Sonia Marsh - Gutsy Living

Bestseller Author Hope Edelman and I have Belize in common.

November 30, 2009 by Sonia Marsh

Thanks to my blogger friend Shirley, and her fabulous blog: 100 memoirs, I was alerted to a new memoir by Hope Edelman, The Possibility of Everything.
Hope Edelman and I have three things in common:

We both live in southern California.
We both placed our hopes on Belize to resolve a problem we had with our kid(s).
We both want to give back to Belize as a result of a positive experience.

There are also many differences between Hope and myself: she is a bestselling author and has the title of Mommy Guru after writing: Motherless Daughters, Motherless Mothers, Mother of My Mother, Letters From Motherless Daughters and now her memoir, The Possibility of Everything.

As soon as I read the Los Angeles Times article, I had to meet her. “In 2000, when her daughter Maya was 3, Edelman became convinced that Maya was inhabited by an evil spirit. She and her husband, Uzi, took Maya to a bush doctor and then a well-known shaman in Belize to have the spirit evicted from their daughter’s body.” It worked.

Although Hope’s story is very different from mine, Belize was our common bond and we had to connect. I e-mailed her with a subject hook, “How Belize Rescued My Son,” hoping this would spark a return e-mail. Within two hours, I received a reply.

Hope offered me an invitation to attend one of her book salons, where she would be speaking. From the address on the invitation, I knew this was not an evening to be dressed in jeans. I drove up to the front gate in my blue Kia Rio, and turned the handle as fast as I could so the window appeared automatic. A male model stepped out of the well-lit guard house, and asked me for my name. While waiting for clearance, a little more thorough than last weeks’s White House one, I had a private conversation with my Kia Rio. “Don’t be shy,” I said. “I’m sure you’re not the only non-Mercedes, BMW or Lexus, here tonight.”

I pulled up to the estate and rang the doorbell. There, in front of the over-sized entrance, the hostess welcomed me into her home. Within seconds, a waitress handed me a glass of Perrier-Jouet champagne, and I felt in another world. It had only been a week since I volunteered in a Mayan Village in Belize, where no one dared use the toilet.

I knew Hope Edelman had arrived when all the women flocked to her side to greet her. A little more petite than I had expected, she sat in front of the fire-place and brought us into her world of caring about others.

After her presentation, I had a chance to speak to her and she wrote a message in my book: “For Sonia, With the hope of an ongoing communication, here and in Belize.”

I was deeply touched and look forward to helping Hope with a project in Belize.

Have you had a similar experience meeting an author you felt “connected” to?

If you haven’t already, please remember to enter the $15 Amazon gift certificate contest, by offering me a system to file my writing papers. Please see post HERE. Winner will be announced on Monday December 7th.

A $15 gift certificate for most efficient filing system.

November 24, 2009 by Sonia Marsh

We are sick and tired of being homeless. Please tell Gutsy Writer that she’s abandoned us on her dining room table for over a month. Whenever she approaches, we get all excited, but that only lasts a few seconds. She shuffles us around, scans a few lucky papers while the rest of us in the middle of the pile shout, “pick me, pick me, my turn,” and then something terrible happens: she gets distracted and boils the kettle for her umpteenth cup of coffee or tea. We think she has ADHD. She clearly has the following symptoms of ADHD:

difficulty paying attention,
inability to sustain attention on tasks or activities,
procrastination,
fidgeting,
squirming when seated,
being always on the go.

We beg you to help her. Perhaps a few suggestions on how to organize us into new homes, clearly labeled so we don’t get evicted. She’s a Virgo, or so she says. Virgos are organized perfectionists, aren’t they? If only we knew where she keeps her birth certificate.

For all you demanding pieces of paper waiting for me to file you, I have two excuses:

I’m a modern Virgo. According to my personality trait, “Although Virgos are described as orderly and neat in most personality profiles, the modern day Virgo may not always stand out from the crowd in the neatness department.”
I have caught the Swine Flu, at least that’s what I think it is. My whole body is achy, my lower vertebrae feel hammered and bruised, my knees don’t function when I’m upright and every time I cough, my brain shakes as though someone is punching it from the inside out.

I need to shut the files up, once and for all. If you can simplify the process and give me tips on how you organize papers and computer documents related to writing, presentation notes, articles, conference notes, and how to make things easy to find, I have a $15 GIFT CERTIFICATE from amazon.com for the best method. Do I have to read through each paper before I file it? Depending on how many responses I get, either I shall decide, or I’ll let everyone VOTE. Come on, lets motivate one another to get organized.

I need your opinion please.

November 19, 2009 by Sonia Marsh

Do you ever feel like you have so many topics you want to cover, you’re bursting? The problem is none of these topics are related?

Friday is the perfect day to talk about:

1). Why are kids in my neighborhood, (southern California) scared of saying “hello” to me? Do I look like a scary monster?

After being greeted with warm smiles and love in the eyes of Mayan children in Belize, it always shocks me how young kids in my neighborhood ride their bikes on the sidewalk and refuse to make eye contact. Have we brainwashed our kids to believe that they must NEVER MAKE EYE CONTACT? NEVER SAY HELLO TO A STRANGER, EVEN A MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN? NEVER EVEN LOOK IN THEIR DIRECTION? If so, our society is dying. I can’t believe how parents in my neighborhood, one of the ten safest cities in the U.S. have made their kids so AFRAID of human contact, that they cannot even say “Morning,” to a middle-aged woman like me, and yet the Mayan kids came running up with amazing smiles to a bunch of women.

