From the Author:Dear Friends,
I have always loved to write, honestly, if you could read all of my memories they would take you all the way back to the first grade where you would find silly poems and stories that I wrote just for the fun of it. I was good at it. I wrapped my heart in it, and without realizing it, I molded it into a friend. It was to my benefit through the most difficult times in my life; the loss of my father, the abuse by my stepfather and my mother's failure to acknowledge it.
When I was 18, I married. When I began having children, time to prepare something to publish was put on hold. But I was good at children. I was good at love. The first time that my eyes rested on my first son's new born face, A little flame flickered in my soul. It was a warmth that I had not felt in such a long time. It made me want to build a bigger fire, so that I could share the warmth that I felt in that serene moment, with the whole rest of the world. So, While the desire to make something tangable of my inspirations was put on hold...it did not fade away.
More time passed, more babies came. My husband was...absent, and began using cocaine. Our marriage ended in it's tenth year, after our fourth son was born. The hope to do some miraculous thing with my life, began to trickle out of my soul and into the gutter that I was certain the boys and I would end up in. Desperate to make sure that the boys did not have to loose their father in one blow, and watch their mother give up in the next, I resolved to fight! To fight for them is how God helped me to find the strength to fight at all.
Two jobs and four kids did not leave time for silly hopes and dreams, there was work to do! But the relentless desire to change our little world would not stop nagging at me. I would visit with it sometimes at night when the house was quiet and my babies slept. After waiting on customers all evening at Helga's German Restaraunt ( some of whom became very dear friends) I would send the sitter home, take the weight off of my greatful feet, and count every nickle in my apron. I would record it in my little notebook then tuck the money safely away until the first of the month when our rent was due, to start all over again. I didn't even have a bank account. Sometimes, in the quiet darkness I would cry for what I lost, when thinking about what the boys must have done that day without me. Sometimes I felt proud for what I hadn't lost, when thinking about what the boys must have done that day because of me. Those are the times - the moments between exhaustion and sleep -when the fire found me. It danced inside of my heart like a living flame at times, and laid still and barely glowing like a dying ember at others - but it never went away.
Fast forward to the present: The bumps in the road we travel have smoothed in some areas, and become more defined in others. I have four boys who are just as proud of me as I am of them (they are really only almost as proud) and I am beginning to see old hopes, that belonged to me as a child and that were born again in the light cast by my own children, coming to fruition. Having this book in print is more to me than being able to say that I have published my heart; it means that a whole new chapter has begun, a whole new story in fact. It means that I am moving forward, again, and teaching my sons that they are capable of the same. It means that the fire isn't only on the inside of me anymore. It's out and it can grow. I hope with my whole heart that a wild rain does not come and drown my fragile flame before it leaves it's mark. On the other hand - this little flame and I have made it through the rain before....maybe this little light in me is more resilient than I ever dreamed.
Maybe I am, too.
Thank you, from the depths of my heart, for your incredible support!
Love,
Dear Friends,
I have always loved to write, honestly, if you could read all of my memories they would take you all the way back to the first grade where you would find silly poems and stories that I wrote just for the fun of it. I was good at it. I wrapped my heart in it, and without realizing it, I molded it into a friend. It was to my benefit through the most difficult times in my life; the loss of my father, the abuse by my stepfather and my mother's failure to acknowledge it.
When I was 18, I married. When I began having children, time to prepare something to publish was put on hold. But I was good at children. I was good at love. The first time that my eyes rested on my first son's new born face, A little flame flickered in my soul. It was a warmth that I had not felt in such a long time. It made me want to build a bigger fire, so that I could share the warmth that I felt in that serene moment, with the whole rest of the world. So, While the desire to make something tangable of my inspirations was put on hold...it did not fade away.
More time passed, more babies came. My husband was...absent, and began using cocaine. Our marriage ended in it's tenth year, after our fourth son was born. The hope to do some miraculous thing with my life, began to trickle out of my soul and into the gutter that I was certain the boys and I would end up in. Desperate to make sure that the boys did not have to loose their father in one blow, and watch their mother give up in the next, I resolved to fight! To fight for them is how God helped me to find the strength to fight at all.
Two jobs and four kids did not leave time for silly hopes and dreams, there was work to do! But the relentless desire to change our little world would not stop nagging at me. I would visit with it sometimes at night when the house was quiet and my babies slept. After waiting on customers all evening at Helga's German Restaraunt ( some of whom became very dear friends) I would send the sitter home, take the weight off of my greatful feet, and count every nickle in my apron. I would record it in my little notebook then tuck the money safely away until the first of the month when our rent was due, to start all over again. I didn't even have a bank account. Sometimes, in the quiet darkness I would cry for what I lost, when thinking about what the boys must have done that day without me. Sometimes I felt proud for what I hadn't lost, when thinking about what the boys must have done that day because of me. Those are the times - the moments between exhaustion and sleep -when the fire found me. It danced inside of my heart like a living flame at times, and laid still and barely glowing like a dying ember at others - but it never went away.
Fast forward to the present: The bumps in the road we travel have smoothed in some areas, and become more defined in others. I have four boys who are just as proud of me as I am of them (they are really only almost as proud) and I am beginning to see old hopes, that belonged to me as a child and that were born again in the light cast by my own children, coming to fruition. Having this book in print is more to me than being able to say that I have published my heart; it means that a whole new chapter has begun, a whole new story in fact. It means that I am moving forward, again, and teaching my sons that they are capable of the same. It means that the fire isn't only on the inside of me anymore. It's out and it can grow. I hope with my whole heart that a wild rain does not come and drown my fragile flame before it leaves it's mark. On the other hand - this little flame and I have made it through the rain before....maybe this little light in me is more resilient than I ever dreamed.
Maybe I am, too.
Thank you, from the depths of my heart, for your incredible support!
Love,