My Gutsy Story Archives - Page 45 of 46 - Sonia Marsh

“My Gutsy Story” by Jill Fales

November 21, 2011 by Sonia Marsh

Remember the feeling of a field trip day at school? A diversion from the routine in the classroom. A palpable excitement exuding from the students wiggling in line to board the broad steps of the school bus.

The permission slip was the linchpin to any field trip. I remember carefully placing the detached bottom portion with my mom’s signature in my backpack. I did not want to be one of the poor misfortunates that the teachers warned us about – kids who did not have permission would be left behind to do school work in a class the grade below us.

In a sense, the adventure I am on right now – The Great American Field Trip began with the same first step.

Permission.

This year, the time had come. The kids were old enough. I signed on the proverbial dotted line and gave myself permission to toss aside the map society provides and instead follow my heart.

I began planning our departure for what I named The Great American Field Trip. Driving across America roadschooling our four kids.

This semester, I am the principal, the teacher, the librarian, the learner, the travel agent, the parent and the bus, err…minivan driver.

Think one room school house meets Around the World in 80 Days. OK, not literally the world, but 26 states. We have an eighth grader, fifth grader, fourth grader and first grader. Two girls, two boys. The Class Clown, the Organized Germaphobe, the Smashed Penny Collector, and the Teenager.

School on the Road is a bit different. There is no front office. No school cafeteria, desks, textbooks, P.E. uniforms, tardy slips, grades, or bells. Also absent – a safety net of predetermined standards and curriculum.

Every day is field trip day.

We left on August 26, 2011. As we pulled out of our driveway, in Costa Mesa, CA, and joined the drivers on the road I could not help think that many no doubt were headed to do some back to school shopping.

I felt like I was beginning a back to life spree.

More than halfway through our trip now, our GPA’s are soaring. But just like many things on the road we have created our own definition of the now obsolete Grade Point Average. In its stead, a Growth Perspective Achievement.

Growth happens when we expand our horizons, are forced to think in new ways. Growing also includes increased patience and empathy.

Perspective is tied to the realization that how we view our world is shaped by our experiences and environment. Attempting to see the world through other’s lenses has been a corner stone of this trip. As we seek to answer the question, “What is an American?” We realize there are many correct answers.

Achievement encompasses setting goals and achieving them. Taking risks, both small and big.

Unlike the conventional system of grading, there is no quantitative way to measure our GPA. There is no ceiling. At the end of the semester, I will not be able to reduce what we have learned to an average of numbers or scores.

We are learning what learning really is.

One cannot learn alone just as one cannot teach alone. I am a student just as much as my kids are. We have learned so much from the voices of the past. Those, who despite massive challenges, pursued the promise of a better life, a better country. Their innovation, creativity and perseverance have inspired us. We stand on their shoulders. We are visiting the places where they lived, stood, worked or bled. We are reading the words they wrote or spoke.

Some are famous like Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Marin Luther King. But most are ordinary people. A soldier on a battlefield who cannot be identified before he is buried. A Lakota woman, who in the face of losing her family, land, and way of life, continues to teach her daughters how to weave baskets.

We have many living teachers who have enriched our GPAs. Wayd, our river rafting guide in Oregon. Matt, the Park Ranger who brought Gettysburg to life. Dwight, the farmer in Iowa who taught us about corn and took us fishing. The herd of bison in Yellowstone National Park, the majestic old growth redwood trees on the Northernmost tip of California. The World War II Veterans we met at the WWII Memorial in Washington D.C. Susan, who led us on a bike tour through the Tidewater lands in Maryland where Harriet Tubman was a Slave before escaping.

Books have been as important as fuel on this trip. Hannibal, Missouri was a highlight, boyhood home of Samuel Clemens. My kids’ memories of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn will not be of cramming for a test. Instead, I hope they will remember listening to the audio book while driving through beautiful scenery of the Great Plains and Midwest. They will remember pretending to paint Tom Sawyer’s fence in Hannibal and licking an ice cream on the banks of the mighty Mississippi. Like the river, Twain runs deep within them now.

Mark Twain once said:

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness”

He also said:

“Don’t let school interfere with your education”

I think these quotations speak directly to the heart of our adventure. I hope long after The Great American Field Trip is over, my kids have learned among many lessons, one of the most important: have the guts to give yourself permission to throw out conventional maps and trust your inner compass.

