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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For me, the answer was and remains writing. 

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

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

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

Happy Back-to-School with the #JudyBlumeProject!  This started with a special surprise, even to my partner, Dana @thekitchwitch, of a four-part series that began last Monday with installment one, and continued last Thursday with installment two.  Monday's post represented installment three, and today marks our final installment with part four!  It has been delightful to see this story evolve and grow, and I hope you've been reading it with your upper elementary and middle graders.

I am thrilled to present this amazing guest post in four parts by author, Jim Denney, of the Timebenders series.  I became friends with Jim on Twitter, my son has read (LOVED!) the first book in his series, Battle Before Time, and Jim thinks the world of Judy Blume, and our little #JudyBlumeProject (GAH!).  As a MG author himself, he thinks so much of Judy Blume, that among his many projects, he took time out to write and share this riveting story, Martian Girl, with US!  GRATEFUL!

I'm certain you'll enjoy this ode to seemingly everyone's favorite, Judy's Margaret.  Check out our Facebook page, we now have a PROJECT PAGE, and you'll see that nearly every post to date includes AYTGIMM among the most meaningful and life-affirming of Judy Blume's prolific works for generations of tween girls during the angst-ridden onset of puberty.  And rightly so.  I hope this shows that any manner of respect you'd like to pay to Judy will be considered, and I hope this will inspire more men (young or young at heart) to contribute their thoughts and memories to our wonderful little project that one day hopes to be published as an anthology to honor our Judy.  

Without further ado, I'm thrilled to present...drum roll....

        Something's wrong, God.

        I woke up and heard alarms going off. I don't know what's happening, but Dad left our cabin to find out. I'm huddled under my covers, talking to you on my Amulet. I wish they'd turn off those horrible alarms.

        All kinds of thoughts go through my head. Is there a fire? Did something go wrong with the Ares? Are we losing power? Are we leaking air? Are we going to die here in space?

        Wait--

        Dad just came in.

        I'll see what he found out.

                                                                                    #

        Oh no.  Oh no.

        Please, God, no.

        Don't let it be--

        Dad came back and said that something happened to one of the passenger sections. He called it "explosive decompression." A whole passenger section just split open and all the air blew out. It might have been a meteor strike. Or maybe the hull just failed. They think everybody inside was killed—two hundred people.

        Mom said, "Oh, how awful!"

        I asked Dad what settlement the people were going to.

        He said, "Why do you ask?"

        "I just want to know."

        He said, "They were going to the Pacifica settlement. What's wrong? What are you crying about? You didn't know any of those people."

        I said, "I'm going to the library." And I ran out.

        Oh no, oh no, oh God, please don't let it be Salvino.

        The whole time I was running to the library, I tried to call him on my Amulet. He didn't answer.

        Now I'm sitting here in the library all by myself.

        Please, God, let Salvino walk through that door. Please, let me see him again.

        Please, God, let him be okay.

        Please, please, please.

                                                                                #

        I don't know what to say, God.

        I don't know what to think.

        I don't know what to feel.

        I made one friend on this trip, and now he's gone.

        His name is on the list of the "missing." It's been two waking periods and a sleep period, and he hasn't called me. I know he's not "missing," God. I know he's gone.

        I keep looking at the picture of him, the one I took after I hugged him. I look at his grin and his dark, smiling eyes. I want him to be alive again. I want to read to him again, and I want him to read to me.

        Why did you let it happen, God?

        I believed in you.

                                                                                #

        Hello, God.

        I'm sorry, but I've decided I don't believe in you anymore.

        Here's the thing: If I believe in you, then I have to be mad at you for letting Salvino die. I'd rather not believe in you than be mad at you.

        Dad's right. I have to quit talking to you. I'll miss talking to you, God, but I just can't do this anymore. I thought you were my friend, but you let me down. And you let Salvino down, because he believed in you, too.

        Please don't think I'm mad at you, God. Really, I'm not mad. I'm just very disappointed. So I've decided you don't exist.

