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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AUTHOR NOTE: This post has been edited to include the embedded video of my LTYM performance, which may require a trigger warning for some. It deals with #SingleMom, #StepMom, #Infertility, #Suicide but it's also victorious and full of HOPE for #SuicidePrevention. #ItGetsBetter. Don't be alone. Please reach out and share your powerful story in the comments, below. Or call the Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-TALK(8255).

I once participated in a yoga session in which we learned to balance our chakras. My hands took their turn on each of my eight chakra points, as guided by our instructor’s soothing voice. I felt calm and at peace. At the end I noticed that one of my hands was very warm and one of my hands was cold. I asked the woman whether this meant something, and whether it was normal.

She nodded, knowing, her whole being smiling at me. “You felt it. One of your hands was giving and one of your hands was receiving.”

Once I hit publish on a post, I wait. Sometimes I get a comment or two or maybe several after a few days. Sometimes I hear crickets. I’m writing for myself, to process my own life experiences, yet I hope to help a few people who need my particular brand of reflection or awareness along the way. Sometimes when I hear crickets, it’s a little disappointing. Even so, I’ll still write, whether or not I get feedback that tells me I’m making a difference in the lives of others. I’m happier, more balanced, more fulfilled, more forgiving and more loving to those around me. Writing makes a difference in my own life, and therefore it’s worth doing, because I’m worth it.

Because of writing and blogging, I had the privilege last May of being part of one of the most meaningful things I’ve ever done professionally.Listen to Your Mother hit 32 cities across the US over two weeks in celebration of mothers and Mother’s Day. I joined thirteen other women from the Chicago area, northwest Indiana and southwest Michigan to give some pretty remarkable Midwestern mothers a microphone. Here's my performance. I hope you'll watch the others, too.

Why was being a part of this show so remarkable? Because it stretched me, it challenged me, and it validated me as a mom and as a writer in ways I could only dream of before. I played Anna in The King & I my senior year in high school, and began singing solos when I was five years old--I LOVED doing those things. 

Listen to Your Mother was vastly different and so very much more than either performing or writing/blogging—it was a powerful, magical and mystical intersection of both. And I had no idea of its incredible power until I stepped on that stage.

I had to audition. That was similar to singing solos and having the lead in a musical. I had to perform. That was similar, too. My words and my story are things I’ve been sharing online for over two years now, with beautiful, heart-warming response via comments, shares and emails from many who have followed and been touched by my journey. What if I'd Said "Just Drive?" started right here, as a blog post for a #JustWrite exercise via Rebecca T. Dickson. I'm so grateful for her support and the kick-butt inspiration she offers so many writers, me included.

Performing my own writing was risky. It was gut wrenching. It was exhilarating. And yet it was like being enveloped in a warm, protective blanket of love and acceptance, much like my recent trip to a Laura Munson Haven retreat in Montana (by TRAIN, which I wrote about here). 

Our first reader, Donya Kolowsiwsky, had never done anything like it in her life—talk about a stretch! Despite never having spoken into a microphone before, she knocked her three-ring circus intro out of the park! Our second reader, Carrie, shared a story of infertility and victory through adoption that touched and enthralled us all. I was third to read. I stepped on that stage, completely naïve to what the two women before me had just experienced. I’ll try to explain, but I won’t do it justice:

My two predecessors set me up for only success, and every one of us that performed after made for a flawless show. I felt allied with my fellow cast members and with the audience like a golden shimmer of aspens—connected and breathing and responding as one organism. We were joined by a shared root system of struggle and joy and existence, warm and rich, clinging tight to the nourishing loam of our stories. It filled the room and pulsed back and forth like the warm blush of sunset. I received the audience and they received me. Our connected energy rose with laughter (as during Robyn Welling's hilarious, How to Scar Your Kids for Life), fell with heartache, and bloomed with understanding, as during fellow single mom, Sheli Geoghan Massie's, Prego at Summer Camp. I didn’t want my turn to end in eight minutes. I wanted to do it again, and again, and again. I close my eyes and I can feel the energy still. The unexpected and unprecedented gifts we gave and received in a ninety-minute show on a warm evening in May, will stay with me for a lifetime. I hope you'll enjoy watching the other touching, hilarious, and sometimes tearful readings from our show.