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The Fales Children on

The Great American Field Trip

Payton Fales

Janey Fales

Sally Fales

Wyatt Fales

Jill Fales may be recognized from one of her two weekly columns Mom’s Voice or as the under cover book reviewer, Paige Turner, in the Newport Beach Independent. Her writing has also appeared in Coast Kids Magazine, The Coastal Real Estate Guide, and The Newport Mesa Daily Voice. Jill is the mother of 4 children (ages 6-14). She earned B.S. degree in Human Development, a Masters degree in Special Education. After leaving formal classroom teaching to stay home with her kids, Jill began writing. She has hosted children’s book clubs for the last 6 years, and teaches Mommy and Me Sign Language classes. She enjoys traveling. Prior trips have included Europe, Indonesia, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Honduras, and Belize. Now she is combining her passions: motherhood, writing, travel, reading, and teaching, as she criss-crosses the country with her four kids on “The Great American Field Trip”. Jill lives with her husband and their children in Costa Mesa, CA.

You can read about her Gutsy adventure on her blog: The Great American Field Trip.

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Thanks Jill for this great adventure which will inspire so many of us to take the plunge. Your children are adorable and I truly believe you are giving a huge “gift” to your children: something they will treasure for life.

To submit your own, “My Gutsy Story” you can find all the information, and our sponsors on the “My Gutsy Story” contest page.

Our first poll starts December 1st-December 14th to vote for your favorite “My Gutsy Story” of the month.

Thank you to those who have already submitted your “My Gutsy Story” to Gutsy Living. We are saving them for future posts and have five sponsors for November. We shall be getting more exciting sponsors in the future.

Please leave your comments and questions for Jill Fales below and please share her inspiring story.

Skydiving at 80 and Rowing 3,107 miles.

November 17, 2011 by Sonia Marsh

Who goes sky-diving on their 80th birthday?

Who rows the distance between Paris and New York in just over two years at 80?

Doris Walsh does and you know why?

Because after her loving husband of 59 years passed away, four years ago, Doris decided she could either:

Stay home and grieve
Do something Gutsy.

So Doris decided to start exercising and developed a passion for rowing.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Doris in her cozy home over a cup of freshly brewed coffee. When Doris greeted me, I thought I had the wrong address and glanced at the unit number, just to make sure. This woman seemed too young and bouncy to be eighty. I kept comparing her to relatives and friends of mine in their eighties, and thought she must be hiding some secret that all of us need to hear about. (Her secret below.)

“Where would you like to sit?” she asked, pointing to three different locations in her clutter-free living area. I picked her dining room table and Doris placed a small dish of wafers, to go along with our coffee. I noticed her fuchsia polished nails matched her lipstick.

Her tidy home and toned body made me realize: this woman takes care of herself and is disciplined.

Doris Walsh was born on February 1st, 1931, in Rosemead, California. She married at 17, and had seven children in ten years. All of her adult children are between 52-62. She now has 24 grandkids and 17 great grand children.

After some background questions about how many siblings she had, “six” and whether she had a happy childhood, “yes” I wanted to prove something that I truly believed. In order to become “gutsy” in life, you must have traveled as a child, and Doris proved me wrong. She said she was rather shy as a child and never moved around more than a 45-mile radius, her whole life. She does believe that being raised to be “independent” as a child and not “coddled,” is very important though.

Doris believes she has done three major Gutsy things in her life:

She went back to school and became an RN (registered nurse) at the age of 56 when she no longer had kids at home.
She went skydiving at 80.
She started rowing and set goals for herself. Her first goal was 2 million meters, which she reached, 3,107 miles and her next goal is to reach 3 million meters. So far she’s rowed 1,864 miles this year.

Doris rowing and listening to music

Doris says that rowing relaxes and takes away any stress. She listens to music and gets motivated when she hears her husband singing, “Some Enchanted Evening” their favorite song when he was alive.

She has become a rowing champion and was interviewed in the Orange County Register.

“I put on my music and just row away. Since I made my goal, I have cut back and now train 3-4 times a week for an hour. I walk here and back home as well. That’s about a mile.”

Doris has a secret: it’s called discipline and setting goals. She says, anytime she says she’s going to accomplish something, she sticks with it.