        If I'm wrong and you really do exist, I hope you won't be mad at me. Try to understand it from my point of view. Try to understand how much it hurts when someone you really, really care about dies.

        I have to go now.

        Goodbye, God.

                                                                                  #

        Hello, God, it's me, Zandria. Remember me?

        I wouldn't blame you if you forgot who I am. It's been a long time since I talked to you. More than a hundred days, I think. And last time I talked to you, I said goodbye forever. And I meant it.

        But I've been wondering about something. I keep thinking about what Salvino's mother told him before she died: "A soul that loves God is never lost."

        I want to believe it, but I'm not sure if it's true or not.

        I wish I could feel your voice in my heart, the way Salvino felt his mother's voice. Sometimes, I think maybe I do, but I'm not sure. Sometimes I think I feel a voice that tells me everything is going to be okay. Is that your voice?

        Is it true, God, that a soul that loves you is never lost? If it's true, God, could you help me to feel it? Could you help me know it?

                                                                                    #


        Hello, God. It's me, Zandria—the loneliest girl in the universe.

        It's been a week since I talked to you last. I haven't felt like talking to you.

        Some days I'm mad at you. Some days I'm sad because I miss Salvino. I never have days where I'm just normal and happy. Mad, sad, mad, sad—ugh! I'm sick of those feelings!

        We're getting close to Mars, God. Dad says the next two weeks will be very busy. We have to go through some sort of training for when they drop us down to the surface. I may not have much time to talk to you until we're down on Mars.

        If anything goes wrong, and I die on the way down, would you do me a favor? Would you please take care of my soul? Would you let me see Salvino again? There's a lot I never got to say to him.

        One more thing, God--

        I mostly believe in you again, if that helps any.


                                                                                      #

        Well, God, I made it to Mars.

        That's right, it's me, Zandria—Martian girl. I'm talking to you from a tunnel deep under the surface of the Red Planet.

        The trip down from orbit was even scarier than they said it would be. It was noisy and the landing capsule seemed like it would shake itself to pieces and burn up. I really thought I was going to die this time.

        We landed hard, but we all survived.

        Mom and Dad and I are in the Utopia settlement. Everything's crowded and cramped compared to Earth, but very roomy compared to our tiny cabin on the Ares.

        I have chores to do, helping take care of the hydroponics garden. And I have schoolwork to keep me busy.

        This is my home now. I'm a Martian, just like Salvino said.

        Oh, no. I'm starting to cry again. Sorry. Just saying his name makes me miss him. I still don't know why you let him die, God, but I've decided that what his mom said is true: A soul that loves you is never lost.

        So I've decided to love you, even though at times it's not easy.

        Today, in the garden, I was humming that song Salvino taught me. It helps me feel close to him--

        The water is wide, I can't cross over.
        And neither have I wings to fly.
        Give me a boat that can carry two,
        And both shall row, my love and I.

        Well, that's all for now, God. Talk to you soon.

        Love, Zandria.

__________________________     The End ... or is it ... just the beginning ...?   ____________________________

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!! 

Dear Judy,

In Grade 4, I was Sheila the Great.

I’m not kidding.

Despite my fuzzy hair and brown skin, I was convinced you had me in mind when you wrote the novel.

I was also Margaret and Tony and Peter.

I started a newspaper at my school in grade 4 because of your books.  I dreamed of being a writer because of your books.

And because at first I wasn’t sure how to do that, some of my earliest writings are letters to my grandmother that were copied almost verbatim from various pages of your novels.

Yes, I plagiarized you at the age of 10.

I apologize.

But I’m not sorry because those letters were never sent and 30 years later, my mother delivered them to me along with a host of other childhood silliness and the joy and tears that resulted from reading my words – your words- are worth any sanctions you may have to take.

What you gave me was a gift; an outlet.

I was a first generation Canadian kid with Jamaican parents trying to find my way through the school system. I didn’t understand cliques or bras. I didn’t know what questions to ask until you came along.

