women

Love Letter to the Moon #moonlover #ayurveda #fullmoon #IWSG

March 4, 2015 by admin

Moon, you know I am an inconstant lover. I commit to you, and then I get busy and harried, then forget. May this love letter to you breathe into me new commitment.

Twenty years ago, while recovering from a strange illness that left me without a voice for six weeks, I woke in the night and saw you, in your fullness, in your brilliance, and I lost my heart. I want to be with you, I said. I want the freedom to stay up at night, as I did that night, to just watch you, with nothing else to do.

It was a prayer, though I didn’t know it at the time. You did…and you answered. Every month, you waxed and waned, sometimes hiding behind clouds, other times shining over the water. You gave me a glimpse of your power and mystery, and you reached out with your glow to touch my face with support and loving care.

Yet I have been disconnected from you, moon. I lost sight of you except for an occasional glance at the night sky, when you rise over the water and command my attention. I lost you when I lost my female cycles. It never occurred to me at the time that those cycles still exist within me, and you are the key.

Women who study Ayurveda, a sister science to yoga, believe the moon is important to women. The New Moon is for introspection, they say, and the Full Moon is for clarity, power, and manifestation.

A few months ago, when I added more Ayurvedic practices to my life, I began to pay attention to you again. I notice higher levels of energy — and agitation — during the full moon. It’s no surprise to me that this week, as you wax toward your full glory, I am carting bags of compost and manure into the garden. I am weeding and feeding my fruit trees. I am writing busily and happily. I feel strong and alive.

In a few weeks, when you wane to near-darkness, I will begin my period of spring cleansing and reflection.

What if I can reconnect to your rhythms? What if I can dance once again with your ebb and flow? Do I stare stare full in the face of magic? Do I claim my right to know your mysteries?

I will walk this path to find you, and then I will know the answer to those questions. I send you my love, mysterious moon, and I glide in your river of sweet, soft energy.

For more on this month’s full moon, visit these websites. I am not into astrology, but some of them are fun anyway. Enjoy!

http://www.universetoday.com/119164/the-mini-moon-cometh-catch-the-smallest-full-moon-of-2015-this-thursday/

http://www.mysticmamma.com/full-moon-in-virgo-march-5th/

http://www.elephantjournal.com/2015/03/full-moon-in-virgo-head-versus-heart-tug-of-war/

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I am grateful for finding the Insecure Writers Support Group. We’re starting the A-Z Blog Challenge in April, but already I’m feeling the love. We also have a monthly group post, and today’s the day. Thanks, all!

We Haven’t Come Such a Long Way, Baby!

February 4, 2015 by admin

Remember the cigarette ads for Virginia Slims cigarettes? In 1968, we women got a cigarette designed just for us, giving us equal rights to die of lung cancer. Yay equality!

Meantime, equal opportunity issues abound in the workplace. In my last job, the commercial reps were all white men. When I had my exit interview, I pointed out how ridiculous that was. The HR rep, herself a woman, told me with a straight face that they couldn’t find any qualified applicants who were females or minorities, even though other oil & gas companies seemed to manage.

I worked in administrative hell, where we couldn’t even get appropriate software to do our jobs, even though that meant exposure to fines and contract violations because we couldn’t keep track of thousands of contract provisions in our heads. Women worked in administration, and administration didn’t generate revenue, so we just had to make do. After a failed campaign to update our systems, I knew it was time to go.

If I seem unduly stirred up by something that happened seven years ago, it’s because of what happened last week.

By now you’ve probably read the crazy obituary of author and neuroscientist Colleen McCullough, most famous for her novel The Thorn Birds. Does anyone remember Richard Chamberlain in the movie? Hubba hubba. But I digress.

Anyway, if you haven’t read it, catch up on it here. This prolific writer, with scores of accomplishments outside of the world of words, was diminished in an obit that focused on her appearance.

Of course, this is nothing new.

Ever since I returned from the U.K., I’ve studied various biographies of Charlotte Bronte. Elizabeth Gaskell’s The Life of Charlotte Bronte, which influenced generations of readers, portrays this brilliant woman as a tragic figure whose subversive Jane Eyre was an accident of a poor, spinsterish daughter of the church who didn’t know any better.

Sadly, Gaskell, who knew Charlotte Bronte, took her cue from the author herself, who had already written apologetically about her sisters, Emily and Anne, for publishing “coarse” novels that included Wuthering Heights.

Sure, Bronte was a tragic figure. Anyone who is the last survivor of many siblings, who herself dies young, gets a pat on the back for a tough life. However, like Colleen McCullough, Charlotte was ever so much more.

Jane Eyre broke new ground in its portrayal of a woman who would have love only as an equal. In real life, Charlotte Bronte turned down several marriage proposals (eventually marrying late in her life). She had an intense relationship with a married man — unconsummated, and unrequited, but one where creativity and intellect brought out her deepest passions, which fortunately for us ended up on the page.