From national producer, Ann Imig’s, humble beginnings with one show in Madison, Wisconsin in 2010, to 32 cities across the US in 2014—if you don’t know what Listen to Your Mother is about, or if you didn’t get enough, you can spend hours watching this season’s and past seasons' videos. You’ll find all those who have come before, giving in exactly the ways you need to receive them on the Listen to Your Mother YouTube channel. Go watch, follow their blogs, and leave a comment now and again to let someone know how much their words matter. And check out our national sponsors, BlogHer (from where I received the Voices of the Year honor in 2013), and Chevy.

Northwest Indiana producer/director, Lovelyn Palm, selected my story as part of Listen to Your Mother this year. I am grateful for her faith in me and in my story, and I feel so lucky to have met this remarkable mother of NINE, as well as our entire cast. With Lovelyn’s support and blessing, I want to do this for my community. I will complete the application process later this year in the hopes of producing and directing Listen to Your Mother in southwest Michigan in 2015. 

If this sounds like something you’d like to be a part of, either as a sponsor, as a reader, or as a necessary and vital member of the audience, please subscribe to my email list to the right. You do not have to be a mother or a working writer to audition and participate. Stories come from sons, daughters, husbands, moms themselves, motherless children, and childless mothers. Listen to Your Mother is a beautiful celebration of motherhood and story in all its forms. And it’s a giving franchise, as well. A portion of ticket sales for our sold-out Valparaiso show supported the northwest Indiana Food Bank. Given the chance, I will choose to support the Boys & Girls Club of Benton Harbor, where I’ve enjoyed the honor of speaking to young girls about their future.

Whether or not I’m successful at bringing the show to my hometown, I look forward to next year and the years to come. I will be a part of this remarkable, uplifting, entertaining celebration again and again, even if it's an essential place in the audience.

1) What am I working on/writing?    
I have a LOT going on! I expect to release my first GANE Possible Publication, Beating the Statistics: A Mother's Quest to Reclaim Fertility, Halt Autism and Help Her Child Grow from Behavior Failure to Behavior Success late this spring. I'm always working on my memoir, My Grandfather's Table, for which I hope to secure a publisher who will go along with my plans to release it by my 50th birthday. That gives me two years. Hey! It's important to have goals! And of course, there's co-editing on the #JudyBlumeProject, which is ongoing and hopes to one day become an anthology in honor of Judy Blume's iconic and prolific contribution to libraries and homes across the world. In addition, I work as a part-time communications and media consultant (and future spokesperson) for UprightFarms.org, which is a small vertical farming startup, and which melds beautifully with my #MOREin2014 -- VARIETY & Veggies, GANE Empowered Wellness philosophy. We're currently doing all the behind the scenes work on getting our website and social media up and running in the very near future, but you can view our testimonials reel online now. As a freelance ghostwriter I've been published in a design industry magazine, and I've encouraged and advised numerous people on how to own the title of writer and pursue writing themselves. As such, if you feel called to writing, but need support in sharing your writing or finishing any writing goal you choose, I’m co-facilitating a local, face-to-face writing workshop with writer and editor friend, Ami Hendrickson (see her bio below, she's among the next participants in the BlogHop). *Every* writer dreams of spending a summer writing the Great American Novel--or maybe you want to write a screenplay, dust off a manuscript that's been sitting in a drawer, write a query letter, and actually SUBMIT it, or write a short story or memoir. #Write2TheEnd is an eight-week program that began in mid-June. We're finalizing our fall offerings now. It’s something you don’t want to miss, and it’s another really good reason to sign up for my email list. --->

