This April we had FOUR OUTSTANDING “My Gutsy Story®” authors. Their stories will be included in our 2nd “My Gutsy Story®” Anthology, published in the Fall of 2014. Thank you to all four authors. Your stories are all WINNERS.
Our first place goes toGinger Simpsonwon 1st Place for her “My Gutsy Story®” about whether she caused her husband to turn to drink. The phrase that struck me in Ginger’s inspiring story is:
“Wanting someone to change isn’t enough. They have to WANT the change.”
Ginger Simpson
2nd Place goes to Kathy Gamble, about finding her way as an expat living in different countries around the world.
3rd Place goes to Benny Wasserman, about the impact that one teenage friend had on Benny to change his life.
BennyWasserman
4th Place goes to Alana Woods for her inspiring story about her 200-mile trek across the U.K.
Alana Woods
Thank you to all four authors. Your stories are all WINNERS.
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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.
Get ready to VOTE for your favorite one of 4 “My Gutsy Story®” submissions. You have from now until May 14th to vote on the sidebar, (only one vote per person) and the winner will be announced on May 15th (from Spain!) and will select a prize from our generous sponsors.
SONIA MARSH SAYS: After reading Alana’s story, I feel like I’ve exercised enough for the year, thanks to you for taking me on this amazing trek across the UK.
SONIA MARSH SAYS: Ginger asks her alcoholic first husband the question “I continually asked him if I was the reason he turned to alcohol.” So often we blame ourselves for others’ behavior.
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.
I married my high school sweetheart and expected to spend eternity together. He worked as a police sergeant, and I spent my days as an Academic Counselor. Like most couples, I thought we had a perfect marriage–the average American family, two kids, two cars, two careers. I couldn’t have asked for anything more. One of our sons was grown and married, and the other just graduated high school. And then after thirty-two years, the proverbial crap hit the fan. I’m not sure how, or more importantly, why, but my husband found something he loved more than me, Jack Daniels.
At first the occasional drink didn’t concern me, but when his JD over ice became a nighttime ritual, I decided it was time for a talk. I told him I didn’t understand how a non-drinker suddenly became one who imbibed regularly. I tried to make him see how insecure his drinking made me feel. I offered to go for counseling but he insisted everything was fine. Of course, I continually asked him if I was the reason he turned to alcohol, but his answer was always ‘no’–he was completely happy and only drank to take the edge off his day. He promised to stop, but what he actually meant was he wouldn’t leave the booze where I could find it. Yet, every cabinet I opened had a bottle inside (some filled, some half empty), even the peg boards in the garage had JD hidden behind them, yet he insisted he didn’t have a problem.
Even when forced by his supervisor to go for rehab, he lied and told me he’d volunteered to go for us, but I later discovered the program wasn’t his choice. He either went or was forced into retirement. So, yet another lie to placate me.
Wanting someone to change isn’t enough. They have to WANT the change, and he obviously didn’t. I don’t think he believed I was strong enough to honor my threats of leaving. His ten-day rehab proved a waste of time that didn’t kill his desire to drink but made him a tearful drunk. He obviously got in touch with his emotions but only exposed them when he drank to excess.
At a time when I was looking forward to midlife security and being proud of our achievements as a couple, I had to decide if living in continued fear of what I’d find when I walked inside the front door was worth it. I’d already found him passed out, with a cigarette smoldering in the carpet and the house in disarray more times than I could count. Our youngest son had long ago stopped asking his friends over because his dad didn’t grasp the concept we all shared the same home. Our feelings ceased to matter.
The day I came home and found my husband…this man I had loved for so many years, passed out, naked, and soaked in urine, his usual cigarette burning yet another hole in the carpet we couldn’t afford to replace, was the day I decided to make the change. I couldn’t stand one more minute questioning my own integrity. Had I caused him to turn to drink? I went to an Al-Anon meeting and listened to stories like mine, but no one there had solutions. Others continued to live in the same hell, day after day, but I knew I couldn’t. Choices are pretty limited when you’re faced with a difficult one. If someone refuses to change, your only option is to remove yourself from the situation. I’d moved right from my parent’s house to a duplex I shared with my new husband, so I’d never lived alone. Could I find the inner strength I needed?
Starting over at forty-nine wasn’t an easy decision. Somehow, I mustered my determination, packed some clothes and walked out, leaving him with the house I once loved, and everything except the few things I needed. Luckily, I had shared my story with a co-worker who gave me a key to her house and told me she had an extra room. I took her up on the offer. Living in one bedroom, surrounded by nothing that belonged to me was hell. I don’t know which was worse–my living arrangements or still trying to work things out in my head.