She was, by all accounts, “plain,” just as Colleen McCullough was reported to be. But who cares?

Someone does, obviously, or we wouldn’t still have to deal with this drivel.

Novels written by women still do not garner the same attention for awards as men’s novels do. Female politicians are expected to be “hot” more than brilliant.

I know when to hand the phone to my husband because certain people, such as mechanics, will respond differently to him as a man. I can’t tell you how many jokes I’ve had to listen to about women and shopping, women and shoes, women and [fill in stereotype here].

Ladies, we need to claim our power. Whatever we do in this life, we need to share our fullness and strength. We are more than our weight, our complexion, or our hair. The Guardian did a better job with Ms. McCullough here, acknowledging her many accomplishments with warmth and humanity. Let’s acknowledge those who treat us with respect and continue to call out those who do not.

Reading the Tea Leaves

April 15, 2013 by admin

I seem to be collecting a lot of tea lately.

Black tea, green tea, lavender tea, tea to strengthen my adrenals, tea to help me sleep at night, tea to help me wake in the morning. The other day, while visiting the Tulip Festival in Washington’s Skagit Valley, I spied a chocolate tea that had to come home with me.

My sisters had come for their annual spring break visit. Growing up in small towns in Illinois, we didn’t grow up with afternoon tea rituals, but we seem to have adopted them, individually and collectively, over time. Last year at this time, we took a ferry to Victoria to enjoy tea at The Empress, and once I served high tea on our deck on a sunny summer’s day.

Amy, my younger sister, is always on the lookout for tea cups — English china, thank you. We scour the thrift stores looking for such treasures, and she usually finds something fun for her collection.

Me, I enjoy sipping from my gardener cups. I’m more concerned with filling the house with the aromas of steeped herbs, and I couldn’t wait to share Rosemary Gladstar’s recipe for root beer tea. Outdoors, I have planted mint, and I heard a rumor that chamomile plant starts will be available this week, so at some point in time, I’ll make fresh tea from herbs in the garden.

Tea reminds me to slow life down, and I need it more than ever as springtime speeds up life. The garden calls out for planting and weeding. The first draft of my next novel has cooled for a few weeks and now calls me to get back to work. I woke up the other morning with an idea about how to fix a problem with another novel that has stymied me for some time. A friend sends me a link to a writing conference that I plan to attend. A blogger friend reaches out about a new writers’ group. I’m doing volunteer work for a couple of local organizations, and found myself working closely with a local business to raise funds for a needed expansion.

If I read tea leaves, I’m sure they would say, “Caution. You’re overdoing it again.”

I am fortunate. I am not overly busy because I have to juggle multiple jobs to make ends meet. I have the luxury of doing what I damn well please, for which I am deeply grateful. Still, there’s so much that I want to do! So much to enjoy! So many books to write! So many plants to put into the ground! So many weeds to pull! Though I do my best to stay balanced, sometimes I overdo, making myself overly tired and cranky.

When my sisters arrived, I put my work aside. We spent time together, tooling around the area, enjoying the tulips, shopping, and yes, hitting nearby tea houses. I played tourist in my own neighborhood, which forced me to put my work aside. Yes, I snuck outside a few times to weed or plant, but otherwise, I enjoyed some needed time off from all the hard work I’d been doing. As with any vacation, I felt a sense of renewal.

Today I’m back at work. This week I gear up the blogging and writing as I return to my familiar routine. Sometime in mid-afternoon I will stop, pause, and make myself a nice pot of tea. I will breathe in its scent. I will make time to hold a warm cup in hand in a moment of gentleness to soothe my spirit, to take in the miraculous beauty of my life. In these moments of reflection, I know that I am enough, and my efforts are enough. Yes, the tea leaves tell me I have work to do, but the tea itself reminds me to take my time, to relax, and to trust that it will all get done in good time.

Best Blogs Thursday and Then Some!

July 12, 2012 by admin

The lovely and talented M.H. Gerber has tagged me for a blog hop called The Next Big Thing. Thank you, M.H.! She’s been one busy lady, with three books out. I’m so impressed!

After I take care of my weekly Best Blogs business, I’ll answer some questions and point y’all in the direction of some authors to watch.

Some weeks it’s easier than others to find new blogs worthy of recommendation, but yesterday the indomitable Totsymae, one of my all-time favorite bloggers, tossed me a gift when she turned me on to The Good, The Bad, The Worse. Blogger Linda Medrano covers a variety of topics with intelligence and humor. She’s fun and interesting, the kind of person I would like to get to know better. I’ve been catching up on her posts with great delight. Check her out!