2) How does my work/writing differ from others in its genre?
Genre? That's one of those scary words that can frighten off those of us who aren't too confident about our writing. All this writing and blogging nonsense began for me back in San Diego when I was so miserable I couldn't stand myself. After wallowing the first year we were there, I decided it was time to build a life for myself. It all centered around my novel-in-progress, Bluebirds, which I've been working on intermittently for six years or more. I haven't abandoned Bluebirds, and I still work on it from time-to-time. But it was proving really hard to write because I found myself trying to fit in too much memoir. Thus, My Grandfather's Table was born--a story of contrasts that flows between the nurturing, love, and nourishment that was freely given me as a child, against the shame and sadness of untold secrets that I believe led to my struggle as a young single mother. It's my quest to forgive and to love myself through food instead of punish myself with food. I need to exorcise the memoir bits in order to just tell the beautiful story that I believe Bluebirds is meant to be someday--because my Gramps continues posthumously to tell me so through birds. 

3) Why do I write what I do?
I've covered that with question two, but overall, it's honestly to keep myself sane. As women, as mothers, we often judge one another. Through sharing my writing, I feel so blessed to have experienced the fellowship and support of other writers, which has led to so very much more than I’d ever dreamed possible. Between my trip to meet and learn from Laura Munson at Haven, and being a part of Listen to Your Mother, this is shaping up as an incredible year. I don’t believe I would have auditioned for Listen to Your Mother without Haven. And I don’t believe I would have tried without the support of my wonderful midlife women blogger friends of Midlife Boulevard. This is what they mean by tribe: I had fought the compulsion to write my whole life, pushed it aside as something frivolous and silly because I lacked a college degree. I had to seek out coaches and like-minded individuals and surround myself with their support, energy, and encouragement in order to feel justified in pursuing writing as a career. Because of my history, because of shame, because of allowing myself to be defined by perceived failure, before, I wasn't enough. The sky truly is our only limit, otherwise it's the self-limiting beliefs that hold us back from realizing our own greatness. Why NOT you? 

You are enough and you and your story matter; you have the ability to impact yourself and others in ways you can’t yet imagine. GANE Possible: make your life what you’ve always wanted it to be…and bring someone else along for the ride. Why do I feel compelled to share my story? To be better for myself, for my family, to follow in my grandfather's footsteps and fully embrace and engage in this life I'm so blessed to have (especially if, like my grandfather, I live to 100!), and to help others do the same.   

4) How does my writing process work?
Ugh! My writing "process" isn't one I can highly recommend if production (organization? what’s that?) and completion is your goal--and yet I've built three websites and produced a TON of writing over the last three years. I need to give myself credit for that! I probably write more in the Evernote app on my phone, standing naked and dripping wet in the bathroom, than I do actually sitting at my keyboard. I pray it’s the water that inspires my cancer spirit and not the cracked pink tiles that line all. four. walls. of the loo in the rental we currently occupy. I'm very encouraged by my #Write2TheEnd habits/progress this summer. I've just completed my first draft of Beating the Statistics, a mini, wellness-focused memoir, which I'd hoped would help me break the finishing and publishing ice. Having this awesome cover done by Julia Mattice at Tice Designs has helped inspire me to keep working. I have many projects of my own in process, as well as volunteering, consulting, and freelance work. Taking time to focus on my own writing is always a challenge. When I do, I have a ready list of notes in Evernote from which to copy and paste. I can then take off with fingers flying and often produce thousands of words at a sitting. 

Mine was definitely the "pantser" method before. I'm benefiting greatly and producing more by adopting pieces of the plotter method, which is Ami's very large and essential piece of #Write2TheEnd, thankfully! ***WRITER/ BUSINESS TIP: Knowing and acknowledging our own weaknesses and joining forces with those who fill our gaps is a brilliant strategy I highly recommend! It's worked for my husband and me over almost twenty years of marriage, even though my creative "process" exasperates him!*** My new office is complete enough that I've moved in, so I'm getting better organized. It was difficult working from home where there was no separation of work hours and family or (barely existent) leisure hours. I look forward to getting settled into a routine after school starts this fall, and having designated work time and space. I will have to figure out where and when my writing time is most productive. This summer, it's been first thing in the morning before my son wakes and BEFORE social media, standing at my kitchen counter. Perhaps this fall I will devise a hanger for the doorknob to my new office that says, “Gone Writing.” 

