An amazing weekend opens new doors for an amazing future...

Yesterday I returned home from an enriching, eye opening and inspiring weekend at a writer's retreat in the beautiful and quaint village of Saugatuck, Michigan.  Not only did I learn about writing and how to achieve success as a writer, but I connected with other fellow writers who gave me just as much, if not more, inspiration to be a writer, a successful one, a published one!  I felt so much at home at the B&B where we stayed, where we connected, where we took our futures to the next level.  It's hard to explain exactly what I felt or how I felt, but it was good.  Damn good! 

Everyone I met at this retreat had a great story to share with us and a great voice to do it.  Some were funny, some were deep and introspective, some were sweet, but all were phenomenal.  It was the perfect combination of people.  I expected everyone at this retreat to be from the area or the region, but it was a national convention!  Some were from Ohio, Nebraska, Texas, New Jersey and a few from the area.  Each one had a unique voice and a great story to tell.  Some brought us to tears and some brought themselves to tears with their stories. 

The author, Wade Rouse, who led the retreat gave us our first writing exercise Friday morning to write about what we fear most to write about.  Anything.  No limits on subject matter.  So many thoughts ran through my head.  Should I make it a funny fear?  An emotional fear?  A career fear?  Yikes!  What do I fear most to write about?  I decided to write about my fear of how happy I am with my husband.  I figured it was sickening enough and I feel awkward sharing it sometimes as it does seem unreal how happy we are.  WHy not?  So I did.  When I read it to the group, I was thrilled at the feedback that I received.  I still have this absurd issue that I don't possess a talent to write well.  But in fact I do write well, or at least have a way to express myself that is felt and understood by others.  As we discussed my piece it came out that I was writing about my guilt of being happy after the death of my first husband.  I didn't even think about that when I was writing it, but it's true.  For the longest time I did feel guilty about being happy again.  As if I was betraying my dead husband.  Sounds ludricous, but it's so common with widows and widowers.  You feel bound by this loyalty to them, and yet you want to move on and have moved on, but the guilt, survivor's guilt, holds you back.  I'm pretty much past that, but I suppose it's still there, a little bit at least. 

Wade, the author in charge, gave me positive feedback and liked the simplicity of some of my statements in this piece.  He even said that I could really expound on it greatly.  That piece alone has a lot of mileage on it.  I felt good.  REally good after that.  Yep, I am on the right track! 

I have to confess that the other day I was looking for my grade for an assignment for one of my classes.  Sure enough, the teacher had graded it and even commented on it about how good it was.  So I opened up the assignment to read it and discovered that it was indeed a well written paper.  I say that because I don't remember writing it like that and I was impressed at how well I had composed it.  I would've given it a good grade, too!

So here I am starting my first blog to see where this writing thing can go, all thanks to Wade, and my beloved and devoted husband, Brad.  More than anything, I want to be a successful writer.  No, I'm not aspiring to become another Nora Roberts or even J.K. Rowling, but successful enough where I don't have to work another day in an office making money for someone else and not feeling any gratification from it.  I returned to work today and the motivation factor really started to kick in.  Write, write, write!

A Look Back

It's hard to believe that it's been over three years since my Mark passed.  It was an unscheduled death.  Took me by surprise, kind of like a tsunami.  One day you're here, the next you're gone.  I've been comtemplating about writing a memoir about this difficult journey, but opening up those dark memories and the pain is a difficult task.  But I want so badly to share this journey with everyone.  To shed light on a topic that we desparately avoid; death.  Grief.  Depression.  Anger.  Confusion.  Fear.  These are just a sample of what I encountered on my long journey.  A journey that I thought would never end.  A journey that was filled with turbulence, uncertainty, hope and ultimately happiness. 

In our society death is taboo.  When we learn that someone has died to someone that is close to us, we feel awkward and unsure of what to say or do.  We start to think about our own mortality, then we brush it off.  It won't happen to us, that just happens to other people.  Then it does.  Bam!  Bif!  Whop!  Holy armegeddon Batman!  This is heavy and too much to deal with.  It's true.  It is.  But there it is.  Staring you in the face.  Your loved one, your husband, your wife, your mother or your father.  Is gone.  And a bigger loss is your child.  Every day we live is a gamble.  We don't know when we'll go or when our loved ones will go, but they will.  And we will.  Now you have to deal with grief.  My mother told me at one point in my grief that you can't run away from it.  If you do, it will find you and really destroy you. 

Grief is a natural process.  Every culture, every society and every person has a different way of dealing with it, but they all do at some level or in some way.  It may be a ceremonious way with different traditions and ceremonies.  It may be in a personal way with just yourself and close friends and family.  Or it may just be you.  It starts out like a violent storm.  Especially when you're not expecting it, like me.  When the doctors came into the waiting room, it was written all over their faces.  Death.  Then they said the rehearsed, "We're sorry, but we tried everything and we couldn't save him".  No!  Go back and try again!  I'll wait.  But that wasn't an option.  He was only admitted the night before with pancreatitis.  People don't die from that.  The doctors said over and over that he had a deadly case of it, but I ignored the deadly part of it.  He was only 48 and relatively healthy.  C'mon!  He's not going to die.  Then in the last couple hours of his life, I started to realize that death was in the cards.  It was an option.

After the doctors dumped the bad news on us I got up and punched the vending machine.  I don't remember if it even hurt.  I couldn't express my despair and shock loud enough, violently enough or clear enough.  I was shaken to the core.  Then shock took over.  I kept telling myself that I would wake up.  It was only a dream.  Somehow this wasn't really happening.  It wasn't.  I had uncontrollable bouts of crying and sobbing.  I remember I couldn't cry hard enough.  I couldn't find a way to truly express everything that was stirring inside of me.  Every emotion hit me like a tsunami!  There was no sorting through them or putting them into any special order.  They were all there and they wouldn't go away.