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! 

Like Tom Hanks' character in Castaway, I want to shout to the seagulls, "I [former aimless flake who talked and wrote plenty about doing it but just couldn’t seem to finish]—WROTE A BOOK—this summer!" A shitty first draft, at least. There is still much editing to do.

But it’s true. I wrote the first draft of a whole, complete book this summer. I never dreamed I would finish something. And now? I’m hooked. Because let’s face it, not everyone wants to schlepp pennies for clicks for conglomerates. Some of us have shit to say. We have stories and memoirs that burn black, ashy grooves in our brains until we finally let them out into the world. 

Once we finish, edit, polish, and publish, in order to reach our audience, we must promote ourselves. According to the brilliant and savvy Rachel Thompson of Bad Redhead Media, what's often missing from the streams of shameless self-promoters is the work of other awesome writers and interaction; give & take, aka conversation.

I don't promote the work of other writers without thought or care. I do it strategically. I do it for authors whose platforms I support, and yes, agree with. I do it for individuals that work to spread positivity rather than judgment, or I do it for interesting, likable people with whom I hope to sit on a panel someday. People like New York author Patty Chang Anker, who I’m introducing when she visits Forever Books this Thursday, August 7th, at 7:00 PM. She will sign copies of her book, Some Nerve: Lessons Learned While Becoming Brave. Patty surfed for the first time off the coast of Silver Beach in Lake Michigan, after renting her surfboard from Third Coast Surf Shop (see chapter 7). No biggie for them, they surf in winter all the time, because that’s when the waves are totally rad. But Patty was a newbie. And FYI, Lake Michigan acts a LOT like an ocean, complete with rip tides. Several people who haven’t spent a lifetime learning to respect the lake are at risk of drowning, and some do drown, each season.

Another for instance, I can’t thank my co-facilitator, Ami Hendrickson of @MuseInks enough, from the bottom of my procrastinating, doubtful heart for bringing me along for the #Write2TheEnd ride of a lifetime this summer.

            While co-facilitating our maiden 8-week session of #Write2TheEnd, I was talking, you see, to myself about giving ourselves permission and casting out our doubts and claiming our worth (thank you, coaches Nancy & Nicci). Funny how that works. And what a delicious, evil brain Ami has for thinking up #Write2TheEnd and inviting me to co-facilitate the course with her.

As I was teaching, I was learning beside our participants and listening to Ami share amazing tools that actually make writing a book possible. And those who know me know I’m all about possible. But we humans can’t always see what’s in front of our faces. We throw up walls and excuses and what ifs and we let fear get in the way.

And we let the judgment of others who use terms like “humblebrag” make us question ourselves and feel icky about an essential aspect of getting our work out there: marketing and self-promotion. Even if you get a publisher these days, you’re doing your own marketing. And the current climate makes that a difficult and delicate balance to strike.

Investing in a course like #Write2TheEnd, or gifting yourself with a writing retreat like the Haven Retreat that changed my life when I took a train from Michigan to Montana in the middle of the coldest winter in decades, is so much different than talking about writing a book. This is actually taking meaningful steps toward DOING it with purpose and with a plan and with accountability and with amazing support, if I do say so myself. ~blush~

And I will be the first to champion #Write2TheEnd alumni the moment their stories are no longer tentative, private, wistful ideas. The success they have achieved already, just by investing in the work and in themselves, and accomplishing their goals, means they've already earned Ami's and my eternal support.    

So this is me, humblebragging all over my students, and all over Ami & myself, too. Because I did what I feared was impossible, and she helped me get there. And now I know how to do it again & again. 

I picked the “low hanging fruit” method, to kind of fool myself into submission. I started our eight-week session with the goal of turning blogs from a site I had shut down into a book. Easy peasy. It’s already written, right?

Ha! Silly me. One thing led to another, reading and tweaking my old blog posts prompted more writing and the need to fill in holes, to connect the bits and pieces, and include more data about what I’ve learned and whom I’ve learned from along the way. So what began as maybe a 50,000-word book, will likely end up closer to an 80,000-word book. And I’m not even getting $100 back at the end. Because…teacher. That wouldn’t be fair. Buy wow! I did that!

I’m pretty geeked. But my pride and joy in my own accomplishment doesn’t begin to compare with how my heart is swelling with pride and joy and amazement at the progress our participants have made, in the breakthroughs they’ve experienced, and in the success they’ve achieved.