And now, I'm pleased to introduce my #Write2TheEnd partner, Ami Hendrickson, as well as Sabrina Lovejoy, and Joan Stommen. They are the next batch of writers on this transformational and inspiring Blog Hop all about writing. 

Ami Hendrickson is the ghostwriter for several internationally recognized master horse trainers and other notable experts. Books she has been involved in creating include: Clinton Anderson’s Downunder Horsemanship; The Rider’s Pain–Free Back, written with neurosurgeon Dr. James Warson, named by American Horse Publications as one of the “Top 3 Books of the Year;” Geoff Teall on Riding Hunters, Jumpers and Equitation;Beyond a Whisper, with behaviorist Ryan Gingerich; and Photographing and “Videoing” Horses. She is the editor of the Trainer’s Certification Manual for the United States Hunter Jumper Association (USHJA).

Ami is also an award-winning scriptwriter. Her screenplays have received recognition in the Cinequest Screenwriting Competition, the Great Lakes International Screenplay Competition, the Austin Heart of Film Screenwriting Competition, and others. "Valentimes Day," a short film written for the SONY 4K Challenge as part of the 2013 Napa Valley Film Festival, was a featured selection in the 2014 Cedar Rapids Independent Film Festival.  "The Interview" won both the Grand Prize and the Audience Choice Award at the Out of the Box Playwriting Competition in 2012.  

A  tireless mentor and cheerleader, Ami has helped scores of writers from 13 year–olds to septuagenarians get their first byline. She is always looking for ways to help writers make the most of writing time, jumpstart creativity, and pack more firepower into the writer’s arsenal.  When she discovers something that works, she is quick to share it.  She especially enjoys speaking to writers and conducting writing workshops. She graduated with distinction from Andrews University and holds degrees in English and Education. 

Some of Ami’s favorite things (in no particular order) are: riding her horses, losing herself in a book, drinking good coffee, eating chocolate, smooching her husband or snuggling her daughter during a movie.  She and her family live with their “vast menagerie” on a 100+ year–old farm in southwest Michigan. Find Ami via her website, www.AmiHendrickson.com, and her blog, Muse Inks. Read her post here.

Sabrina Lovejoy is most comfortable writing about what life has taught her. From becoming a single mom several days after her 18th birthday to her more than 20 years in corporate America, her hope is that her experiences encourage women to keep pressing towards their finish line. While fully aware that we all come from different backgrounds, Sabrina believes there is nothing that she’s been challenged with that someone, somewhere, hasn’t already experienced and overcome (Ecclesiates 1:9 “...there is nothing new under the sun”). She believes the journey of women would be easier if they’d more frequently seek those that know how to get from calamity to clarity. And, while that road has already been paved in many different ways by some of the most amazing women, writing has allowed Sabrina the opportunity to add her own bricks here and there.  

Sabrina’s blogging journey started in 2009 with a blog geared towards encouraging single moms in corporate America. Later, she decided to lean more towards sharing the life lessons she wished someone had shared with her. In 2013, while pursuing a career as a Life Coach and disappointed with her own corporate journey, Sabrina founded a 30 day challenge entitled “Career Success through Self-Awareness”. Due to its success, Sabrina has begun the process of creating resources for women new to or frustrated with the corporate climb.
 
Sabrina’s blog, Much Needed Advice, is a compilation of her journey as a writer. Read her post here.

Joan Stommen has always been a writer. Her shelves are full of letters, essays, journals, newspaper clippings and lessons used as a writing coach. Retiring in 2007 after 33 years as an elementary teacher, she returns a few days a week to sub and stay active in the writing and learning process.

She’s a National Writing Project Fellow, a former staff development instructor for various school systems and taught writing instruction to teacher candidates at Kennesaw State University. From her college newspaper to various publications, she’s written news stories and columns for over 40 years. A native of Michigan who now lives in Georgia, she enjoys 5K’s, Zumba, hiking, gardening and reading.

