Roslyn Carter, President Jimmy Carter’s wife, would be visiting the small, two-year college where I was the Director of Public Relations and Alumni. My office was chosen for her to rest in because it had an outer office for her security, and a bathroom. A few days earlier, the Secret Service, and their bomb-sniffing dogs, preparing for her brief visit, searched and sniffed the entire campus to clear the way for her. Satisfied we posed no threat, they settled in my office to hang out with Charlie and me.
I suppose it would help you to know, sooner, rather than later, that Charlie is a plant stand. He was made for me by my kids’ babysitter and seriously resembles the bottom half of a gentleman, made with Charlie’s old jeans and his old hiking boots. I always kid that I saved the “best parts”.
Charlie and Cat
Appropriately fleshed out with poly-fill, stabilized with a skeleton of a wooden frame, and a set-in painted plywood top, he stands life-size, well half-life size, waist height, and at a very slight slant, not too dramatic a slant, though, because he sprouted a healthy philodendron plant in a pot, on top. He was a plant stand, after all. Charlie—well what I had left of Charlie—had been a beloved beau, but that’s another story.
While the Secret Service men were on their lunch break, I was working at my desk, and for the first time ever, the president of the college, a nun, in full floating garb and starched white wimple, came flying in my room unannounced, all a flutter screaming at me like a crazy woman! “What are your children’s paintings doing on your wall? And THAT, that, that MAN thing! Get it out of here! The President’s WIFE is coming! Get rid of all of that junk, now! What were you thinking?”
Dumbstruck, I couldn’t think for the shock of her vile reprimand! The bile was sourly working its way up from my gut and I wanted desperately to blast her, but I reined it in, and kept my mouth shut. I needed a job. Period. Charlie and the kids’ artwork were banished to the closet, my perky personality pierced by the humiliating slap.
That afternoon, the Secret Service came back, and stopped in their tracks. “Where is Charlie? Where are Amy and Iona’s paintings?” (They even knew about my family by now.)
“What can I say?” I said. “I need a job.”
“That happens everywhere we go, ” they said. “People paint, repair, scrub and spend money they don’t have to impress her, and she doesn’t care about or notice those efforts. She’s totally down to earth. In fact we told her all about Charlie, and she can’t wait to meet him! She loves stuff like that!” I shrugged, miserable. I’d made my choice.
When Mrs. Carter arrived the next day with her entourage, of course I was banned from my office, and I stood about three rows back in the hall filled with the colleges’ mucky-mucks as she was shuttled from her car to my inner sanctum. Then, the door opens a crack, and a Secret Service agent caught my eye and motioned for me, not the college’s president, to come in! Now, I’m doomed, here, and I know it! I was ushered in, and Mrs. Carter stood up, to not just shake my hand, but to give me a hug, and a heartfelt apology. “This happens all the time, and I am so sorry! May I please see Charlie?”
Grinning, I showed her Charlie in the closet, and she adored him! Then she asked to see Amy and Iona’s artwork! How endearing was that?
I returned to my place in the hall, eyes avoiding contact with anyone, lips zipped. Then our college president was asked to come in and meet her before she escorted her to the stage. I had to take care of the press, so missed her speech.
A few months later, I’d accepted another job, thanks to an award-winning ad series design (toot-toot), and as I was packing to leave my job, I received a call from the president’s office requesting an “exit interview”. Cringing, I quickly finished packing my last box, and put it and Charlie’s plant in the car. He would be last, but not least. Then I impulsively perched Charlie’s crotch on my shoulder, and walking at a slight slant, myself, to balance him, went straight past her secretary into the president’s office, and announced, “This is my exit interview. Charlie and I have nothing to say to you.” Then I turned around, left the campus, and never looked back. No one has ever messed with me again about my choices of décor.
(I might have given her a gesture, but I’d never mastered that. I tried it once in a ridiculous traffic jam, exacerbated by a pedestrian who caused the breaking up gridlock to re-grid. I went to flip her “the bird” only to give her a well-timed thumbs-up!)
NANCY McBRIDE: Why write?
I am an innate storyteller. I love the joy of crafting my interpretation of a concept, be it through art or writing. I’ve been called a “whimsical realist”. Once expressed, I am relieved of some niggling, often non-defined, concept that has finally escaped through my fingers into some observable medium! Mine are simple stories, often skewed by my amusing take on life—stories colored with a twist of lime, line, texture and color, or words—all with teased-out detail—all means of storytelling, as is stopping before an idea is overdone, such as now, with this “writer’s statement”.
