The Prologue
I can't believe the day has finally come that I'm launching this blog!
For eight years now I've been wanting to write an autobiographical novel, with the goal being to empower more women to live their best lives, whatever that means for them.
My intention is to post here weekly - entertaining stories that will hopefully inspire, uplift, set you straight, or somehow fill your cup!
Nine years ago I was a newly single mom, with a part time stylist's income. I didn't make enough to afford Bay Area housing costs, had no car, my child hated me and everything was ten times harder than I thought it would be all those times I'd fantasized about leaving my husband but fear would stop me. Read it again. TEN times harder.
But ya know what? The rewards have been 100 times greater than I EVER imagined possible!
We only see what our experience and perspective allow us to see.
So for my first blog post I thought I'd share an excerpt from my book. Give you a feel for where I'm coming from and what I'm trying to do.
I've written VERY little so far, and this excerpt will likely evolve dramatically as I complete more of my book... but this is the most recent piece I've written, about a year back, as an intro/prologue. Probably more as a tool for myself, to get some direction after a long hiatus from writing. It's rough and unedited, but so am I.
I hope you enjoy/connect with it on some level.
Please leave a comment/feedback!
I believe we all have a story worth sharing. No matter who you are, regardless of race, socioeconomic background, gender or sexual orientation. It’s one of the many beautiful ways that, despite that diversity which makes each one of us unique, we are all the same. One human race. We carry with us volumes of short stories. Memories of experiences past. Our truth.
But what makes my story worth sharing beyond the usual ways we share our lives? Like how we do recounting our weekend with a coworker or catching up with friends over drinks. When you break down my life into a simple outline, it sure doesn’t seem that interesting. Fairly common actually... I married far too young at 18. Had a baby at 22, just as I was starting my career. I was a stay at home mom who worked in a salon doing hair two to three days a week. Other days I was in full soccer mom mode, driving my girl to practice then coming home to make a full dinner from scratch with key ingredients picked fresh from our garden... Until the day I couldn’t live that miserable lie anymore and turned my own world upside down.
Writing a book was NOT my idea. I guess the stories I told friends and clients were not your average life experience and after a few months of being single, they began telling me I needed to write a book. I remember my girlfriend Leah emphatically telling me, “I got that 50 Shades book and I couldn’t even get through it. Your stories have ruined me. You need to write a book, it'll be a best seller, and they'll even make it into a movie.” A couple weeks later my client Vicki came into the salon on her regular five week rotation. She sat in my chair and I asked her what’s been going on the last month since I saw her. “No, I wanna start with you first. Your stories are always so good.” Then another client. Then another. So I began to believe maybe I really could write a book. And people would actually buy it. But still that wasn't quite enough to motivate me.
Something new started to happen during that time as well. As I’d tell clients my tales of weeks past, time and time again they would tell me that I somehow inspired them. What was so inspiring that prompted women to say that? I realized that after hearing how life was beating me down and I chose to continue carving my path regardless, they were inspired by my strength and passion for living the very best life I could. It was then that I went from believing I maybe had the chance do this thing, to deciding I really wanted to do it, that I was going to make it happen. I realized if I was inspiring women who heard my stories in the salon, writing a book would enable me to help women on a much larger scale. And they need it.
I couldn’t really afford a laptop so instead I bought myself an iPad, and began the cathartic journey of putting my story to paper, figuratively speaking, with this newfound desire to help other women who were still living a similar struggle. I began writing. Though I didn’t really get very far. It wasn’t an issue of finding the right words, or any inability to write. That comes fairly easy to me, writing the way that I would speak, and I’m a natural storyteller. What I lacked was time, investing all that I had in two people, the first and number one priority being my teen daughter. D was still in a post-divorce tailspin, requiring far more attention, research and damage control than the parent of an average child need give. The weekly rollercoaster rides were enough to push anyone well past their limit.
A year into the struggle to rebuild my life as a newly single mom, I met the second person to distract me from my writing, a man. As if the first wasn’t sufficient. I even, timidly, brought him around D very early into dating him. On a crisp spring morning a few months prior, D and I were perusing the farmers market and she asked me to buy berries from the first stand we passed selling berries. I gave her this explanation. “You don’t just buy berries from the first stand to sell them! We just got here and have to to circle back anyways. Check out all the stands. Find the BEST basket of berries here. That’s the only one coming home with us. Hahaha, it’s the same with dating. Meet different people, learn about yourself and what you want and don’t want. Don’t be quick to settle down.” I think there was a “like I did with your dad” said under my breath or at least in my head. I recall her making some comment about how I was essentially telling her to be a slut so I still questioned how she received my message. Come autumn that year, I told her I wanted to introduce her to the very best basket of berries in the market. For the next three years I was in a relationship that everyone believed to be the perfect happy ending for my book. Until it wasn’t.
The concept of happily ever after is an interesting thing. When what seemed like the picture perfect happy ending comes crashing down, then what?
You pick up the pieces and move forward, mending your life and heart as you go. In welding, when properly rejoined, two pieces of metal are stronger than the original base metal. The same is true of our hearts.
Life is really just a series of these types of events. Some more catastrophic than others. Will you let these events break you or shape you into more? They say life is about the journey, not the destination. Then what is the destination really? We have our hopes and dreams, which we should turn into goals. But really, life is about about all the stuff that happens in between.
This is my stuff.