In addition to compiling stories of her Dad’s war experiences, she contributes to national blogs and websites and writes the Gramcracker Crumbs blog  (www.gramcrackercrumbs.com). Initially started with her 5 grandchildren in mind, she now writes about the aging process in Senior, Single and Seventy, fitness, education, family and, after the death of her husband, about Becoming a Widow; befitting her tag line “the bits and pieces of my life.” Read her post here.


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The funny thing about our world these days is that Social Media vehicles like Twitter and Facebook have made it much smaller than it once was.  Due to the recent events in Newtown, Connecticut and the immediacy of shared information, other countries are suddenly offering their input and participating in a dialog that was once uniquely American.  I’m new to Twitter, but I’m becoming more and more aware that I could be talking to someone across oceans, and certainly across thousands of miles of tundra.  I could be talking to someone who isn’t American, about a topic that concerns Americans, because suddenly it weighs heavily on the hearts and in the minds of the world.

Such was the case last evening when a dialog began about gun control and mental health between two mothers in two different countries.  In the shorthand that is unique to Twitter, we only whispered at the surface, but I am building a great deal of respect for her views on success and failure, and we and the brilliant minds at Leadership Voices agree on the need for an urgent global discussion on mental wellness.  Irene Becker is a business coach and consultant with Just Coach It in Canada, and I am actually working with a business coach, Nancy Kaye, of Define Your Destiny in San Diego, California.  These women and others like them share a vision of the potential that can be reached by many who may have previously seen themselves as failures.  And it’s quite possible these two fine, smart, beautiful spirits who are trying to heal the hearts and the minds of the clients they work with, one at a time, may share some other similarities in their views on gun control.

I have a unique perspective on the issue of gun control, in that my husband is an ex-police officer/ firefighter/ paramedic and is a nationally recognized security expert who specializes in Business Continuity Planning that encompasses active shooter and violence in the workplace programs. 

We’re from Michigan, and we tend to be prepared sorts.  That being said, neither of us is against federal mandates for stricter gun control policies as they pertain to the consistent vetting (across the country) for past criminal and mental health issues, right to privacy be damned—I would not be opposed to such background checks on all members of legal age in a prospective household, a waiting period not to exceed a week, for example, safety checks and required safety courses.  With his background, my husband was part-owner of a gun store in our town for a time and served as gunsmith and armor to many of the local law enforcement agencies.  On occasion I worked in that gun store, and thus had to go through the extensive training and testing and obtain a Concealed Pistol License (CPL) myself.  I understand there are those who have very differing views on and feelings about guns than many of the rest of us in the US, as I’m sure we do on other issues.  Much like the taboo of mental illness, this wasn’t something I often felt I could talk about in California, as I imagine it wouldn’t be in many circles in Canada and other countries.  I must tell you, however, as a 5’0” woman who has been the victim of date-rape and who spent years as a single mom, I rather enjoy feeling competent and prepared; less scared and less like a potential victim all the time.

I suspect the incidence of all crimes is lower in Canada than in the US.  But here we are, and suddenly taking guns away from law-abiding citizens while leaving them in the hands of criminals and psychos who don’t abide by the laws of the land, amounts to piss poor planning.  However, Leadership Voices, Irene and Nancy are definitely onto something when they speak about the amount of stress under which our society lives and functions on a daily basis.  I’ve seen it first hand, having lived in Chicago for a time when our daughters were young, and more recently having lived in San Diego for two years.  We have chosen to return to our small, Midwestern town, where the pace and the demand and the traffic and the competition and the stress is far lower than what we experienced in either of those two bustling metropolitan areas, and frankly where I’m less afraid (and better prepared) to walk the streets.  There was a school shooting at Kelly Elementary School in Carlsbad, California, not fifteen minutes north of our house when we first arrived there.  There were two incidences of highway snipers that occurred in the short time we lived there, the 2nd one ending with an incident AT our freeway exit.  There were robberies in malls, there were home invasions, there occurred two murders of cab drivers two exits to the south of ours in an area we frequented with out of town guests; all and much more in the short time we lived in California.

