence and hear my voice first and, I pray, accept me for my heart before they see my size.  Writing, posting is bliss because for the moment *I* can forget.  I thought I was growing past it.  But even among all of [the women of all kinds, races, shapes and sizes], even attending as a #BlogHer13 Voices of the Year Honoree, at times it was insurmountable to introduce myself.” 

Why do we discount ourselves?  Why is it that I can sit in a room full to the brim of other midlife bloggers, recognize myself in them, yet feel too self-conscious to reach out to them as they have reached out to me after BlogHer?  Many of the Generation Fabulous women have since generously put out their arms and welcomed me into their fold.  How is it that I didn’t know before I attended that panel discussion that there are so many midlife women bloggers out there? 

How is it that we are still so underrepresented in every facet of life: corporate boards, politics, sponsorship, etc., etc.??  How is it that we so often don’t even recognize it?  We are 51% of the population (hence the book, 51%: Women and the Future of Politics), and yet we represent less than 19% of congress?  It seems we are largely complacent with being slotted into the role of teachers and school board members, raising the children, building the foundation of our future—all vitally important stuff that many of us probably don’t want to leave to the men.  But the fact that we are not nurtured to do otherwise isn’t good enough.  The fact that many of us don’t even think to seek otherwise isn’t good enough. 

And woe to those of us who didn’t attend college.   Whether or not it’s truth, the lack of a college education, time spent staying home with our children and the consequential holes in our resumes, can paralyze many of us with fear.  It halted me.  I allowed my lack of a college education to stop me from becoming something more, from finishing my book, from seeking and touching more of me.  

Until I left my hometown in Michigan, hit San Diego and was forced to take a hard look at myself, I existed, I loved, I enjoyed life to a degree…I wanted more, but I was holding my breath. 

I’m no slouch.  Two college level creative writing courses in San Diego, a modicum of encouragement from my professors, and I haven’t looked back…but what if…?

Well, as Kelly Wickham of Mocha Momma said in her Voices of the Year reading about being a single mom that resonated with me so deeply, “that is unacceptable.”  Kelly also wrote in “Untold Stories are Sometimes Secrets,” about,” feeling invisible as a person of color at times.”  I want her to know that I often felt invisible as a very short woman before I was heavy, and only more so now as a short heavy woman.  Perhaps we all put on our own invisibility cloaks for any number of reasons…acne, too large breasts, bad teeth…the list of things we can’t magically change about ourselves goes on.

Before #BlogHer14, here’s something I can change:  I will endeavor to stand proud, to embrace all that I am, inside and out, to *believe* myself to be your peer, just as Queen Latifah tells me. 

Before #BlogHer14, I will reach out to other women.  I will return the embrace of Generation Fabulous, and follow in their well-forged steps.  I.  Will.  Finish.  Bluebirds.  I will seek more speaking opportunities, I will query publications.  I will get paid for my writing.  And as of tonight, I am going to submit my book to a publisher! 

And come #BlogHer14, I will extend my hand to you no matter what I weigh, and I will help wake up the next generation of fabulous women to all they already are, even if they don’t get to witness people like Sheryl Sandberg and Rita Arens and Kelly Wickham and the almost 5000 strong of us amazing, powerful, diverse women for themselves.

What halts you in your tracks?  Or how have you managed to overcome your own personal invisibility cloak?
If you heard about the #JudyBlumeProject at #BlogHer13, SUBMISSIONS ARE STILL OPEN!! 


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The Beauty of A Woman Blog Fest:  The Beauty of Women Friends

2/21/2013

32 Comments

 
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August McLaughlin's Beauty of a Woman Blog Fest 2013
My mind is occupied with things that aren’t so beautiful.  Things like cancer.  Things like my second close friend in six months undergoing the knife to remove a piece of her that I imagine, as we all have, she’s grown accustomed to looking down at from time to time.  Certainly she’s been painfully aware of its presence recently, if she didn't pay it much mind before.

Her husband sits in a waiting room with his father and sister, not seeing the phone before him, hearing perhaps a ticking clock nearby, snippets of hushed whispers.

Her children sit in their respective classrooms, not hearing their teachers.  Wondering, worrying, and not quite understanding what their mother is going through, or perhaps even where she is.

I sit looking at this glowing white page, with words coming and then escaping me; too fleeting to capture most of them.  And I wait.  I’m not there.  I feel helpless.  The snow blows outside my window.  And I wait. 

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An army of supporters waits with them, each of us going about our own lives.  I am writing this post, because I agreed to do it, and because there is nothing more beautiful than a woman mothering through her pain.  There is nothing more beautiful than a wife who is there for her husband for all the moments before and all the ones after a traitorous piece of her is cut away.  There is nothing more beautiful than a woman who comforts and cries with and prays with her children and reassures them, even as she reassures herself, that everything will be OK.

