Inspirational Archives - Page 13 of 45 - Sonia Marsh

How I Became a “Gutsy” Mennonite

January 27, 2014 by Sonia Marsh 25 Comments

The Fear of Death

“My Gutsy Story®” Shirley Showalter

Behind all our fears, often hidden even to ourselves, lies one big fear.

Yes, you got it. The fear of death.

We can’t become truly gutsy, courageous, until we accept the reality of death and consciously seek to live deeply and fully in its presence.

I first stared death in the face at the age of six.

It happened this way:

On the evening of Dec. 20, 1954, my younger brother Henry and I were playing in a little stack of hay in our barn, making tunnels out of bales and talking about what we hoped for in our Christmas stockings. Cows chewed contentedly next to us. The DeLaval milkers sounded almost like heartbeats—lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub—as they extracted warm milk from each udder.

And then we heard it: a horrible, penetrating, animal-like scream, piercing that night and my life to this day. The terrible sound grew louder as Mother came toward the barn. She ran to Daddy and, still screaming, started pounding him on his chest.

“My baby is dead. Our baby is dead. My baby is dead.” That was all she could say, over and over again. Then she would throw back her head and wail.

I learned a lesson that night that I would have to learn again when my father died at age 55 and when several close friends died in sudden, untimely ways.

We all die.

From then on, life became even more precious. I decided to live twice, once for myself and once for the little sister who lived only 39 days.

When I played softball on the playground, I swung for the fences.

When I read books, like Little Women, I identified with the gutsiest character, Jo.

When I discovered you have to go to college in order to be a teacher I decided to go, even though my parents weren’t enthusiastic about the idea. Even though no one else in my family had ever gone.

When I stood up to the bishop in my Mennonite Church and told him that he wasn’t practicing what he preached.

What does it mean to live twice? How did it change my life?

In other words, my childhood and adolescence were never the same after I heard my mother scream and after I touched the cold, white skin of my baby sister inside that sad little casket in 1954.

Death made a searcher out of me. I sought out writers who understood urgency, such as Annie Dillard, who advised:

Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case. What would you begin writing if you knew you would die soon? What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality?

I love these words. I try to keep them in mind as I write my stories.

But I have to keep something else in mind also.

I believe that death is not the end of life. The writers I love best don’t dwell on morbidity, they face death and fear, and while doing so, come home to themselves by coming home to love. Engraved inside their hearts is the reminder that love is eternal.

But it wasn’t a writer that taught me that lesson first; it was my mother. After she shook my six-year-old world with her screams and tears, she took solace in her faith and accepted the comfort of friends and family. Depression tempted her. She could have withdrawn from life and hence from her living children. Had that happened, you would not be reading these words.

Sometimes the gutsiest things we do are to keep on putting one foot in front of another and continuing to live, determined to turn darkness into light.

Next month my mother turns eighty-seven. I no longer fear death because love has triumphed. Whatever is gutsy in me goes all the way back to 1954 and to the woman who never gave up on life, my mother.

SHIRLEY HERSHEY SHOWALTER, author of Blush: A Mennonite Girl Meets a Glittering World, grew up on a Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, dairy farm and went on to become a professor and then college president and foundation executive. Find her at her website: www.shirleyshowalter.com

Please watch my interview with Shirley Showalter about her memoir: Blush: A Mennonite Girl Meets a Glittering World

Please join Shirley on her Facebook page, and on Twitter @Shirleyhs

Here is my 5-star review of Shirley’s excellent memoir, Blush.

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Do you have a “My Gutsy Story®” you’d like to share?

Click on cover to go to Amazon

Would you like to submit your “My Gutsy Story®” and get published in our 2nd anthology?

Please see guidelines below and contact Sonia Marsh at: sonia@soniamarsh.com for details.

You can find all the information, and our new sponsors on the “My Gutsy Story®” contest page. (VIDEO) Submission guidelines here

Our January 2014 “My Gutsy Story®” series started with:

VOTING for your favorite January 2014 “My Gutsy Story®” starts on January 30th and ends on February 12th. Winner will be announced on February 13th.