In our experience and in fact, the problems don’t stem from those of us who legally and responsibly own guns for the protection of our homes.  The problems tend more to come from those for whom guns have been purchased by others, or from those who illegally possess guns.  My hometown in Michigan sits on a stretch of highway that runs between Detroit and Chicago.  There is a great deal of drug running that occurs, and there is plenty of gun violence that occurs in the socioeconomically depressed and welfare dependent town that sits right across the river from ours.  We cross the river to go to the movies, and we cross the river to do our Christmas shopping.  Thus, we are occasionally the victims of muggings and other crimes, particularly this time of year, and shoplifting and petty larceny is rampant. 

Among the difficulties of the recent events in Newtown, CT, for me, is the fact that it has taken away an insular sense of security I once treasured here in my hometown.  Mine is very like the town of Newtown: lakeside, quaint, picturesque, we parent and love one another’s children without restraint; we look out for our neighbors.  Sandy Hook Elementary is a school very similar to my son’s.  The staff and the children who lost their lives, and ALL of the town’s and the nation’s and the world’s parents and citizens who grieve them, look and sound very similar to those in our town.  And even while I grieve my own and my children’s loss of innocence in such times, I have a strong sense that the past several years of economic destruction in many American families has left us heartbroken and emotionally, mentally, and financially battered.  Those with the capacity for hope and the mental stability to do as Irene so aptly describes in her essay, Winning the New War, to use our Constructive Discontent to Fail Forward, will survive and with the help of people like Irene and Nancy use our skills to grow and perhaps even to excel in these times.  It is the perpetually poverty-stricken, the sick and the tortured, the ones who suffer from undiagnosed and untreated mental illness, PTSD, and even chemical imbalances that can sometimes be attributed to something as simple as food sensitivities, who are clearly more susceptible to urges that lead them to take their pain and their anger out on innocent victims.

But patting them on their heads and holding their hands and telling them that it will be OK and being afraid to discuss mental illness or to reach out for help that isn’t there; caring more for their civil rights than for their mental health and the safety of others, clearly isn’t doing enough to ensure the health and safety of the public at large, and it must be immediately addressed. 

Americans will always feel differently about guns than Canadians and those in other countries do, because Americans have had to fight hard for our freedoms, and Americans have had to fight for the weak and for those who have been inhumanely treated by their own governments.  But what of our own?  We are the self-appointed and globally-appointed protectors of freedom and justice in this world, and that ideology isn’t likely to change any time soon.  Now we just need to find a way to heal our own troubled nation and protect the children in our own backyards and schoolyards, classrooms and hallways.

Taking the right to bare arms away from law-abiding Americans is akin to “changing the minds” (a la Paul Ryan in the vice presidential debate) of Middle Eastern nations or changing women’s minds about the right to choose—from either perspective.  That’s a war nobody wants to take on.  Perhaps we can, however, come to a reasonable compromise about important things like background checks for all persons of age in a prospective household, waiting periods, trigger locks, safety checks and safety courses.

I wouldn’t be GlutenNaziMom if I didn’t relay the fact that much of the anger and the malcontent that exists in our country can be attributed both to what is lacking (vital nutrients/ variety) and to what is present (GMOs, sugar, chemicals and additives) in our Standard American Diet—S.A.D.  And there’s a reason the acronym is so very, very SAD.

We must realize that all of the pieces and the parts are connected.  I am a sometimes reasonably liberal and sometimes reasonably conservative chick—founding member of the Enlightened Middle Majority—who occasionally likes to very safely shoot guns, who has chosen both life and otherwise, and thus could never presume to “choose” for another woman, and who has pulled herself out of the depths of poverty as a single parent and for a season contemplated suicide, and who believes that Health Care Reform as it sits is faulty, at best.  How can it support itself if NO ONE is paying a copay?  The math simply doesn’t work.  And what earthly good can it do if we don’t address mental health in the process?  If we continue to fail to address or even discuss Welfare Reform?  Mind, Body, Spirit; it’s all interconnected, from an individual standpoint, and from our nation’s. 

