Fresh Thoughts

April 5, 2023

So, I think I started this blog about 5 years ago. In all my enthusiasm for writing things for people to read, I thought I’d have something to post every week! Silly me! That didn’t happen!

If you’ve only followed me a short while, you may want to go to the menu and read the “about me” article.  That will give you the backstory to understand where I am now, 5 years later. A few mere months away frombeing 80!

When I wrote the “about me” article, I thought I’d come to a place of being comfortable in this world I’m planted in and it would be all peace after that. No more hills to climb.  That the new place I found myself in would lead to new revelations about the order of things and those revelations would lead to more peace and happiness and joy. And I’d write about all my musings and understandings.

Well, that didn’t happen, and my blogging slowed down, not because of any disaster. I didn’t battle anear-fatal disease, and no family member died before their time. Nothing like that!

Certainly nothing like that! I just didn’t have any huge, big revelations and successes to blog about.  The stuff we like to brag about! 

And I didn’t know what to “brag” about.  I had started looking deeper into what I believed and held as truths.  Things I held as undeniable truths. And it even became exciting to look at my Christian faith, held for so many years,  a faith that brought life and change  tomy 30s and on. I was on a sort of new soul-searching spiritual journey. Nothing that I could blog about because it was confusing even to me.

I started to learn that I really didn’t know a lot of things for absolute sure. I only had opinions that I could only prove with other opinions or interpretations.

I now can hold two “things” as true at the same time. Two opposite things.  That may sound strange, but actually it is wonderfully good to NOT have to know so much for sure. Especially on things that I have no influence over. I relaxed.

All that said, it certainly made writing a weekly blog for other people rather difficult. I just didn’t know what to say.

So I turned to writing a book. I’d dabbled in it for a few years, but I finally got inspired or motivated to take it seriously and actually WRITE A BOOK FOR PUBLICATION.  It is a more arduous task than I ever imagined and it took more than 5 years,  but I did it.  

It is the story of me in my 20s, believing my dreams of being a mommy, staying home and making cookies, doing laundry, cuddling babies, and reading stories to them.  I almost had it, but then it was shattered by a man, and later by my own self. It gets pretty low before it gets better.  I managed to write it first-person, in my own words, and with no bad language and no graphic sex, no descriptive sex and all.  It is a clean book.  A hard story to read at times, but it ends really well, in case you wouldn’t guess.  It is a triumphant story, I think, because here I am with a home and family andlearning the sacrifice that let my dreams come true.

Writing it took some hard emotion. I’d worked hard to be a very different person and now I was going back and trying to feel all that crappy stuff again, putting it out there for people to see and to know. One day I had such a hard time remembering what it felt like to have to hide out in alleys that I actually had to go outside and sit for awhile by the garbage cans at the end of my yard before I could write about those other alleys.

Writing a book is only a small part, I was soon to find. After going away by myself to rewrite it a few times,remembering more, feeling more, it was finally finished and I felt so proud of myself.

Until I tried to navigate the publishing and media/advertising/ebook world. It is truly beyond my understanding.  Well, I guess I could figure it out if I wanted to, but actually I’d rather go have coffee with my best friend, or go gather wild flowers while on a hike. Or sit with tea and read a really good book! Anything but sit and navigate that book-selling world. I like to write, but I don’t like having to market what I’ve written.  I don’t like marketing myself.

I chose not to and so hired a company to do all of thatfor me and … lo and behold, the book is now on Dorrance, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble websites!

The title is “But I Can Learn”  by Clair

(I changed my name a bit to give myself some anonymity.)

I think, maybe in my next blog I’ll write about some reasons why I decided to write about such a horrible time in my life. Why I am so willing to put it out there and what I hope to accomplish (not riches, not fame, not popularity, none of those).

I’m writing this blog now, Easter week, my favorite holiday.  Easter is about reformation and victory over death and all that.  It’s a time to rejoice, color eggs, watch spring flowers emerge, and wear pretty clothes and hats.

Go have some fun!