It’s obvious that Doris and her husband were deeply in love during the entire 59 years they were married. Her daughter showed up during our interview and said, “My parents were joined at the hip. They were the perfect example of soul-mates.”

Doris told me that Faith, is what gets her through everything in life. She knows that she will join her husband one day.

When I asked her what other Gutsy things she would like to do, she mentioned “Sky jumping.” She said it’s different from bungee jumping, which she refuses to do as it can detach your retina. Doris said there’s sky-jumping in New Zealand where you can jump from a tall building. I looked it up and think this might be what she wants to do next.

Plus, Doris wants to keep sky-diving on every single birthday. The problem is her daughters don’t want to.

Perhaps I should volunteer on Doris’ 81st birthday on February 1st 2012, as I’ve never tried.

The secret is: Setting goals, discipline and sticking with it, as well as exercising as you get older. This is how you can make your life exciting and Gutsy at any age. Doris Walsh is proof. I forgot to mention Doris also walks everywhere, even to the grocery store, and does yoga which explains her flexible, youthful stride.

What do you think? Have you met any older Gutsy people? If so, please share what you admire about them?

Don’t forget our weekly “My Gutsy Story” contest. Great sponsors and prizes. Please read guidelines and submit here.

“My Gutsy Story” by Lauri Kubuitsile

November 14, 2011 by Sonia Marsh

Running is Not for Cowards

Lauri Kubuitsile

That day, I got in a stranger’s car and left-forever. It wasn’t a difficult move. In retrospect I guess it was dangerous, I guess some might have said it was reckless. But it was the choice that brought me here, to this point, to this life I have now. The journey started when I was 16. I was running away from home and it was the most important thing I’ve ever done.

Up to that age my life was divided into sections like an orange. There was the bit where my mother was out of the mental hospital and we lived with her. In that bit we lived on welfare and free school lunches, and when her dark days arrived, she kept us in the house with the windows closed and the doors locked until someone noticed and came and saved us.

There was the bit when we stayed with my father, a long distance truck driver who was gone all week, only home on the weekends. On the weekends he’d hire a babysitter. Sometimes she’d last a week or two, sometimes she’d disappear midweek and we’d have to see how to get through until Saturday when my father came back again.

And then there was the last bit. Maybe the most difficult bit. The bit where my father thought marrying one of the babysitters might solve the problem and instead threw us into a real-life fairy tale with the sticking-to-script wicked stepmother but no happily ever after at the end. My father started coughing in August and was dead by March. I realised quickly I needed to make a decision. I knew without a move, I would be sucked in and lost for ever. I wouldn’t let that happen. I had plans for my life.

So that morning I packed my schoolbag with what I could and got on the school bus, but I never went to school that day. I walked to the highway. I got a lift with a stranger, an old man who had to make a stop on the way to feed some cats. A man who asked me many questions about where I was going that I answered with lies he was able to smile about and accept. I got in his car and set off on the journey leading to my life. The one defined by me. I was tired of being the victim of circumstances I didn’t create. I was not born to be a victim.

I think running away gets a lot of bad press. Don’t listen to all of the Oprah-speak about how you can’t run away from your problems. I’m proof that it’s a lie. You can. I ran and ran again -and here I am, thousands and thousands of miles away from where I started. I live in Botswana, in a quiet village, with my new family, the one created by me. I hesitate to say I’m happy because for me happiness is not a goal, it’s a by-product. A by-product of living your own life, the one specifically designed for you. In that sense, I did find happiness along the road to finding my purpose.

Running is gutsy too. Don’t accept the hype.

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Lauri Kubuitsile is an award winning, full time writer living in Botswana. Her short stories have been published on four continents and she has 14 published works of fiction, primarily for children. She’s also written six textbooks, two television series and numerous radio scripts. She has twice won first place in Africa’s prize for children’s writing, The Golden Baobab. Most recently she was shortlisted for the 2011 Caine Prize. Her latest books are a YA book, Signed, Hopelessly in Love (Tafelberg, Aug 2011) and a romance novella, Mr Not Quite Good Enough (Sapphire Press, July 2011). She was born in the United States, but is a citizen of Botswana. She’s married with two teenage children. She blogs at Thoughts from Botswana

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Thank you Lauri for sharing this very moving and “Gutsy” part of your life.

As you can see, each story is very different and “Gutsy” in its own way. We shall select one a week and feature it on Monday. Please comment, and the more comments a story receives, the more likely it is to be selected as the “winner” of the month.