SONIA MARSH SAYS: You are one “Gutsy” and funny lady. I love your exit interview strategy. Also your artwork is so unique and whimsical.
“This is my exit interview. Charlie and I have nothing to say to you.”
Some authors claim it’s a waste of money to enter book contests, but I don’t agree with them.
Whether you like it or not, readers look up to authors who have been nominated for Awards, and I think it’s important to try as many ways as possible to become “visible” in this competitive ocean of indie authors.
Why it’s important to enter Book Award Contests
To stand out from the competition
To get recognition
To have a Press Release sent out to the media
To land an interview or a newspaper article
To get further media attention while attending the Awards Ceremony
To get your photo taken and use it for promotion
To add it to your Amazon Author Page
To try and get a photo taken standing next to a celebrity at the Awards Ceremony
The organization also promotes the winners (SEE BELOW)
My goal is to help you enter a few contests and I am very proud to announce that my memoir, Freeways to Flip-Flops: A Family’s Year of Gutsy Living on a Tropical Islandreceived the Gold Medal at the Readers’ Favorite Awards. I look forward to attending the Awards Ceremony at the Regency Hotel, Miami, Florida, on November 22nd, 2014. Photos will of course be posted on my site.
Click on photo to see the 5-Star Review
Readers’ Favorites state the following:
“We have posted your review on Barnes & Noble and Google Books. Your book must be currently listed on these sites for us to post your review there.
We have also posted your review on our Facebook, Twitter,Google Plus and Pinterest pages. You will notice we created a special sentence with #hashtags for each of your social posts to help them get noticed. You may want to include the hashtag we created for your book title in future social posts to link them to your review and help build a trend for your book.
Amazon does not allow professional review companies to post in their Customer Reviews section. Instead, they have created an Editorial Reviews section where they want you to post excerpts from your professional reviews, which you can do through your Amazon Author Central Account.”
So why not enter the Readers’ Favorites, 2015 Award Contest. You have 195 days left.
I know many of you have read my memoir, and I am getting ready to write another one. I have applied to join the PEACE CORPS and shall keep you posted when I get my interview and find out which country they are sending me to for 27-months of my life.
Here are the list of Awards I’ve received to help you contact these organizations and submit your own books to them. BEST OF LUCK to you. Keep being GUTSY!
For me, travel started at a young age. As a kid, I was often subjected to long-haulcamping trips across the US. Early on, I learned how to adjust to living on the road, sleeping in a new place each night and making new friends, living out of a suitcase and in a tent. Despite this background of basic living, in 2005 when I was told at age 14 that the family was about to uproot, sell everything and backpack around the world for a year my whole life crashed before my eyes. This transformation in my life was significant, and perhaps what got me prepared for my own gutsy story.
Instead of one year, our vast and remarkable adventure turned into an 80-country, four- year long trip. I had transformed from a spoiled, naive girl, into someone who could put myself in other people’s shoes, use a squatty toilet under any condition, share my food with strangers and push myself to conquer things I once considered impossible. Despite the many life changing adventures I encountered, there was always a part of me that longed to go home. To return to the life I remembered as “normal”.
Lovers in Cape Verde celebrating our birthdays and my 100th country!
The longing for home was quickly diminished when I was 17 years old and fell in love with a much older Dutch man who was on a year-long overland trip around Africa. Because of our 21 year age difference (not to mention cultural difference and slight language barrier) he insisted it could NEVER work between us. We travelled together in his overland truck with my family for 8 months in Africa. We were falling more and more in love each day, yet everyday he reminded me “it can never work”.
In late December of 2008, I parted with him and my family and flew back to Vancouver from Cairo, Egypt and I didn’t look back. I was headed home! Home to the place I’d dreamed of for nearly four long years, or at least, this was how I got myself to step on that plane, walking away from a man who’d eased my pains and changed my life in Africa. It seemed, the impossible dream I’d managed to coax up would cease to exist, fading into nothing more than dizzy memories. I hoped that I could walk away and life would go on as it should. That I could indeed begin my “normal” life….finally! Of course, being alone for the first time, separated from the family, I felt empty and slightly lost. I didn’t know what Vancouver would have in store for me after so long away. The place that was anything but unordinary to me, was now culturally and visually shocking to my many heightened senses. After years living in less developed countries, I had a strong appreciation for the most minuscule things. Ice cubes were treasured in the freezer, running hot water felt glorious on my skin but all the things I’d missed so much like sushi or Grandma’s home-cooked meals didn’t seem satisfying…like I had expected. It was as though all that time I had created a perfect world in my mind, that wasn’t really there. And now that I’d found a man who made me laugh there was nothing that could replace it….and yet I had lost that only thing.