I’d tried to make my husband understand that love is comprised of trust and respect, and every time he lied or I saw him in a repulsive state, the loss of trust and respect chipped away at that emotion. I’d often wondered about the saying “I love him but I’m not ‘in love’ with him,” because it didn’t make sense to me. Suddenly, I knew what those words meant, but not out of want.
God granted me sisters for moral support, and one, gratefully, for financial. With her help, I was able to get into my own apartment for the first time in my life and see what being independent was truly like.
Once our house sold, my husband relocated to the apartments next door to mine. I tried several times to tell him I was moving on without him, but he apparently didn’t believe me–or didn’t want to. In desperation, I put my feelings in writing, and explained I couldn’t help him heal. In my written plea, I also told him I wished him well, would always care for him, but in order to open new doors, I had to close the old ones. That was my determining moment–picturing him standing on the other side while I moved blindly into a new life, not knowing what to expect. That decision was the most frightful I’ve ever made. Sometimes, the unions we think are the best are missing elements we don’t realize until we seize the moment and make a change. It was the most difficult, gusty move I’ve ever made, but it worked out for the best.
Ginger and her second husband
GINGER SIMPSON BIO:
In 2002, Ginger Simpson decided to attempt writing her own novel, and in 2003 her first offering, Prairie Peace, was published. Since then, she’s dabbled in other genres but always seems to migrate back to her favorite historical era. As all authors continue to learn through the process, so has Ginger, and her debut novel has been recently released with a new cover and title, Destiny’s Bride. Although her biggest dream has been saying ‘yes’ when someone asked if her book was at Walmart, she’s happy with the progress of ebooks, but after repeated questions, she recently tucked one of her books into her coat and smuggled it into Walmart just so she could take a photo of it on their best-selling shelf. She never said it had to stay for long. http://www.gingersimpson.com
Ginger has several books on Amazon. Check out her Author Page.
SONIA MARSH SAYS: The phrase that struck me in your inspiring story is:
“Wanting someone to change isn’t enough. They have to WANT the change.”
This applies to everything in life, and I am also sad to see how women so often “blame” themselves when something is not right.
“I continually asked him if I was the reason he turned to alcohol.”
Thanks for sharing your “My Gutsy Story®” story and the fact that you left, and started a new life after 30-some years will help other women in the same situation
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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.
Please leave your comments for Ginger. She’ll be over to respond.
Also, please check our next “Gutsy Google Hangout” and interview with Kathy Pooler, on May 1st at 9 a.m., PST. “What You Really Need to Know About Writing a Book in 2014.” Sign-up here.
Next “Gutsy Webinar” on May 30th at 9 a.m. PST “Everything You Need to Know About Formatting e-books and Why Metadata is Important.” Jason Matthews, expert on e-books will be presenting with me. Reserve your seat TODAY.
Get ready to VOTE for your favorite one of 5 “My Gutsy Story®” submissions. You have from now until April 16th to vote on the sidebar, (only one vote per person) and the winner will be announced on April 17th, and will select a prize from our generous sponsors.
SONIA SAYS: Yelena is living life to the fullest and stepping out of your comfort zone. She is volunteering in Tanzania right now, and I have the pleasure of doing a Google+ Hangout with her on April 10th, about her experiences there.
SONIA MARSH SAYS: Rachael’s story captures the essence of travel: exploration, freedom, fulfillment, trusting yourself and the opportunity to get to know yourself.
SONIA MARSH SAYS: Peter’s story captures all the emotions he went through after loosing his wife, and manages to find and write about happiness. It’s such an emotional and inspiring story.
SONIA MARSH SAYS: Through your courage of taking the steps to change your life, you are making a difference to help other women who have been sexually abused.
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.
On my thirty-second birthday, as I sat at my mother’s dining room table in front of a large cake, thirty two candles threatening to ignite my beard should I lean too far forward, I realised that the only ambition I had left in life – the only dream I hadn’t given up on – was to be married.
Or at least in some sort of steady, loving relationship.
A long term partnership with someone whose ying was a close match to my less than melodic yang.
But even this, this last naive expectation of life, was looking increasingly unlikely. Every candle on that cake was some sort of burning epitaph to just how utterly rubbish I was when it came to affairs of the heart.