Letting Go; Allowing My Daughter to Die

January 20, 2014 by Sonia Marsh 21 Comments

The Greatest Gift

“My Gutsy Story®” by Eleanor Vincent

I stared out the window in the Neuroscience ICU waiting room. Below me, stick figures moved across achingly green lawns. They looked like a cardboard tableau of normal life. Mt. Diablo’s saw tooth outline cut through a ribbon of clouds. A grandfather of a mountain, its hulking presence loomed above the rolling hills and valleys of Contra Costa County, a collection of suburban towns east of San Francisco. My older daughter Maya’s accident had happened three days earlier on a hot April afternoon in the foothills of Mt. Diablo.

She had hiked to a meadow laced with oat grass and wildflowers. A ravine full of scrub oak and laurel trees tumbled down to a dry creek bed. One of her friends dared her to ride bareback on a horse they found there unfenced and unsecured. The animal reared and threw Maya to the ground with such force that she never regained consciousness.

For the last 72 hours, we had endured the hell of waiting at Maya’s bedside.

Now, I looked at my watch, steeling myself to face the double doors that led into the Intensive Care Unit, and another ten minutes with my comatose child. I lifted the house phone.

“This is Maya’s mom. Can I see her now?”

“Yes,” a voice answered. “I’ll buzz you in.”

I walked toward my daughter’s bed, past the curtains surrounding families bent over other silent forms. After three days of willing my daughter to recover, an impossible thought dawned – Maya might not make it. When I reached her bedside, I took her hand in mine.

“Sweetheart, it’s Mom. I’ve been telling you that you will get well. But maybe what I want isn’t what matters.”

A roar filled my brain. I shook my head, trying to silence my own resistance. I spoke to my nineteen-year-old daughter, saying out loud what I would never accept in my heart. “You decide, honey. I won’t hold you back.”

I looked down at the beautiful young woman she had become. Maya’s face, inanimate as ice, was rosy-cheeked, bride-like against the stark white sheets.

I leaned into her and whispered the biggest lie of my life, never doubting she could hear me. “I’ll be all right, sweetheart, if you need to go.”

I wanted to throw myself across her chest and give in to hours of suppressed weeping. But then I had a new thought: If I break down, it will be too hard for her to die. My task now is to let her go.

Maya’s chest rose and fell. The ventilator hissed, the monitors beeped, a fiber optic cable snaked into her skull to measure the pressure inside her brain. Over the last three days I had become expert at reading the peaks and valleys on the monitors.

I whispered, “It’s between you and God, now, Maya.”

* * * * *

The next afternoon, Maya’s brain surgeon, Dr. Carr, asked to speak with us about the results of the cerebral blood flow study he had ordered. One of the nurses gathered us into a windowless conference room where a hospital social worker sat at the opposite end of the conference table, looking grave and sympathetic.

Dr. Carr came in, his white coat flapping, and sat down at the head of the table. I sat on his left side, staring at him.

“The test we did shows how much blood is flowing to the brain.” He spoke to the wall, not looking at us. “There is none, absolutely none, zero blood flow. I’ve declared her brain dead.”

I could not move, or even blink. A collective gasp filled the cramped room. Maya’s boyfriend, Dale, groaned. My ex-husband, Dan, put his head in his hands.

“I’ve called in a second surgeon to confirm the diagnosis of death by neurological criteria,” Dr. Carr said. He spoke with exaggerated calm, seemingly oblivious to the emotions swirling around him.

My eleven-year-old daughter Meghan leaned against her father and wept. Dale’s mother began screaming “NO!” over and over.

Hot tears of disbelief trickled down my cheeks. Of all the people in the room, I was the only one who did not move, or cry out. I felt granite-hard, yet sensitive as a tuning fork, paralyzed with grief.

For the first time since he had entered the room, Dr. Carr met my gaze. His eyes were like icy blue marbles. “Would you consider organ donation?”

The question hung in the air for a long moment. I pictured families in other hospital conference rooms waiting for bad news.

“Yes,” I heard myself say.

Dr. Carr nodded. “At least it won’t be a total waste,” he said. I recoiled.