I was still living in California when my first close friend underwent the same surgery, double, that my friend today must endure; must survive; must press on through for all the days that follow.  I can’t fathom what might be beautiful about those days in between—only perhaps the other side.  After the scars begin to fade, and the hair grows, and the beauty and blessing of mothering lives once again in her children’s classrooms, reading and making crafts, and checking papers, instead of mired in each moments’ survival. 

My job will be to find ways to help make some of those days beautiful for my friend and her family, even as I continue to be the mom, the wife, the writer and businesswoman I’ve come to expect myself to be. 

Now that I’m back home where I belong, the beauty of my dear friends, all of us different ages, but with children the same age; changed on the surface and deep inside though we have in two short years, is that we’re still here.  Even if we can’t comprehend the choices, or fully appreciate the experience without having had it ourselves, we’re still here and we’re still friends.  We still have each other's backs, and we still hold one another's families in our hearts and in our care when one of us is down.

My friends, my posse, still forgive clumsily chosen words; we still vote for and cheer one another on, hold each other up and help each other succeed.  We still give the benefit of doubt in most cases, and accept apologies when offered.  We hope for only the best in life for our friends, and we’re there to help them survive, overcome and learn from the all too common snag, or plod through a monumentally difficult time. 

And through two years in California I made new and equally beautiful friends that now span the country, and who will remain so forever.  And through this process of releasing my inner author and sharing my soul with *the world*, I’ve made a myriad more friends across tundra and oceans.

Whether an instant of soaring brilliance, or in the worst of life’s moments—even if it’s spent unproductively, staring at a blank page, and praying like I’ve never prayed before, for mercy, for deft hands, for beauty and grace, and for another day to hug my friend, gently, or just to be there if she can’t stand my touch, even if it’s not a particularly beautiful day—there is no place I would rather be than among these beautiful women who became my friends through a MOMS Club playgroup.  We’ve seen children born and children married, and we’ve watched our brood of fifteen kids grow through everything in between. 

This week reminds me what is beautiful about being a woman that has nothing to do with weight or height or skin or hair or breasts; and none of it is more striking than the beauty of women friends. 

[And what a difference 48 hours makes.  Update: my friend came through her surgery bravely and valiantly, and so did her family, and so did I.  Amazingly, she came home the next day.  She is where she belongs, recovering with her family and friends surrounding her.  And my first friend gave us all hope when she received news recently, as her hair begins to grow back, that her doctor considers her in remission.  On to the next step:  Fight like a Girl, my beautiful friends!  Fight like a Girl!]

Thank you to August McLaughlin for inviting me to participate in her second annual Beauty of a Woman Blog Fest.  Please check out what are sure to be more fantastic posts over on August's page, where she'll be linking up a bunch of us to celebrate the beauty of women tomorrow, February 22, 2013.


This post that I wrote quite feverishly the afternoon that I was waiting to hear about my friend's surgery absolutely suits the spirit of @HeatheroftheEO 's #JustWrite exercise over at Extraordinary Ordinary.  It's all about capturing moments.  Happy ones, heart wrenching ones, poignantly beautiful ones...those that give you pause, that make you notice life and appreciate all it has to offer, the good and the bad.  It's one of the best writing exercises I've participated in, and I highly recommend it.  Be sure to follow the directions, because that's what makes it ROCK so beautifully.  
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    Kim Jorgensen Gane

    Author|Award-Winning Essayist|Freelance CommercialWriter|GANE
    Empowered Wellness Advocate, Facilitator, Speaker

    Kim is a freelance writer, living and working on Michigan’s sunset coast with her husband, youngest son, a standard poodle and a gecko. She’s been every-mom, raising two generations of kids over twenty-seven years. Kim writes on a variety of topics including parenting  through midlife crisis, infertility, health and wellness, personal empowerment, politics, and about anything else that interests her, including flash fiction and her novel in progress, Bluebirds.  Oh, and this happened!

    Kim was selected as a BlogHer '13 Voices of the Year Honoree in the Op Ed category for this post, an excerpt of which has been adapted for inclusion in the book, 51%: Women and the Future of Politics, to be released late 2014.  Visit her Wordpress About page to see her CV.
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*GANEPossible.com is an anecdotal website and in no way intends to diagnose, treat, prevent or otherwise influence the medical decisions of its readers. I am not a doctor, I do not recommend going off prescribed medications without the advice and approval of a qualified practitioner, and I do not recommend changing your diet or your exercise routine without first consulting your doctor. These are merely my life experiences, and what has and hasn't worked for me and my family. You must be your own best medical advocate and that of your children, and seek to find the practitioner with whom you have the best rapport and in whose advice and care you can entrust your health and medical decisions.


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