You gave me a guideline to being normally abnormal that has guided the rest of my life.

When my mother bought me “Letters to Judy: What your kids wish they could tell you.” I was insanely jealous of the fact that these kids had written to you and that you were responding.

I was far too in awe to have thought of sending my thoughts as well.

So now that I have the chance here’s what I’d like to thank you for:

Are you There God It’s me Margaret : It led to an awkward conversation between a father and daughter when I snuck up behind him to ask what a “period” was and “how I could get one.”  Good times.

Forever: The sneaky way you didn’t announce that this book wasn’t like the others, allowing me a full fifteen minutes of jaw-on-the-ground reading heaven before my mother came bounding up the stairs after getting a tip off from another parent. I’d also like to thank my mom for always hiding the “not until you’re older” book  in the same spot allowing me to continue my reading on the sly.

Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing:  For giving me insight into the world of a boy, giving me something great I can share with my sons so they can get to know you too and siding with me in the acknowledgment that baby brothers were put on this earth to test your sanity.

Thank you for Iggie’s House that had a character that looked like me, and for Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great, Blubber, Then Again Maybe I won’t, Tiger Eyes and all the others that kept me up way past my bedtime, flashlight in hand.

All those years ago when I thought there was no one who understood me, you popped in with characters that have stayed with me my entire life.

I’m so glad to have the chance to finally write the letter I couldn’t all those years ago.

Your pal,

Heather

aka Sheila the Great


Heather Greenwood Davis is an award-winning feature writer with more than 20 years of journalism experience.  Her stories have appeared in numerous publications including most recently the June issue of "O" The Oprah Winfrey Magazine.  A yearlong trip around the world last year with her husband and two sons (ages 6 and 8) led to the family being named National Geographic Traveler Magazine "Travelers of the Year."  Stories of their travels and lessons learned also appear online at www.globetrottingmama.com.

Heather thanked US for the chance to purge her soul, but we couldn't be more grateful to her for sharing her memories of growing up with Judy Blume.  I couldn't be more grateful that she permitted me to share it with you as a guest post on my blog, and it ain't over, folks!  We welcome you to do the same or to participate via your own blog!  UPDATE:  Find out everything you need to know to participate ON THE #JudyBlumeProject PAGE!!

Copyright © 2013 Heather Greenwood Davis.  All rights reserved.  Reprinted with permission from the author.

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

What a bum I've been!

There goes that Momma-guilt machine again, dammit!

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

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

Scary stuff!

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

Nah, I haven't done a damn thing. 

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

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

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

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

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

You know you're tired when you scroll down to see how long a post is before you decide whether you'll read it.

You know you're tired when you can hear your eyes blink.

You know you're tired when you look in the mirror and see yourself yawn and it makes you yawn again.

You know you're tired when the dust bunnies are so big, the dog thinks they're new toys.

You know you're tired when you can still fall asleep immediately after your second cup of coffee.


You know you're tired when you fall asleep at your desk, sitting up, with your fingers poised over your keyboard.

You know you're tired when your eyes burn so bad, you can't read more than a paragraph without falling asleep.

You know you're tired when you find your keys in the fridge and the cheese in your purse.

You know you're tired when you can't retain a thought long enough to write a complete sentence, let alone a paragraph.

You know you're tired when the only thing you seem to be able to write is a ridiculous post about how tired you are.

Though Kristen Lamb, guru, incredible WANAMama to all things WANACon (online writers conference of her creation), says here that Being Tired Can Make You a Better Writer...I may have gone beyond that point, and am looking forward to a coaching conference in San Francisco this weekend to re-energize me and help to recharge my batteries. 

My point?  The Judy Blume Project is far too big for two moms from Colorado and Michigan to do justice to in a mere month (without child protective services being alerted, and husbands complaining loudly about there being no clean underwear), and Judy deserves SO much better than sleep-deprived zombies for partners.