He waved his hand in the direction of the ICU and all the high-tech gadgetry keeping Maya’s heart beating, her lungs pumping, her blood circulating. I could see he meant that all the effort and resources spent on a hopeless case would not be in vain. But my “yes” meant that the love and energy I had poured into my daughter, her very life, must continue. I could no more accept that Maya was truly dead than I could fly to the moon or allow any vital part of her that could save another human being to go to her grave.

I trembled uncontrollably. I was about to give my daughter away in pieces. If I had fought harder, could I have held her here? I gave Maya ultimate freedom and she took it.

* * * * *

Maya’s organs were donated to critically ill patients. My decision saved four lives. Her bone and tissue helped restore sight and mobility to dozens more. In the 21 years since that April day when I made the most difficult decision of my life, I have often wondered what gave me the strength to say yes. From someplace deep within came a sure knowing that donation was the right thing to do. It was the gutsiest moment of my life.

ELEANOR VINCENT is an award-winning writer whose memoir, Swimming with Maya: A Mother’s Story, was nominated for the Independent Publisher Book Award and was reissued by Dream of Things press early in 2013. She writes about love, loss, and grief recovery with a special focus on the challenges and joys of raising children and letting them go. She is a national spokesperson on grief recovery and organ donation, appearing on radio and television programs around the country.

Eleanor Vincent Book Cover — Click on cover to go straight to Amazon

To connect with Eleanor please click on her sites:

Website
Facebook
Twitter @Eleanor_vincent
LinkedIn

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Do you have a “My Gutsy Story®” you’d like to share?

MGS FINAL COVER Small — Click on cover to go to Amazon

Would you like to submit your “My Gutsy Story®” and get published in our 2nd anthology?

Please see guidelines below and contact Sonia Marsh at: sonia@soniamarsh.com for details.

You can find all the information, and our new sponsors on the “My Gutsy Story®” contest page. (VIDEO) Submission guidelines here

Our January 2014 “My Gutsy Story®” series started with:

Monday, January 27th, Shirley Showalter will share his “My Gutsy Story®.”

VOTING for your favorite January 2014 “My Gutsy Story®” starts on January 30th and ends on February 12th. Winner will be announced on February 13th.

Winner of the December 2013 “My Gutsy Story®” is Laurie Buchanan

January 16, 2014 by Sonia Marsh 5 Comments

We had 5 outstanding “My Gutsy Story®” authors in December, and first I’d like to congratulate all of them. Their stories will be included in our 2nd “My Gutsy Story®” Anthology, published in the Fall of 2014.

CONGRATULATIONS to Laurie Buchanan who won the most votes for her “My Gutsy Story®”. Her story was titled, “I thought I was stupid but now I have a PhD.”

2nd Place goes to Felicia Johnson who wrote, “How Writing Saved My Life.”

Felicia Johnson shares how writing became her therapy.

3rd Place goes to Jessica O’Gorek.

The title , “Why I love Crack Cocaine” shocked many readers, but Jessica has been drug-free for over ten years and was written to help and inspire others. She wrote her “My Gutsy Story®” with such honesty.

In 4th Place, according to the vote count only, we have Marian Beaman’s story. She writes about her “gutsy” stay in the Ukraine, and “Rising Above the Pettiness, to Focus on the Positive.”

Now Ian Mathie’s “My Gutsy Story®” was full of adventure. How often does anyone get to experience riding, and waiting for their camel to return in the desert? “Waiting for My Camel to Come Back.”

Thank you to all five authors. Your stories are all WINNERS.

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Do you have a “My Gutsy Story®” you’d like to share?

Would you like to submit your “My Gutsy Story®” and get published in our 2nd anthology?

Please see guidelines below and contact Sonia Marsh at: sonia@soniamarsh.com for details.

You can find all the information, and our new sponsors on the “My Gutsy Story®” contest page. (VIDEO) Submission guidelines here

Our January 2014 stories have started with Jon Magidsohn, and Gillian Jackson sharing their “My Gutsy Story®.” Next Monday, January 20th, Eleanor Vincent will share his “My Gutsy Story®.”