Guns and the right to bare arms, religious freedom as well as the freedom not to worship are organic and fundamental pieces of the ideology on which this country was built.  Mr. President, you may have won the election because for just enough the alternative was unpalatable, but you have a long way to go before you win over and heal the hearts and the minds and the pocketbooks of the Greatest Nation and of the world.  And until we as a nation come together, support one another, and collectively do so, unthinkable and unacceptable horrors such as the one in Sandy Hook Elementary school last Friday, such as the one in the mall in Newport Beach, California, three days before, and the one in the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, before that, will only continue to happen and likely continue to escalate.  I think we can all agree that nobody wants to see that happen in their corner of small town America, or anywhere.

AUTHOR NOTE:  Please be advised, this may contain a trigger for single mothers (parents).  But its intent is to convey and contain hope.  It gets better.  Updating for the Suicide Awareness and Prevention Blog Carnival.  Follow along at #SABD13 (and check out what the tweeps were tweeting about).  I'm also linking up for Suicide Prevention Day with Time Warp Tuesday on Bereaved and Blessed, for their theme this month: Learning.  This is definitely reflective of what I've learned since my daughter was this little peanut.  

AUTHOR UPDATE 05/13/14:  I performed this piece for Listen to Your Mother 2014 in Northwest Indiana. You can view my performance and those of my fellow cast members (and countless others that took place in 32 cities across the US) on the Listen to Your Mother YouTube channel.

I had a recurring nightmare as a child:  It started with my brother and me sitting in a parking lot in my mother’s Pink Panther pink ’69 Mustang convertible. Its white ragtop was down, and its rumble seat was hidden away in the trunk. 

The parking lot was outside a crumbling brick building in a southwest Chicago suburb, near where we lived for a couple of years when I was in elementary school.  My mom was my Brownie leader.  Once, she left us in the car when she ran in to buy patches.  I’m sure it wasn’t that bad of a neighborhood, but it’s also where a mentally disabled man-child tried to kiss her outside a convenience store.  Compared to where we came from, this had a lasting imprint on me.

My brother had once hooked his diapered behind to the gear shifter in my mom’s old car.  It tumbled down the dirt driveway at my grandparents’ with her running after it, shouting at no one, “Stop, Stop!” After my brother dove out the window, she managed to jump in and the old green Ford Torino lurched to a stop.  My mother’s white knuckles and heaving breaths are still vivid through the dappled windshield.  I suppose I had a well-hidden desire to rescue my little brother from that.  

So, my recurring dream took the two of us from that parking lot near Chicago, to a familiar street.  All of a sudden, we’re bouncing along the bluff in our quaint lakeside hometown across Lake Michigan.  I am in third grade; my brother is in first.  I am behind the wheel of that Pink Panther Pink Mustang convertible and we’re careening and hanging on for dear life, until I can’t keep control on a curve and we go sailing off the cliff, into oblivion. 

Each time I woke, sweating, frightened, and feeling like a failure.

A condition that is oft repeated years later when I’m a single mom, trying to survive with a delightful, sparkly-eyed little toddler to care for.  Alone in my conservative hometown.  With no child support. 

After much convincing, my mother had co-signed a lease for me and my daughter to escape the 1200 square foot house we’d shared with her and her second husband, three dogs, two cats, and my skooching infant half brother who came a year and nine days after my daughter. 

I moved us into a back alley apartment downtown.  It had one bedroom, just wide enough for my daughter’s twin-size bed on the floor and an old cane rocking chair from my mother. The room was long and narrow.  Her changing-table-turned-dresser occupied one wall, and an overloaded pink metal bookshelf stood just inside the doorway.  There was little room for her to play on the floor, and no carpet to cover the distressed hardwood.  I read to her in the cane rocker every night before bed, where her projectile spit-up still crusted underneath the swooping wooden arms. 

I’d hand-stitched a pink balloon valance for my daughter’s room, a blue one for our living room that doubled as my bedroom, and stayed up for almost an entire weekend straight to hand-stitch a blue-flowered comforter for myself.  I have it in the guest room to this day.  My daughters and their husbands sleep under it when they come to visit from their respective homes in Minnesota and New Mexico.  My daughter used to curl up under it on the pullout couch with me.  She’d watch Looney-Tunes on Saturday mornings while I slept in. 