At the end of each month, we shall run a poll so everyone can vote for their favorite “My Gutsy Story” of the month.

To submit your own, “My Gutsy Story” you can find all the information, and our sponsors on the “My Gutsy Story” contest page.

Questions? Comments? Please share, and Lauri will check back to respond.

“My Gutsy Story” by Karen van der Zee

November 7, 2011 by Sonia Marsh

Go to Africa? Marry a Foreigner? What Was I thinking?

Karen van der Zee (aka Miss Footloose)

“If you don’t go, you’ll never know,” my mother says. It’s the perfect answer to the question I’ve been struggling with: Should I get on a plane and go to Africa to be with the man I’ve only known for a short time? He’s an American Peace Corps Volunteer and I’m a Dutch girl, in love, and dreaming of adventure. But we haven’t seen each other for six months and is he really the one? This is risky business, I’m sure you agree. Maybe I should just stay in Holland and marry a dentist and have a safe and unadventurous life in a nice, clean Dutch suburb.

But, no, I get on a plane to Kenya. Kenya is not Holland and I find it all a great adventure. And I’m in love with my Peace Corps hero. A couple of months after my arrival we decide to get married and purchase two 9-karat gold rings, the cheapest we can find because we are poor.

On a sunny tropical morn, my hero and I walk to the District Commissioner’s office in the town of Nyeri for the joyous event, at least we’re expecting it to be joyous. It turns out to be rather bizarre but we don’t know that yet.

Our wedding party of twelve strong awaits us at the door, a hippie lot consisting of one Swede, one Brit, a couple of Kenyans and several Peace Corps volunteers, all dressed up in their finest jeans and cleanest shirts.

We squeeze ourselves into the small office, a humorless space devoid of festive adornments and full of stale air. Behind the desk stands the District Commissioner, a man of solid build and serious demeanor. Also present are two mystery maidens, pretty Kikuyu girls in neatly pressed frocks. We do not know who they are, but soon discover they’re here to serve as our witnesses in case we don’t have any. We do, but the girls do not leave because (I assume) seeing wazungu (white people) getting hitched in this town is not a daily occurrence.

It may well be a very rare occurrence because the DC, wearing a suit and tie as is befitting his status, is sweating bullets. Not only from the heat, because along with the sweating he is also trembling and displaying a nervous tick.

After various solemn greetings, the ceremony commences. The DC directs himself to my man, ignoring me.

“Do you understand,” he asks, his cheek twitching, “that this is a civil ceremony and not a tribal one?”

My husband-to-be says yes, he does. So do I (this is, after all, Africa), but my understanding is of no importance apparently. I am not amused.

“And that under civil law, you can only have one wife?”

My man says, yes, he understands.

The DC’s hand trembles so much he drops his pen. “And do you understand that if you want another wife under civil law, you must first divorce the first one?”

Ye gods. Is this an omen? Am making a terrible mistake? We are talking about getting rid of me before I’m even married. How cool is that? I’m standing here in all my bridal glory, miniskirt and all, and the DC is talking to my man as if I am not even here. I’m overwhelmed with emotion at this sacred matrimonial moment. I’m sure, dear reader, you can identify.

My not-yet husband says he understands about divorce. (He hails, after all, from America.)

I’m aquiver with nerves. Should I get out of here, go back to Holland? Marry a dentist instead? What was I thinking, traveling to Africa, marrying a foreigner?

“However,” the DC continues, cheek twitching some more, “in the event you want a second wife but don’t want to divorce your civil-law wife, you’ll be allowed to marry a second one under tribal law.”

This is good news! My man won’t have to get rid of me if he wants another wife! I’m overcome with emotion. (This is, after all, my wedding day.)

After some more of this scintillating discourse, we finally get to the one single question I have the privilege to respond to:

“Do you take this man . . . . ”

I say yes, I do.

Years have passed. So far no second wife, tribal or otherwise.

Getting on that plane to Africa was risky business, but I ended up with the man I wanted and together we live a globetrotting life, which is never boring.

_____

NOTE: This wedding was not a recent event, and I am sure that the ceremony I have described has been changed and modernized. So if you want one just like it, you are out of luck.

