Essays & Short Stories
Forgiveness Code
Words from spirit can help heal wounds on both sides of the veil, illuminating strategies to forgive when you can’t. Mother/Daughter Series Self-help quick read.
Mother dies taking any hope of reconciliation with her.
The author is left with the residue of 60 years of maternal hatred, and subsequent rage.
There is no peace until she solicits the help of a medium, who takes her beyond the veil to hear what could have and should have been said.
Two great epiphanies change the context of a lifelong pattern of behavior overnight.
Ever grateful for the Higher Power whose love is everlasting, the author is able to heal.
The death of parents can manifest interesting symptoms of dysfunction. Closure can mean many things to many people, but the journey to closure is fraught with obstacles.
The author explores her response to the aging and dying of parents who struggled with unconditional love.
She notes that each parent’s last words were about food, a euphemism for love. She grieves that the end of life is not always about reconciliation, but the essence of unconditional love. She struggles with the bitterness of death of hope, and how to forgive when she can’t.
The journey to take care of parents in life and death then becomes one of getting the closure she needs to move on.
She shares her experience with the psychic world to further communicate with the spiritual energy of her parents, and the impact of books such as: Barbara Ann Brennan’s Hands of Light, Light Emerging and Core Light Healing, Medical Medium by Anthony William, and The Emotionally Abused Woman by Beverley Engel.
The tools and strategies that allow her to forgive are illustrated in this short dramatic life-story.
Pieces
The initial book of the series about mother/daughter relationships and healing strategies. A contemporary women’s self-help quick read.
This book is a chronology of the author’s experience with emotional abuse. Her mother’s use of shame and belittlement caused the author to become what she refers to as a ‘many-splendored personality.’
Aged 2 to 17, she documents significant events that cause her to develop parts of her personality to cope with specific situations.
She draws on parallel experiences with her career as a children’s theatre professional and how trauma is best dealt with through the expressive arts.
‘The stage and my imagination saved me.’
She furthers the argument that mental health is really about emotional health. Traumatic histories can be overcome.
The worst of family moments can become treasured memories, as she describes how she and her sisters glued their fractured relationships together for the sake of their brother.
Several tools and strategies are illustrated in this short story.
Dream Come True
A fun Shirley Valentine Fling and spiritual mission for Grandma take on new meaning on a Dream Come True birthday bash. A contemporary romance quick read.
Turning 51 and having a Shirley Valentine fling is everyone woman’s wish list dream come true.
Or so the author thinks when she asks a Glastonbury B and B for someone to drive her to spiritual sights in southern England.
And one shows up to do just that.
It quickly becomes the fling of dreams, and on her birthday between Stonehenge and Avesbury, she encounters Devizes, the ancestral home of her grandmother.
The fling takes an usual turn and then times out as all good flings must do.
But the greater story is discovering the graves of her ancestors, and returning a year later to bury a photo of her grandmother in the grave.
The bittersweet memory turns out to be the gift of a lifetime.
Mother’s Day
A mother/daughter play becomes a harrowing life and death experience live on stage. A Contemporary women’s fiction quick read.
It’s Steel Magnolias in community theatre, and a first time experience for most of the women in the cast.
But Opening Night, and one goes down. The Steel Magnolias mother/daughter kidney drama is played out in front of a live audience.
Second by second, the director must decide when to bring the curtain down.
The plan b happens sooner than later as the actress sits and freezes.
Everyone springs into action.
The actress is taken to hospital, but not without a fight.
The director steps into her shoes to finish the show.
The rest of the run is a vigil, praying for the mother in the cast more than the daughter in the show.
The end happens on Mother’s Day, when the show is a reprise and celebration of life.
Black Widow Spider Mother
An adult daughter frustrated with her mother’s treatment of her as she struggles to help her mother manage life skills. A Mother/Daughter Self-Help quick read
The author continues the task of taking care of a mother who doesn’t want her there.
The changing of mattresses and filing papers becomes a fight that the author can’t win.
The greater fight is within and she begins to recognize she is mirroring her mother’s toxic energy, and becoming the very thing she hates.
She puts the pieces in place for care-giving to function despite her mother’s obstruction, and then finds ways to prevent sliding into the black rage that envelopes her.
One black widow spider mother is enough.
The Smile
A chance meeting chases the clouds away when The Smile changes a woman’s perspective on her life. Contemporary Romance Quick Read Series
This story begins during the darkest Christmas, when everything that could go wrong, has.
The only thing that rescues the holiday is her son’s need for a Christmas stocking. She resurrects herself to make Christmas happen for her family.
But events and people continue to plague her.
She describes ‘dark energies’ that render sleep impossible. Dreams become terrifying until she walks the lake and daily sees a man who seems to be on the same path.
As they learn to acknowledge each other, she observes the impact of a brief smile.
The smile takes on huge implications as she battles the ‘dark energies’, and learns symbolic strategies to distance herself spiritually and in everyday situations.
As the season turns warmer, so does the man with the smile at the lake.
The spiritual relationship allows them both to overcome their private wars, and they become friends.
Together, they survive.
Me, Myself and I
Strategies to survive. A Mother/Daughter Self Help Quick Read
In this short story, the author chronicles her ‘many splendored personality’ as she does her mother’s laundry.
The laundry room becomes a metaphor for their relationship as her combative mother asserts independence at the expense of her well-being, and her daughter’s sanity.
The fight goes beyond cleanliness to the need for a power of attorney, a will, and residential care.
The daughter’s quest to survive being the only caregiver in the family amplifies the strain on her patience, and frustration at getting the problems solved.
Desperate for relief, she looks to the rain and sun. Nature steps in where the system fails.
And when all else fails, writing is the best catharsis of all.
Magic Moments
Contemporary Romance Quick Read Series
It is a love story that begins on a film set between a special effects co-ordinator and children’s theatre director.
The hit and miss relationship begins with her son, who wants to become the next great film actor.
The scene is set with gun explosions that require her son to be exposed to live ammunition, and the early camaraderie between the two takes on a serious edge when she becomes terrified for her son. He is holding a gun.
Trust is built as he talks her through the scene, and reassures her that her son is safe. Her battle is with the word, ‘trust’. And with a man she’s never met before. It is battle of emotions as the scene progresses.
That moment of bonding continues as they build a relationship around sets for children’s theatre productions, and more magic moments.
The author discusses the need for needy relationships, and surviving those that implode and explode. The search for understanding with God, repeating mistakes of the past, and being judged for emotions are all part of the self-analysis.
She rejoices in the moments of magic that are the life graph of a relationship, and the growth of self that accompanies it.
A Lifetime Ago
Contemporary Romance Quick Read Series
Some loves live many lifetimes, and some live many lifetimes in one.
Orphaned on the prairie after her parents are murdered, a silenced 14 year old Vylysia journeys to town in search of Henry David the Sheriff for protection.
But she arrives after he has left. Vylysia spends several years at the mercy of Belle’s brothel, only to awaken upon the return of Henry David.
The Legend of Star Child
A quick read generational love story from the stars. A historical romance quick read.
This story begins on an isolated ranch, when young girl in hiding listens to the murder of her parents.
When a stranger comes upon her, he helps to bury the dead, and tells the young girl to find the sheriff in the neighboring town.
When she gets to town, the sheriff has moved on, and she ends up at the local brothel. It doesn’t take long before it’s her turn.
She suffers a mental breakdown, but pressured by the new sheriff, the madam releases the girl to servitude.
Only when the new sheriff is killed and the old one returns, does she allow herself to wake up and see the possibilities of love.
But the town does not allow for a sheriff and lady of the night to be recognized.
Soon the sheriff must make a decision for all of them.