Dana and I are delighted to report that we've gotten so much terrific feedback, we feel compelled to expand the project and extend the deadline.  We are STILL ACCEPTING SUBMISSIONS!! ...Maybe it even remains a living, breathing thing...who knows? 

So visit your local library.  Re-read your favorite Judy Blume books, enjoy the memories they spark, and let us know what a wonderful and necessary contribution she made to your pre-adolescent and adolescent survival. 

For many of us, Blume's characters and their life events allowed us to experience scary things without actually having to suffer the consequences.  She helped us to feel normal, to understand things we couldn't speak to our parents about, and to understand that we were perfectly acceptable amid a persistent fog of zit-infused angst and uncertainty.

You can review our submission guidelines here, as well as check out all the other fabulous pieces to date.  WE HOPE YOU'LL JOIN THEM.  Established or not, young or old, student or teacher, mother or daughter or father or son; all the above, or none of the above--this means YOU. Let us know you're getting to work on your Judy Blume Project Anthology submission, thanking and honoring the fine lady for her amazing contribution to MG/YA fiction. 

[UPDATE: !!NOW -- ACCEPTING SUBMISSIONS -- NOW!!]

Magic can materialize in a breath...you're going about your day, you happen upon something that might be remarkable, make an innocent comment and wheels start to turn on a regular old Tuesday, if you're open to it.

Magic is exactly what happened yesterday between The Kitchen Witch and I, when I linked my Beauty of a Woman post about The Beauty of Women Friends to the Extraordinary Ordinary's weekly Just Write exercise.  My moment, trying to write while waiting for my dear friend to come through her surgery to remove a cancerous breast, totally fit with the spirit of the exercise...write from the heart, "from a free heart-gut place," says Heather, and don't stop, Just Write.  So you post your moment, and others post their moments, you read each other's blogs, maybe laugh, maybe cry, but above all, you appreciate the craft of real writing that comes from the heart.  Soon you find it changes the way you write for the better.  You come to seek out moments to write about; beautiful moments, poignant moments, moments to appreciate, to savor or just to mark.

I was reading some of the other blogger's posts, and The Kitchen Witch's was about Judy Blume (please take a moment to pop over and read it), bemoaning the absence of new MG/YA fiction for her daughter's generation from Blume, and acknowledging how the author's works had impacted her own life.  She wondered where the next Judy Blume would come from, which clearly struck a nerve with several of the commenters.  So today, she writes:

What We Want to Say, March 6, 2013

Hi, you lovely, big-hearted Readers,

I was Gobsmacked at the volume of personal emails I recieved from you, telling me how much Judy Blume has meant to you, and how pivotal she has been to your (and so many of our) growing-up years. So often she’s been a steady, reassuring voice whispering in the dark.

A friend of mine, Kim and I were talking yesterday about Judy Blume, and we thought it would be so interesting and beautiful to hear the stories/memories/musings about Judy’s work and what it meant to you, as a young woman navigating that twisting and hard road between girl and womanhood.

Our ultimate goal is to compile an anthology in her honor, full of colorful, vibrant voices. A book chock-full of writing by women (or men!) who have heartfelt and honest things to say.

If you’d like to submit a piece for consideration, [PLEASE VISIT OUR #JudyBlumeProject WEBPAGE]. It [may one day] be a belated Valentine to our Judy, but one that is long overdue.

So, Dana and I started hashing it out.  She's taking it on through her channels, and I'm taking it on through my channels, and we're going to put our heads together, pick through the many inspiring and heart-felt submissions we're sure to get, and come up with something brilliant to honor Judy and her many inspiring works for young readers.

So dig in.  Dig deep.  Send in your submission by the end of [June], and maybe you could find yourself a published author (newly or again) in the near future!  We all have a story to tell, if Judy has inspired the landscape of your life in any way, maybe this is a beautiful place for you to begin telling yours. 

FIND EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW INCLUDING SUBMISSION GUIDELINES & CONTRIBUTORS RIGHT HERE!!!