Now, back to The Next Big Thing. Here are my answers to M.H.’s questions:

1. What is the title of your book/WIP?

Currently, I am completing Blood and Loam, a Vietnam-era book about a young woman coming of age in a time of social and political upheaval.

I’m also drafting a series of essays and a new novel with the working title House on the Hill. I’m sure that will change several times, though!

2. Where did the idea for the book come from?

With Blood and Loam, I wanted to write about the confusion I felt growing up in the 60s and 70s. Women’s roles were changing, and I was getting a lot of mixed messages. I’d had some turbulent relationships in those days, so I wanted to explore the life of a young woman with little self-esteem. Originally it was set in 1980, but when I switched it to 1970, it opened all kinds of exciting doors! A lot of things happened that year that reverberate through our current political climate, so the setting has become its own character.

3. What genre would your book fall under?

Good question! I am calling it historical fiction because the Vietnam-era setting is essential to the story. The main characters are female. Just as in The Foreign Language of Friends, I write about women who don’t get along very well – in this case, a mother and daughter. For some reason I am fascinated by the friction that can exist in female relationships. So, I suspect that some people will call it “women’s fiction,” but I don’t think it really qualifies.

4. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

Stella: Lindsey Lohan. Yes, you read that right. I’m rooting for her to make a comeback. She needs to stop messing with her face, though.

Ruth (Stella’s mother): Sarah Jessica Parker. I need someone petite and blue-eyed. She needs to die her hair black, though.

Adrian: Colin Farrell or Johnny Depp. I need someone who can come across as dangerous and sexy at the same time.

Luke: John Goodman. Well, John may be a little old for the role these days, but I need a big, beefy, blue-collar type of guy.

Grandma Hannah: Dianne Wiest.

5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

When the violence at Kent State erupts, new graduate Stella Kellar returns to her small, Midwestern hometown to escape the turmoil, only to find that some wars are personal.

6. Is your book published or represented?

No.

7. How long did it take you to write?

Years. Seriously. I first drafted the novel more than 20 years ago, but made the mistake of getting it critiqued too soon and ended up tossing the whole thing in the trash. It was originally a horror novel, but I didn’t want to end up being stuck writing horror — that’s not what I do. In 2010, I used NaNoWriMo to rewrite it in its current form. It’s now been through two developmental edits, and I think one more will do it.

It’s a hard book to write, but I think I have the right story now. I had to be older, wiser, and a better writer to do what needs to be done. There are big themes and some events in the book that are so controversial, I was told by one expert, that no major publishing house would touch it. I’m uncomfortable with it, but it’s the story that wants to be told, so I’m sticking with it.

8. What other books within your genre would you compare it to?

Good question. I’m reading some other Vietnam-era fiction now to see what other people have done. Right now I have no idea.

9. Which authors inspired you to write this book?

None and all. This book has no real roadmap – it’s unlike anything else I’ve read. That’s one reason it’s been so hard to write.

10. Tell us anything else that might pique our interest in your book.

It’s sexy and violent, with multiple taboo topics!

Some writers to watch whom I have tagged:

Juliet Greenwood: Check out her elegant, lovely Eden’s Garden.

Ute Carbone: The author of a fine novel, Blueberry Truth, Carbone has some new work out that I’m excited about reading.

Karen Wyle: Author of a powerful, character-driven sci-fi novel called Twin Bred. I recently had the privilege of being a beta reader for one of Karen’s WIPs, currently called Reflections, and she’s working on other stuff as well.

Have a great weekend, y’all! I’ll be busy the next several days at the Port Townsend Writers’ Conference. I’m sure I’ll have lots of news to report next week!

Book Of The Week: The Knitting Circle

June 26, 2012 by admin

I mentioned recently that I’m not great at reading instructions. I’m also not great at reading book blurbs, those nice descriptions on the back of the cover that are supposed to suck you in and make you want to read a book. Someone recommended The Knitting Circle to me, so I downloaded it. Without. Reading. What. It’s. About.

By the time I read the Prologue, I was having an uh-uh moment.

You know how TV shows have the little warning at the beginning about whether there are sex, drug, or violence references? Hubby says they need warnings for when something awful happens to a dog or a child. I stopped watching Mad Men after an episode where one of the characters abandoned his dog so he could drink. House M.D. lost me for a while when a child died. Shoot, when we saw War Horse on Broadway, I was a sobbing mess at intermission, and those horses weren’t even real — they had people underneath them, for God’s sakes.

So you can imagine my frame of mind when I learn that in The Knitting Circle, our heroine, Mary, is reeling from the sudden and unexpected death of her daughter.

Mary joins a knitting circle at the suggestion of her mother, with whom she has had a distant, difficult relationship. At first she feels safe among these women who know nothing of her story. Of course, as she gets to know them…

Did you ever hear the Buddhist story about the woman whose baby had died? She went to the Buddha and begged him to bring her child back to life. The Buddha tells her he will do it under one condition: she must find a home where death and loss have not paid a visit. Of course, as she travels everywhere, she hears one story after another about the losses of others.