Why did I Crack After Forty Years of Silence?

January 13, 2014 by Sonia Marsh 15 Comments

Moving On

“My Gutsy Story®” by Gillian Jackson

The complexities of keeping secrets can be a heavy weight to carry around; a burden which grows heavier with passing time and, like telling lies, compounds as the secret ages. When I reached the grand old age of fifty, my life began to crumble and my secret came out. As a little girl, I was sexually abused by an ‘uncle’ over a period of three or four years, abuse which began when I was about four years old.

I cannot claim that my life had been completely ruined by this experience. The inbred ‘survivor instinct’ has given me a degree of strength and I entered into a happy marriage and gave birth to two wonderful children. I also enjoyed a successful career as the owner and manager of a Day Nursery in my home town in North East England. So why did I crack after over forty years of silence? With hindsight I can identify a number of incidents which were perhaps triggers, bringing old and painful memories to the fore. Working in childcare, it was inevitable that at some point I would encounter instances of abuse. Generally I could be objective and professional in such cases but in the later years of my work at the nursery we cared for a little girl who presented physical signs of sexual abuse. It was an upsetting case and I floundered somewhat in my responsibilities, passing the case on to my deputy which turned out to be the correct thing to do. But the incident forced me to acknowledge that I had buried trauma from my own childhood which I had been hiding from myself as well as the rest of the world. I sank into depression and my usual ‘pull yourself together’ attitude failed me. This coincided with a medical problem which forced me to retire from my work in the nursery, a career choice which had probably been shaped by my early life experiences. I can also now acknowledge that I had been an over protective mother. Not to the point of being suffocating, but I trusted no-one to care for my own children as well as I could. Fortunately they have grown into happy, well-adjusted adults of whom I am extremely proud.

Another significant contribution to eventual breakdown was a new role in life as a grandmother. This seems a contradiction, as becoming a grandparent is one of life’s best experiences. I found it every bit as emotional as becoming a mother had been twenty eight years previously. All my maternal feelings were again brought to the fore, coupled with that overwhelming protective instinct that almost knocks you off your feet. It was a wonderful time in many respects and I had the privilege of attending my first grandchild’s birth, amazing. But I felt lost, scared and fearful for the future.

I am fortunate in having an extremely caring husband who played an enormous part in helping me overcome my negative childhood experiences. He is the one in whom I first confided and who persuaded me to seek help from my GP, the start of confronting my past and moving on with my future. And so began the path of recovery

It was hard to be honest with my doctor but I soon learned that this was the only way he could help me and eventually I was referred to a counsellor who suggested I would benefit from group sessions. Shock! Horror! It had taken me forty something years to get to this point, did she know what she was asking? The answer to this yes and I began a journey which was to change my life, a journey which has been an education. I know and understand myself much better now than I have ever done. I don’t like everything I’ve found out about myself, but I have a greater understanding about why I’m the way I am, and why I do what I do. In short, I’m more at ease with myself than I have ever been.

Enough of the negatives. How can I be so positive and fulfilled today? Well, as part of the healing therapy I decided to try writing, a pleasure which I had never had time to pursue. I scribbled furiously, recording all those painful memories and my shifting emotions and then took great pleasure in tearing the pages into tiny pieces, a truly cathartic process. I also became fascinated with the theory of counselling and two years later returned to college to train as a counsellor. Simultaneously I embarked upon a writing course, two new passions in which to channel my energy.

It’s now eight years since I took that difficult step to disclose my past abuse and I am a changed person (for the better I hope!) I use the skills learned in counselling by doing voluntary work for an organization which visits and supports victims of crime and the writing bug has consumed me! I combined my new passions by writing novels about a therapeutic counsellor, Maggie Sayer. The books particularly appeal to women who seem to connect with the emotional content and I’ve been thrilled by some of the positive reviews they’ve picked up. The first book is simply titled, ‘The Counsellor’ and introduces Maggie and three of her clients. It follows their stories which generally have positive outcomes, (I’m a sucker for a happy ending!) But one novel wasn’t enough and there are now two more in the series, ‘Maggie’s World’ and ‘Pretence’ and I’m currently working on number four. The novels sell mainly as ebooks, with paperback copies also available. I now have a new career as a writer and cannot imagine life without my writing projects and am rarely without my laptop or a note book and pen!