As each day went by I could see the deep creases of dirt, engraved in the bottom of my feet begin to fade but my love could not. A continual ache lingered in my chest and I knew there had to be a way. “If there’s a will there IS a way” and that may have been my biggest lesson that kept me pushing on. This realization was not one that suddenly appeared but something I’d known all along but tried to ignore. He had tried to rationalize with me throughout our entire journey together that I should try for the chance of a “better”, more logical path in life. After all my struggles and “drawing it to me”, to simply let it slip away? Where was the sense in that?! The only rational thing I could see…WAS him!
I quickly took up a job at a bakery and as soon as I had enough money I bought my plane ticket to Holland! With only 40 euros left in my scared, little 18 year old hand, I stepped onto a plane headed to a country I’d never been to before to be with the man I loved.
I understood the warnings from loved ones and from him and the consequences of taking such a risk, but if people could not accept and let me be who I needed to be then I could only wish for that acceptance, not be expected to change my life for other people. Trying to change who I am to please others would not bring me happiness…so I had no choice but to follow my heart.
Although the journey with my family had ended, I hadn’t doubted another would begin. Once again, I was caught off guard and thrown across the world in a whirlwind, but this time, every action was my own and I would be held accountable for every move I made along the way.
Today, 6.5 years later, we are more in love than ever and continue to travel the globe, having visited a total of 38 countries together. We’ve bought property in Guinea, Spain and our first house in Holland. Sometimes all the odds seem to be against you, but when you want something badly enough, you truly can make the impossible come true.
Walking lions in Mauritius
SAVANNAH GRACE was born and raised in Vancouver, Canada. Age 24, she has traveled to 100 countries and is the author of award winning series “Sihpromatum” which includes “I Grew My Boobs in China” and “Backpacks and Bra Straps”. Currently living with her Dutch partner in The Netherlands, Savannah continues to write her family travel memoir series. Website: www.sihpromatum.com
SONIA MARSH SAYS: I admire your courage to go with your gut, and not be swayed by others. What a meaningful statement to help those who are unsure of what to do.
“If people could not accept and let me be who I needed to be then I could only wish for that acceptance, not be expected to change my life for other people. Trying to change who I am to please others would not bring me happiness…so I had no choice but to follow my heart.”
This August we had FOUR OUTSTANDING “My Gutsy Story®” authors. Some of these stories will be included in our 3rd “My Gutsy Story®” Anthology, published in 2015. Thank you to all four authors. Your stories are all WINNERS.
1st Place, with 45% of the votes, goes toLeslie Johansen Nack, with, “I Wished Him Dead.”
SONIA MARSH SAYS:
Thank you for sharing your personal story and helping others who have been abused by their fathers. You made us wait to discover who you were talking about, which I found intriguing. I cannot wait to read your memoir and wish you all the best Leslie.
SONIA MARSH SAYS: Barbara, you look too young to be 79, and being active seems to be what makes you stay young. You are an inspiration to all of us. keep doing what you love. Perhaps you should join the Peace Corps next.
3rd Place goes to Gisela Hausmann, “My “Gutsy” Journey to the Dalai Lama’s Potala Palace-Lhasa Tibet”
Gisela Hausmann
SONIA MARSH SAYS: Thank you for taking us on a spiritual and historical journey through your Gutsy adventure to Tibet.
4th Place, goes to Maralys Wills, “Hang Gliding With My Son.”
SONIA MARSH SAYS: I know Maralys Wills from a writers’ group I attend, and can attest that she fits the “Gutsy” woman award in every way.
“GIRL ON BIKE, A mountain bike, A mid-life adventure and men in shorts.”