The Knitting Circle is like that. As Mary ventures back into the world and into new friendships, knitting all the while because knitting brings a sense of peace when nothing else does, she understands that she is not alone.

Author Ann Hood, whose own daughter died similarly to Stella, Mary’s child, brings a depth of understanding to a parent’s grief that only those who have been through it understand. Sometimes strangers provide the greatest kindness and compassion when friends and family don’t know what to say. Mary must learn to take the wound and to knit it into something beautiful.

Reading the story, I found myself angry and upset. Mary is falling apart, unable to function in those deep, early months of grief. I wanted her to get up. I wanted her to triumph. I wanted her to hold it together.

I wanted her to because I had to, because when it happened to me, I had no choice. My babies, two of them, died in utero in 1997, and the pain of those losses has never fully healed. I don’t hurt like I used to, but there are still days when it hits me, especially Mother’s Day and October 14, my daughter’s birthday.

It dawned on me that I wasn’t angry at Mary at all — I was angry that I didn’t get to grieve the way I needed to. I wanted to be the one to fall apart, and I didn’t get to be that person. As Mary’s marriage lurches and struggles through the agony, I remembered how my own marriage came to a loving but painful end when our different grieving styles exposed other incompatibilities.

Like Hood, I wrote about my pain, but in a different way. When a Grandchild Dies: What to Do, What to Say, How to Cope, came out of my experiences as a bereaved mother, when I discovered that I had books and support groups to turn to, while my mother did not. Writing that book changed my life in ways I couldn’t begin to imagine. Like Hood, I have emerged from my grief transformed, even though the scab remains.

Hood knits a beautiful story of loss and healing. It is authentic and true, down to the core. It is breathtakingly sad, but not hopeless. Life does, indeed, go on.

Book Recommendation: Eden’s Garden by Juliet Greenwood

June 19, 2012 by admin

Before I go into this week’s book recommendation, I just have to brag a little. I mean, I recommended Cheryl Strayed’s Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail several weeks ago, well before Oprah picked it up for her book club! So you heard it here first, folks. I’m just sayin’.

Now, to this week’s recommendation:

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From a recent “Secret Garden” tour. The Latin inscription above the archway translates to “Break on through to the other side.” (Remember The Doors?)

Take a woman from present time with the typical dilemma of modern-day womanhood — balancing career and love. Combine her story with that of a mysterious woman from days gone by who carries a dark secret. Throw in that genetic “something” that draws us back to our roots and deepest desires with a bit of Welsh magic, and you end up with the Bronte-esque Eden’s Garden by Juliet Greenwood.

Let me say first that I don’t use the Bronte name lightly. I first read Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte in the fourth grade and periodically pull it down from the shelf even today. I dragged hubby to the last incarnation of the movie version, which he loved, and I extracted a promise from him that we will visit Bronte country in England. While I didn’t enjoy sister Emily’s Wuthering Heights nearly as well, it also influenced my early reading life. It took me a long time to become willing to leave 19th century literature because of these wonderful writers. So when I say something is Bronte-esque, that translates to “major cool” in my brain.

In Eden’s Garden, Carys is the modern-day heroine, who returns to the town of her childhood to help her mother through hip-replacement surgery and recovery. She left as a young woman, jilting her childhood sweetheart to pursue her career dreams. At the time of her return, she is moving toward a career change, returning to her love of gardens, something she learned from her grandfather. The gardens of Plas Eden, a place where history and sad memories collide, draw her back. While her own life plans begin to unravel, she is drawn into an untold story of love and pain from ghosts of the past.

As a lover of gardens myself, I find that working in the garden connects me to my ancestors, and the same is true for Carys. The unique statues and mystery of the gardens at Plas Eden, a property struggling with disrepair and economic woes, add a further element of mysticism to these generational connections.

The other woman from the past? We don’t know for a long time, but as her story unfolds, it intertwines with Carys’ narrative, and we discover her, bit by bit. As she is revealed, Carys makes her own discoveries about life, love, and what really matters.

As rich and varied as the garden of Plas Eden itself, this story covers multiple generations of a woman’s struggle and heartache with a deft touch. Sensual and romantic, the story swept me away with its strong female characters. We are reminded how much better we women have it these days — and yet, even now, we must often make difficult choices. How do we manage both work and love in our modern, driven society?

One warning: once I got about halfway through, I could NOT put this book down. It is filled with Welsh charm and romance, and delights with a sweet, lovingly tended story that leaves the reader deeply satisfied, much as we would by strolling through a magnificent garden. Of course, now I have to get to Wales to explore some more on my own!