2). Why do couples end up color coordinated?

Often, my husband and I will end up wearing the same color shirt, without even seeing what the other person put on. Does this happen to you?

3). Have you ever thought about how you and your spouse will end up in your 80’s? I want to be like the straw hat elderly couple walking in my neighborhood when I grow up.

Nearly every morning as I head to the gym, I see an elderly couple holding hands, wearing the same color jacket and straw hat. Even though the sun is asleep, they still wear their golden straw hats. I saw their faces for the first time last week and thought, “That’s what I’m looking forward to being at their age: happy, smiley, full of energy and kindness.”

4). What chemicals are pumped into my Thanksgiving turkey that I’m not aware of?

“Americans remain largely oblivious to the intrusions of the pharmaceutical industry into our kitchens. Across the pond, however, the Europeans are wising up.”

5). We have to HURRY and get our revisions done before Oprah quits her show on September 9th, 2011? What a shock, but then again, Oprah needs to enjoy her life. Who can blame her?

I know they are totally unrelated, but I can’t help it. Topics pop into my mind constantly.Please comment on whatever.

A souvenir from Belize. A worm in my toe.

November 17, 2009 by Sonia Marsh

A PICTURE OF MY TOE IN BELIZE

I woke up on Sunday October 18th, and noticed something different about the skin on my right foot. It had the texture of a jelly fish: squishy and inflamed.

It was our last morning in Hopkins Village after a week of volunteering in the Mayan Village of Red Bank.

During breakfast, I raised my foot above the table and pointed, “Look at this,” to all eleven nurses from our group. All eyes were staring at my foot, and at that moment, I relished the attention, like a woman showing off her engagement ring.

The nurses took a brief look and asked me, “What’s that?”

Since no one came up with an answer, I ignored my foot as much as possible, until I noticed bubbles mounting to the surface of one toe.

The nurses returned to California, while I flew to Ambergris Caye, to revisit the island where our family lived for one year. My husband met me there for a few vacation days.

Back on the island, I recognized expats driving around in their golf carts. Duke and I decided to have a drink at the Palapa Bar, a famous bar hovering over the Caribbean where you can look down at schools of fish. I saw nurse Laura sitting on a barstool chit-chatting with another couple. Their eyes were full of hope and excitement about the possibilities of living on the island. They asked Laura the same questions Duke and I had asked when we also fell in love with Ambergris Caye, in 2003.

Now was my chance to get help for my toe. I pulled my foot out of my flip-flop and stuck it under Laura’s face. “Remember me?” I said.

“You’re Sonia right?” she said.

“Yes.”

“What do you think this is?” I asked, as though no time had gone by since our last neighborhood watch meeting at the Palapa Bar, on Saturdays.

“A worm,” she said. “You need six Mintezol pills, two a day for three days.”

“Any side-effects?” I asked.

“Not really. If you get a few extra pills, you can crush half a pill, mix it with a few drops of water and stir into a paste. Rub the paste directly onto the skin. Ask the pharmacy in town. They have Mintezol.”

Relieved but freaked out to have a worm in my toe, Duke and I drove our electric golf cart to town. I wanted to kill the worm immediately. What if there were several worms reproducing inside my toe and they started crawling around my body? I had visions of tape worms and never getting rid of them.

Duke stopped the golf cart at a local pharmacy. I’d forgotten how easy it was to get certain medication without a prescription. The sales lady picked up a large white plastic container and scooped out 8 pills; two extra for crushing.

“That’s 25 cents a pill,” she said.

I gave her $2.00 Belize dollars, which is the equivalent of $1.00 U.S. dollar.

The pills had horrible side effects. I had nausea and dizziness and almost refused to take the last two, but Duke forced me to. Besides, I didn’t just want to half-kill the worm; I wanted to slaughter it.

On the fourth day, I stood in my shower back in California and screamed with joy and disgust.

“Duke I just gave birth to a few worms.”

The skin popped open and I performed a mini C-section of my toe.

No more babies or worms for me, at least I hope not.

Have any of you had this experience from your travels?
Have you tried Mintezol? What was it like for you?

How parenting affects children.

November 12, 2009 by Sonia Marsh

“I had tried and tried to get them to see me. If I wasn’t an accident, if my mother was telling me the truth, wasn’t this worse? If I wasn’t an accident, mustn’t I be a crushing disappointment? My father couldn’t bear to be with me. It was as if to do so, caused him more physical pain than all his ailments combined and my mother lived in exile within her own mind, devoted only to the past.”

After hearing Augusten Burroughs read this paragraph from his book, A Wolf at the Table, my thoughts turned to how we all carry baggage with us into adulthood based on how we were raised.

Some of us, myself included, were fortunate to receive unconditional love at home. Others were not that fortunate during their childhood.

In his book, Augusten Burroughs put me in the skin of a small boy longing for unconditional love from a parent. He is so brutally honest as he talks about the “unspeakably terrifying relationship between father and son.”

This lead me to do a search on how parenting affects children. I found a simple graphic on Dr. Phil’s website which I copied below.

He has a quiz which allows you to identify your parenting style. I did one section for fun, and actually scored higher than the highest score mentioned for that section. You might be wondering which one? A description of each style of parenting is also given at the bottom of the quiz. Most of us probably fit into several categories, although when I look at my three sons, I can quite clearly pin-point which category they fit in.

My blogger friend Jennifer Fink, focuses on raising boys. I always find useful information on her site.

How about you? Anything you want to share about your childhood, your style of parenting, or parenting in general?