It’s obvious to me from the process of writing my book this summer that I have indeed overcome and achieved a great deal: I have three amazing kids and we’ve held our blended family together for over twenty years through a lot of struggle. But building and supporting writers ranks in the top ten of my greatest achievements thus far.

As we wrap up our summer session and gear up for our fall session, which begins September 15th, I’m looking back with the amazement and pride of a momma bird watching her flock take flight.

Sooo…perhaps I am bragging about writing a book this summer, but there’s nothing humble about it. And well, it’s just too bad if I am humblebragging anyway. It’s amazing to me that I finished something, and I’m damn proud of myself. And I’m damn proud that I’m a part of something that can help make that happen for others. Shoot me. Call me a braggart. I don’t care.

It isn’t an understatement to say that if I can do it, you truly can, too. I hope you’ll join us. Even if you’re not local to southwest Michigan, be sure to get on the mailing list for the newsletter. We’re working on offering online options and on expanding the site in 2015, which, it freaks me out to say, is right around the corner.

On Monday, August 25th, 6:00 – 8:00 PM, at our offices, 420 Main Street, St. Joseph, Ami and I are planning an evening to introduce ourselves to a new batch (or returning batch) of local writers, share a little about our program, and share a little about the Midwest Writers Workshop in Muncie, Indiana, we recently attended. We will hold a mini session open to your questions with answers to help you meet your goals and build your writer community. If there’s time, we may open it up to a read-around during which you can share a short work of your own.

I hope you’ve done something as amazing and outside your comfort zone with your summer as I have. If so, I hereby invite you to humblebrag about it in the comments.

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

I was working in our restaurant when a customer burst through the door and asked if we had a TV.  We did not, so he ran to his shop and brought us a little black and white one, the kind with the old rabbit ears.

It was the quietest that restaurant had ever been, the most food ever left on plates, and the tips were sparse.  The only hollow sounds were those of burners clicking, ventilation blowing.  Even the newscasters left many silent spaces between their attempts to speculate and explain.

There was no explanation.  Nothing could make sense of anything we were seeing.

The laughter and the joy and the community camaraderie you could always find at our restaurant were gone in an instant.  Like a giant vacuum had come in and sucked it all away, and it never did get its life back.  I’m sure there are others that were much more closely impacted that still feel like they’ve never gotten their lives back.

The restaurant industry was hit particularly hard, however, when (what felt like, and in some ways probably was) the world decided they wanted to hold on to whatever hadn’t been lost, eat at home, be with their children, gather close around the family table again.

Our restaurant was too young and couldn’t bear the sudden downturn in business that shut off the summer season so soon and so finitely.  Sadly, we had to close the following April, almost exactly three years after we’d opened.  We should have closed the previous November, and to this day we feel the financial ramifications of not doing so.  But we were worried about our employees through the winter, and it was so hard to let go of the dreams, the intentions, the maybes, the what-ifs.

Had we not closed when we did, I believe with every piece of my soul that my son would not be here.

Infertility was a battle I fought every day we owned that restaurant.  I had a miscarriage on a morning that no one was coming in to open and cook and be ready for customers at 6 a.m., but me.  I was bleeding.  I knew it was happening.  But I couldn’t leave.  We’d been trying four years at that point.

The month after we closed though, after my pH was suddenly, magically in balance absent the daily stress of operating the restaurant, which has an adverse chemical impact on the body, I saw my bluebirds, and I was given hope.

We traveled to England for my husband’s work.  That’s what the UK was called when I was a little girl, and it was the homeland of both of my maternal grandparents—there was no question, I was going.  Even amid all the money troubles we had like so many other restaurant owners across the country, I felt such a connection to my heritage and like my personal healing had truly begun.

Just a few short months later, after six long years—72 some months of disappointment—I had reason to take a pregnancy test again, and it was positive.  Even though we lived in a world that was broken and crazy, for us the Universe had finally aligned, and I knew it was meant to be.

Because I believed so deeply in the omen of those bluebirds sent by my Gramps.

Because tragedy and struggle happen, but life is for the living, and it goes on.

And every day that we wake up.  And we throw off our covers.  And we set our feet on the floor.  Has the potential to be beautiful.

God bless this one.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.


RECLAIMYourFertility.com


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