“My Gutsy Story®” by Colleen Hannegan
Standing in the kitchen, my hands in fists at my side, I thought, “Surely it won’t end like this?” But there was no stopping the stream of hurtful words, screamed at me until the blue veins in his neck bulged and his spittle hit my face. I was almost hoping he would strike me so I would have visible signs of his abuse. It would make it so easy to file the report, pack my bags and leave. I would be able to look in the mirror and see the color of pain; red and purple and bruised brown, instead of how it had coursed through me unseen, a strong, invisible current that had pulled me along this river of false hope and fear for too many years. I had been slowly drowning, quietly, like a small child unattended in a pool of water, making no sound, surrounded and surrendering to a sinister power I did not know how to overcome. Until this moment.
Masters and mystics tell us the only way to solve a problem is not to go around it, but to go through it. Deepak Chopra says, “All great change is preceded by chaos.”
When the day came for me to re-discover my inner tough girl, I ran away from home at 50, bought a mountain bike and learned how to ride the dirt trails into the wilderness park.
This is a story about my journey, my search to re-discover myself, despite the fear I had to do so at mid-life. But it’s a journey many of you have also taken — whether you have chosen a bike, or running shoes, a paintbrush, a computer or a set of drums.
In learning to ride my mountain bike with a group of tough guys who were kind enough to include me in their group, I discovered how a frightened and fragile woman (me!) can recover her inner power of strength, embrace her outer beauty and uncover the magic of healing and grace that exists in the outdoors. I learned the secrets of redemption that being in nature teaches me each time I return to play out there; about forgiveness, freedom and fun. Along the dusty bike trails, accompanied by the kindness and kinship of new friends and companions, I revel in dirt, sweat, tears while a few bike mishaps have taught me that bruises and bumps will always be a part of life. And as long as you choose your friends wisely, and keep your heart open, you can make it through anything. True freedom belongs to everyone who braves the chaos that precedes great change.
When I was 16-years-old, I traveled as a foreign exchange student to Paris, France. I was thrilled with the idea of such adventure and experience. I felt so brave and alive! My daily diary was filled with detailed descriptions of the beautiful places and people I met. I imagined a life as a magazine writer on my flight home. But my rosy ideas of life as a traveling journalist lay locked away in my diary as life showed up with other ideas and challenges. I married young and had my daughter Leah when I was 20 years old. After being a single mother for six years, I married again at 28. I opened a business when I turned 35 and worked six to seven days a week for the next twenty-two years. Along the road of my life, I’d let go of adventure, I’d forgotten how to play and working hard seemed to be what I did best. I became a very successful business-woman, but a very unhappy girl. Until the day I found, again, the courage I once owned. And the bike and the wilderness trails that led me back to her.
In the midst of this mid-life adventure; on the trails with the dirt, the wildlife, new boyfriends and wild scenery, she came back to me. The girl inside showed up and I knew this was the time and place to tell her story. At 16, she was alive and well and full of promise. But at 50 she was ready to kick ass and set herself free.
Our instincts push us toward the very chaos that is our only ticket to freedom. It’s a far more wonderful world—filled with great adventure and fabulous people—than we can imagine, when we’re stuck in a place of discontent. So I encourage you to leave the job that doesn’t appreciate you or the relationship that sucks you dry. Get on your own “bike” and ride through the fear and uncertainty. The girl inside you is the one to trust. She is waiting for you to say “yes.”
COLLEEN HANNEGAN is a writer, professional speaker, certified business advisor, personal life coach for women in transition and a life long entrepreneur. She writes about change, about business and a variety of topics pertaining to the nature of things. Her articles and essays have been featured in SheWrites.com, betterafter50.com, Golf Extra and Eyecare Business.
For more than thirty years, she has enjoyed a career in optical retail management which included owning her own successful optical shop for twenty two years in southern California. She sold her business in 2012 and continues consulting other small business owners as an efficiency expert.
Of her many studies in the healing modalities of spirit, mind and body, Colleen enjoyed her two years study program in Shamanism and became a Certified Corporate Shaman.
Her memoir theGirl On Bike, A Mountain bike, a Mid-life adventure and Men in Shorts is due out in September, 2014.
She can be reached at www.colleenhannegan.com
SONIA MARSH SAYS: Your story will resonate with so many who “accept” their situation, rather than take the steps to become free.
“True freedom belongs to everyone who braves the chaos that precedes great change.” —Colleen Hannegan.
What a powerful statement, Colleen. Thanks for sharing your “Gutsy” story.
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