There had been relationships in the past – of course there had – but I’d kind of ‘fallen into them’, by accident. And after the ladies in question had tried, and failed, to mould me into the kind of man they actually wanted, those relationships had withered and died. There hadn’t been an ‘accidental relationship’ for a while. Colleagues no longer described me as an eligible bachelor. Some had started to question my sexuality.
So as my family launched into a rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’ I decided there and then that the prospect of being single for the rest of my days was unacceptable.
Something had to be done.
* * *
Around that time there was a TV show called ‘Would Like to Meet’ where a team of experts would take some hapless individual and turn them into a heartthrob or a man-magnet. It very quickly became my favourite TV show. I’d watch it avidly from one week to the next hoping to pick up some tips. And the conclusion I came to was that I too could do with a similar makeover – albeit without the entire viewing nation of the United Kingdom looking on.
So over the next few weeks I tracked down Image Consultants, and contacted one. Back then, Image Consultants mainly worked for corporations, re-styling senior corporate executives who might otherwise look less than sharp in the boardroom, but I had surprisingly little problem persuading my consultant of choice to broaden the scope of her client base to include one sad and lonely thirty-something guy. She took one look at me, threw away every item of clothing I’d acquired in the previous decade, and in an afternoon gave me some much needed va-va-voom, in the wardrobe department.
And once I’d been completely re-styled, I looked around for a flirt coach.
These days, you can barely move for self-styled relationship experts and flirt coaches but back in 2003 I could find just one. And she ran courses.
I took several hundred pounds from my savings, and booked myself on a ‘flirting weekend’. Nervously, I took my place in the front row, and when instructed I turned and introduced myself to the stunning blonde sitting next to me.
“I’m Peter,” I said.
“I’m Kate,” said the blonde.
Then she smiled.
And I was smitten.
The course wasn’t that much of a success, in that it didn’t teach me how to flirt. Not that it mattered. My strategy had worked, somewhat differently but infinitely better than I’d hoped. On the Monday evening Kate and I had our first date. By the Tuesday I’d officially found myself a girlfriend. A few months later I found myself on one knee. And a year to the day after we’d first met, I found myself married.
And when she died in my arms just two years later, I was heart-broken.
* * *
Peter and Kate on their first Wedding Anniversary in Paris
People rarely ask me how Kate died. It’s just not the sort of question they feel comfortable asking. Most assume she must have had cancer – that we’d have had some warning. We didn’t.
I’ve learnt since that sudden deaths like Kate’s (a sub-arachnoid haemorrhage) are surprisingly common. Kate had a weak part in her brain, probably since birth. It could have happened at any moment. It was almost inevitable.
I learnt too that after the shock comes the guilt. Every cross word, every nasty thought, every lie – they all come back to haunt you. And amongst the demons that were queuing up to torment me was the realisation that I still wasn’t happy, and maybe I never had been. There had been happy moments, of course. Quite a lot of moments. Most of them in the previous three years, and most of them down to Kate, but they were moments none the less. And I wanted to be happy all the time. Not just occasionally. Not just for a moment.
Something had to be done.
* * *
And so I decided to tackle the problem in the only way I knew how: by making lists, and coming up with a strategy.
“So what,” people ask, “is in this… ‘happiness strategy’?”
I tell about my ‘Now List’, my ‘Wish List’, how I set myself yearly goals, and how I make sure I actually achieve them.
I tell them how I’ve taken back control of my life, decided how I want it to be, pointed it in that direction, and given it a kick up the backside.
I tell them how I’m having more fun than I’ve ever had. Smiling more than I ever did. How there’s love in my life again. How I think Kate would be proud of me. And that I can finally say, I’m happy.
PETER JONES started professional life as a particularly rubbish graphic designer, followed by a stint as a mediocre petrol pump attendant. After that he got embroiled in the murky world of credit card banking where he developed ‘fix-it-man’ superpowers.
Now, Peter spends his days – most of them, anyway – writing. He is the author of three and a half popular self-help books on the subjects of happiness, staying slim and dating. If you’re overweight, lonely, or unhappy – he’s your guy.
Find out more about Peter Jones, his books, speaking engagements & workshops, at peterjonesauthor.com
SONIA MARSH SAYS: Peter, When I read your story, I saw a movie. It captures all the emotions that are part of being human, and at the same time, ends on a positive note. I am so glad you shared your amazing story, and can show others how you overcame the loss of Kate.
Would you like to submit your “My Gutsy Story®” and get published in our 2nd anthology?
Click on cover to go to Amazon
Please see guidelines below and contact Sonia Marsh at: sonia@soniamarsh.com for details.