Working through past issues was not an easy task and although I had some excellent support it was at times a steep path to climb but I have no regrets and I thank God for giving me such a new and fulfilling life.

GILLIAN JACKSON is a passionate writer who lives in North East England with her husband Derek. When prised away from her lap-top and writing projects, she works voluntarily for a charity supporting victims of crime, as well as spending time with her four adult children and eight grandchildren. An interest in psychology and counselling inspire her novels, with all three offering readers the unique opportunity of being a ‘fly on the wall’ in counselling sessions. Gillian tackles gritty contemporary issues but in a sensitive, positive and non offensive manner. She is a great believer in happy endings!

Please visit Gillian’s website: www.gillianjackson.co.uk.

Follow her on Twitter: @GillianJackson7

and on Facebook

Click on cover to go straight to Amazon

Click here for Amazon UK link

The second two books in the ‘Maggie Sayer Trilogy’ are ‘Maggie’s World’ & ‘Pretence’

Gillian Jackson book — Click on cover to go to Amazon

Gillian Jackson Pretence — Click on cover to go to Amazon

SONIA MARSH SAYS: It’s so nice to hear a positive ending, and that your husband was so supportive and helpful during this difficult time. I am also amazed at how your writing has blossomed and helped you through everything.

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Please VOTE for your favorite one of 5 “My Gutsy Story®” submissions. You have from now until January 15th to vote on the sidebar, (only one vote per person) and the winner will be announced on January 16th, and will select a prize from our generous sponsors.

Do you have a “My Gutsy Story®” you’d like to share?

Click on cover to go to Amazon

Would you like to submit your “My Gutsy Story®” and get published in our 2nd anthology?

Please see guidelines below and contact Sonia Marsh at: sonia@soniamarsh.com for details.

You can find all the information, and our new sponsors on the “My Gutsy Story®” contest page. (VIDEO) Submission guidelines here

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Next Monday, January 20th, we have Eleanor Vincent’s “My Gutsy Story®.” Please stop by, you’ll love it.

Mourning the Loss of My Wife With My 10-Month Old Son

January 6, 2014 by Sonia Marsh 13 Comments

Three of Us

“My Gutsy Story®” by Jon Magidsohn

My ten-month-old son, Myles, and I had been on the road for two weeks by the time we crossed the border from Kansas to Colorado. After hours driving through blanched wheat fields, the landscape suddenly turned green; rambling stands of cottonwood trees sprouted from the moist woodlands, which drank from the streams fed by constant mountain run-off. Myles, rear-facing in his car seat, watched the great plains drifting away into his horizon while, about eighty miles in front of me, I could see the approaching Sangre de Cristo mountains fading into view, the red sandstone dotted with blue-green Piñon Pines as it arched its way down toward New Mexico. Having endured nearly a week of featureless views, I welcomed the sight of the mountains like they were a long-absent parent. My thoughts, which had been as arid as the prairies this mid-summer, were rejuvenated by Colorado’s verdant vista.

Sue had died less than four months earlier, ten months after her breast cancer diagnosis and nearly a year after we learned she was pregnant with our first child. Impending parenthood and countless visits to doctors of various specialities had inured me against recognizing the signs of normal. After she died, normal simply evaporated. What I did recognize, being a widower now miles from home, was that I didn’t just grieve for my wife; I also mourned the loss of the future we were supposed to have had together. My instinct as a single dad told me to kick-start the discovery of my new life by taking it on the road. Myles and I had left Toronto in late July with a car filled like a jar of jelly-beans and little in the way of a plan. We were moving forward.

Driving had taken on a new characteristic by the time we reached Colorado. It was no longer simply meditative and cathartic; it had become an inevitability, each leg of the journey fulfilling an insatiable urge to be satisfied. Being in the car with my son was as necessary as breathing. To drive was to be. The silver Rav4 had become a part of our mobile family; an extension of me and Myles that sheltered and guided us and in return deserved our love and respect.