Karen van der Zee grew up in the Netherlands and has cooked, shopped, mothered, traveled and written romance novels and stories in Africa, Asia, Europe, the US and the Middle East. You can read about her (mis)adventures on her blog Life in the Expat Lane (www.lifeintheexpatlane.com)

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Thank you Karen for sharing your Gutsy marriage in Kenya. We’re glad to hear there is no second wife, tribal or otherwise. You can find out more about Karen van der Zee, her travel adventures and her present expat life in Moldova on her blog.

So far, the stories are all very different and “Gutsy” in their own way. We shall select one a week and feature it on Monday. Please comment, and the more comments a story receives, the more likely it is to be selected as the “winner” of the month.

To submit your own, “My Gutsy Story” you can do so at Join the “My Gutsy Story” contest.

Here you can find out more about our sponsors and prizes for November 2011 contest.

Thank you to those who have already submitted your “My Gutsy Story” to Gutsy Living. We are saving them for future posts and have four sponsors for November. We shall be getting more exciting sponsors in the future.

Questions? Comments? Please share, and Karen will check back to respond.

“My Gutsy Story” by Rhonda Hayes

October 31, 2011 by Sonia Marsh

My Gutsy Story

Rhonda Hayes

I certainly don’t want to give you the impression that I’m the “gutsy” type. In fact, if you’d ask anyone who really knew me, they’d tell you I’m the “gutless” type. For example, my husband Greg would be the first to tell you how I drove him crazy when I was the passenger in the car. He’d love to tell you how I’d slam on my imaginary brakes when I’d see a phantom car coming at us.

Unfortunately Greg is gone now, but he really was the gutsy one between us. He lost his gutsy battle with cancer on August 16th of 2008, eleven days after his 59^th birthday.

Immediately following Greg’s funeral I left Oceanside, California to stay with my daughter Sherry who lived an hour’s drive away in Orange County. Sherry was thirty-four at the time and she was fighting stage four colon cancer.

Sherry was gutsy like Greg, but in a softer kind of way. She would never tease me about being a nervous passenger, but she was the first to tell me that I needed to “get a life”. Actually, that’s exactly what she said to me, nine months after Greg’s passing, right after she had signed on for Hospice care.

One day I was massaging her feet when she said, “Mom, you need to get a life. Why don’t you go on a dating site? You know Dad wanted you to move on.”

In my weak attempt to appear as gutsy and strong as Greg and Sherry had always been, I dodged her question and replied, “This is my life.”

However, in reality, there was such a frightening loneliness deep inside me that even a writer can’t come up with words to describe it. There are none. What was I going to do when Sherry was gone? Who would ever understand my agony, and my great loss? The two gutsiest people in my life were slipping away from me…the gutless one in the family.

I tossed and turned all night. A dating site? Could I? Is that what Sherry really wants? How could a mother, a widow, signup for a dating site while she’s taking care of her dying daughter? Now that would really take some guts! I began to explore my feelings and a dating site.

The next morning Sherry was excited to hear that I had considered her advice and helped me in filling out my profile. Then we reached the last question.

Any additional information you should know?

Sherry was silent. I sat motionless. Panic struck. What was I doing? I can’t date. I’m not available. This isn’t fair—to her, to me or to any man.

Then a profound calm came over me, the kind of peace that I couldn’t will or force on myself. I could only trust and accept it. I recognized it. Tears of hope and gratitude filled my eyes.

What if it was possible to meet someone? What if he could meet Sherry before she died?

If he met her, he’d understand what I was losing.

My fingers swept effortlessly over the keyboard. “My daughter has terminal cancer and she is my life right now. Why would I be on a dating site? She is encouraging me to move on with my life, and what a treat it would be if you had the opportunity to meet her. She is an angel.”

I read my words to Sherry and she smiled at me and said, “Perfect, Mom, perfect.”

I hit Submit. The gutsiest, life-changing thing I ever did. Yes, I found Larry in the nick of time.

Rhonda and her Larry's wedding — Rhonda and Larry

First, I wish to thank Rhonda Hayes for her emotional and inspiring “My Gutsy Story.” You can find out more about Rhonda Hayes and her upcoming memoir on her website.

To submit your own, “My Gutsy Story” you can do so at Join the “My Gutsy Story” contest.

Here you can find out more about our sponsors and prizes for November 2011 contest.

If you liked Rhonda’s story, please share and leave your comment below.