Socialize!  Find us here--->>
GANEPossible.com
  • Welcome!
    • #Write2TheEnd
    • Press / Media
    • GANE Possible Calendar
  • GANE Momentum
  • GANE Insight
    • GANE Insight Blog

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.

Follow Kim on Facebook

REINVENT YOURSELF AS YOUR OWN BEST FRIEND

9/23/2013

9 Comments

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

I'm in a Mind-Still-Blown Haze Post BlogHer'13--If I Have to Tell Me Again...!

7/30/2013

14 Comments

 
Picture
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!! 


14 Comments
    Write2TheEnd | 

    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.
    View my profile on LinkedIn
    BlogHer '13 Voices of the Year Community Keynote Honoree
    Picture
    Creative Commons License
    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
    Picture

    Subscribing is sexy, and may be fortuitous!

    Join our list!

    * indicates required
    Email Format

    Archives

    April 2015
    November 2014
    August 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    January 2014
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012

    Featured on BlogHer.com

    Categories

    All
    2013
    2014
    911
    Abortion
    Add
    Adolescence
    Adoption
    Amanda Bynes
    Amtrak
    #AmtrakResidency
    #amwriting
    Amy Jo Burns
    Ann Imig
    A Novel
    Anthology
    Asperger's
    August Mclaughlin
    Author
    Autism
    Ava Chin
    #BacktoSchool
    Back To School
    Beauty Of A Woman Blog Fest
    Benton Harbor
    Bigotry
    Blended Families
    Blended Family
    Blogging
    Blogher
    #BlogHer13
    BlogHer '13
    Blog Hop
    Bluebirds
    Books
    Brain Health
    Breast Cancer
    Brownies
    Budget
    Bully
    Bullying
    Challenge
    Change
    Children
    Children With Disabilities
    Choice
    Choices
    Christmas
    Cinderland
    Costume
    Crackbook
    Ct
    Cyber Bullying
    Cyber Friends
    Dairy Free
    Destiny
    #DF
    Discrimination
    Disney
    Diy
    Dog Puke
    Dr. Lissa Rankin
    Eating Wildly
    E Books
    E-books
    Education
    Empowerment
    Empty Nest
    Endometriosis
    Enlightened Middle
    Exercise
    Facebook
    Face To Face
    Face-to-face
    Fall
    Family
    Fear
    Featured
    Feminism
    Fertility
    Festive
    Fifty Shades
    Flash Fiction
    Flash! Friday
    Friends
    Galit Breen
    Gane Possible
    Generation Fabulous
    #GF
    Girlfriends
    Giveaway
    #Giveaway
    Gluten Free
    Glutennazimom
    Google+
    Government
    Government Shut Down
    Grief
    Guy Kawasaki
    Halloween
    Handmade
    Haven
    Heal Healthcare Now
    Health
    Hepatitis B
    Hepb
    Hillary Clinton
    Holidays
    Holistic
    Homework
    Hope
    Humblebrag
    Humblebraggart
    Humblebragging
    Humor
    Immunization
    Income
    Infertility
    #Infertility
    Influencer
    #ItGetsBetter
    It Gets Better
    Jim Denney
    Judy Blume
    #JudyBlumeProject
    Judy Blume Project
    #JustWrite
    Just Write
    @KimGANEPossible
    Kim Jorgensen Gane
    Kim Singing
    #KindnessWins
    Language
    Laura Munson
    Lean In
    Life
    Lindsay Lohan
    Listen To Your Mother
    Local
    Low Cost
    #LTYM
    Math Facts
    Md
    Mental Health
    Michigan
    Midlife
    #MidlifeBlvd
    Midterm Elections
    Miley Cyrus
    Mind Over Medicine
    Mom
    Montana
    Mother
    Mothering
    Moving
    Nablopomo
    Newton Ct
    Obama
    Obamacare
    Online
    Oprah
    #OwnBossy
    Parenting
    Patty Chang Anker
    Pcos
    Peg Fitzpatrick
    Pinterest
    Platform
    Poem
    Poetry
    Politics
    Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome
    Popular Media
    Poverty
    President
    Progress
    Puberty
    QueenLatifah.com
    Racism
    Rain
    Reading
    Reality Tv
    Recipe
    Reclaim Your Fertility
    Religion
    Reproductive Rights
    Retreat
    Review
    Ruth Curran
    #SABD13
    Sahm
    San Diego
    Santa
    School
    Self Discipline
    Self-Discipline
    Self Esteem
    Sex
    Sheryl Sandberg
    Simplifying
    #SingleMom
    Single Mom
    Single Parenting
    Social Media
    #SomeNerve
    Some Nerve
    Soup
    Southwest
    Southwest Michigan
    Spring Forward
    Stay At Home Moms
    #StepMom
    Step Parenting
    Step-parenting
    Submission
    Suicide
    #SuicidePrevention
    Suicide Prevention
    Support
    Tablet
    Tea Party
    Technology
    Thanksgiving
    The Bachelor
    The Book Thief
    The Hunger Games
    This Is Not The Story You Think It Is
    Thrift
    Timebenders
    Time Change
    Time Warp Tuesday
    Train
    Twitter
    Unexposed Talent
    Vaccination
    Vmas
    War On Women
    Waxing
    Whitefish
    Women
    Workshop
    #Write2TheEnd
    Writers
    Writers Workshop
    Writing

    RSS Feed

*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.


Mailing Address:
420 Main Street, Suite A
St. Joseph, MI  49085
Please email to schedule a consultation,
Hours by appointment:
kjgane(@)ganepossible(.)com

I Blog with Integrity, please treat my content with integrity: Copyright © 2020, Kimberly Jorgensen Gane, This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License..