We were a threesome again, like the trio Myles, Sue and I never had the chance to explore. We could have been the exemplar of families. Sue and I might have raised Myles to be the perfect combination of his parents; from me he’d be patient, musical, light-hearted; from his mother shrewd, dedicated and fiery. Even before Sue was diagnosed – before the medical incentives – we never wanted a second child. As a threesome we would be complete.

Maybe it was the endless stretch of grey road winding through America, because even though I’d told myself this excursion was all about forward momentum, it began to feel like I wasn’t going anywhere. The one-sided conversations with Myles in the back seat did little to distract me from the empty seat next to me. I’d spent so much time with myself recently, I was beginning to forget what it was like to have a partner.

Loneliness crept up on me like a fiend. I thought I was coping well; I thought I was doing everything right. The reverberating blows of death would eventually dissipate, I assumed, but I didn’t think I could endure the loneliness. I understood that so-called ‘successful’ people can be some of the loneliest; movie stars with trampling entourages at their disposal, the embarrassingly rich, princesses. But I considered myself a success simply because I’d chosen to marry Sue. I had neither fame nor wealth nor royal blood but I did have intimacy and companionship. When Sue died she took all the fruits of my success with her.

So this was where the strange contradiction started. Deep down at the bottom of that dark empty hole that Sue left sat jolly young Myles stretching his little arms out as wide as he could and saying to me in his own wordless way, ‘Here I am Daddy and I love you and I’ll hold your hand when you’re feeling lonely and I’ll listen to your secrets and I’ll let you cry on my shoulder and we can be a family.’ And if that hole wasn’t in the process of growing persistently larger he might just have been able to fill it up.

Myles had served as the ever present counterbalance to the weight of sadness since before he was born. The anticipation of his birth gave Sue and me something to look forward to during the months of cancer management. He’d saved us from the constant burden of fear and doubt.

After Sue died he kept fulfilling his duty as my protector. The grief was manageable because of Myles, whether we were at home or driving through the middle of Middle America. I had to look after him so that he’d still be able to look after me. I needed those moments when he’d wrap his arms around my neck with unquestionable affection; those moments talking to him when he’d smile like a faithful companion. And the moments when he’d look at me with his bright, trusting eyes and I’d know there was love in my life.

After Colorado we’d spend ten days driving through the desert before reaching the west coast. Each region had its own unique effect on my moods and the reflections that accompanied them. By the time we returned home to Toronto, almost two months after we left, we’d covered more than 10,000 miles through 23 states and 2 provinces, four time zones and back, gotten two oil changes and emptied one jumbo box of Cheerios one ‘O’ at a time. I still had a long way to travel before the worst was behind me, but I was confident that my son and I were headed in the right direction.

JON MAGIDSOHN: is originally from Toronto, Canada. He’s written about fatherhood for dadzclub.com, the Good Men Project, Today’s Parent and Mummy and Me magazines. He’s also been featured on Chicago Literati and the What’s Your Story?-Memoir Anthology (Lifetales) and currently publishes three blogs. He’s been an actor, singer, waiter, upholsterer, sales representative, handyman and writer. He moved to London, UK in 2005 where he received an MA in Creative Non-Fiction from City University. Jon, his wife, Deborah, and their son, Myles, are now in Bangalore, India, where Jon writes full time. www.jonmagidsohn.com

Please follow Jon on Twitter: @JonMagidsohn

SONIA MARSH SAYS: Jon, your story and your words bring out so many emotions from love, to loss, to love. What a powerful and beautifully written “My Gutsy Story®.”

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Do you have a “My Gutsy Story®” you’d like to share?

Click on cover to go to Amazon

Would you like to submit your “My Gutsy Story®” and get published in our 2nd anthology?

Please see guidelines below and contact Sonia Marsh at: sonia@soniamarsh.com for details.

You can find all the information, and our new sponsors on the “My Gutsy Story®” contest page. (VIDEO) Submission guidelines here

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Next Monday, January 13th, we have Gillian Jackson’s “My Gutsy Story®.” Please stop by, you’ll love it.