She’d curl up in my lap on the bathroom floor, and lift my tear-streaked face, and say, “Wudge you, Momma.” 

It was so hard.  Paying for daycare.  Keeping the lights on, which I didn’t always.  Keeping the heat going. 

And the loneliness. 

A cavernous loneliness from working and earning never enough; from returning bottles and cans from my dad’s office for their 5-cent deposit to buy bread and milk and eggs to feed my little girl; from raiding my dad’s change jar for quarters to go to the Laundromat to wash our clothes. 

There were boyfriends on occasion. We both had our hearts broken more than once before we met the man she would eventually call Daddy.  Who walked her down the aisle and cried at her wedding and danced with her under a spotlight into her husband’s waiting arms.  He gave her an equally impish and delightful stepsister to grow up with, for us to love and to be the only person who could properly send her off to married life with the perfect Maid of Honor RAP.

Since my husband’s daughter, younger by exactly two Januarys, stepped into my daughter's room and said, "This place is a mess," they've shared every birthday.  They've shared Barbies®, Practical Magic, potions, and pets.  They've whispered under covers and behind closed doors, over phone lines and across air.   They've rescued one another from childhood loneliness, and young adult mishap.  They welcomed a long-sought brother into their teenaged lives, whose baby’s breath, sweet, meaty little hands and nighttime cries provided an excellent source of birth control.  

Just like their father and I, my daughters are bonded by so much more than blood.  They're bonded by history.  We're all bonded by exactly what the other needed at precisely the right time.

So, what if…?

What if the recurring nightmare I would remember years later while driving my toddler around that same curve in my 1981 Dodge Omni with no radio; sucking her binky and clutching her soft yellow blankie, her trusting eyes watching me in the rearview…what if instead of putting on the breaks and slowing down and taking that same curve cautiously during a blazing snow-storm and thinking time and again through my tears that long winter that I couldn’t possibly do it without her—to leave her with a lifetime of thinking it was her fault?  What if I’d closed my eyes, took my hands off the wheel and decided to just drive into that icy lake?

But I couldn’t do it with her either.  She was too precious.  Too beautiful.  Too full of life and possible and hugs and Wudge You Mommas.  I needed her, and she needed me, and she saved my life in more ways than I can count.  But it was all so much more than one girl should have been asked to carry on her tiny shoulders. 

We made it through that winter, and another, and another after that.  We made it through me losing a job, and my car getting repossessed, and quietly not being able to pay rent the winter after we met her daddy and her sister.  We made it to the day we moved into a new place with them when I saw the weight of more than two thousand days before float off her shoulders with the imagination of two little girls, who were both for once, just being kids.  They were playing with the dollhouse my Gramps had made her on the floor in her new bedroom, which had room enough for two small girls, with the same birthday two years apart, to sprawl out on their bellies.

Thank God I didn’t…Just Drive.

AUTHOR UPDATE 03/16/13:  I read a blog post today by Les Floyd on the topic of Suicide and Cowardice.  In the comments I shared a link to this one, because it's certainly relevant, and I added what Kathryn and I said below about driving through life's challenges, because you never know what has the potential to be beautiful around that next turn. 

I gave a talk a couple weeks ago to the Depression and Bipolar Alliance, about the relationship between gluten intolerance and depression (and bipolar, and anxiety disorder, as well as neurodegenerative diseases, like Alzheimer's, dementia, etc., etc., etc.) that only years later I have come to understand, and to understand how the avoidance of gluten now helps me to cope so much better with the curve-balls that life inevitably throws our way.

Suicidal thoughts can often be as a result of chronic pain and chronic illness, including infertility, which can lead to anxiety and depression. Please know that your life matters, and that getting help matters, and changing your diet and helping yourself absolutely matters and could absolutely make a monumental difference.  We all have a story to tell and we all have a place in this world.  There might be someone right around that next corner who needs you in their life; possibly even to save it.  Please, save your own first.  Suicide prevention, compassion and empathy is so important.


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Dr. Mercola on wheat: "Three Ounces of This a Day May be Harming Your Brain"