"The Book"---Advancing Backwards

In the beginning there were dozens of spiral notebooks filled end to end with my scribbled, scratched up hieroglyphics of stories I have told or wanted to tell. I have told stories all my life. I have been blessed to have events and conversations that led me to life long learning and the occasional epiphany.
Very early each morning I'd get up, get my coffee and sit down with a cheap, well worn pen and my notebook and begin to try and make sense out of my life and the happenings around me. My love of phraseology and verbiage had me sitting for at least an hour everyday writing what I remembered, what I had learned or what I was feeling. Writing frantically before anyone else was up became my little patch of peace. Some days the ink would flow like water running all over the page in a constant stream of thoughts and feelings and memories. Other days I suffered for my art, feeling as if my brain had run away from home while I had been sleeping.
I have never kept a journal in the traditional sense of having private writings. I wrote everything as a story to be told in order to bring others closer to me. I told stories about events in my life that had others mesmerized at my survival. I had a full medical arrest when I was 28 years old during the birth of my youngest child. I bled to death on an operating room table and was legally gone for 2 1/2 minutes before they were able to revive me. I had lived through a nasty divorce from the man I had loved and the father of my 4 children. I had only wished I were dead during that period. My ex-husband and I began to contemplate reconciliation when he was diagnosed with an aggressive sarcoma and he died 8 months later, leaving me heartbroken once again. I raised my 4 kids as a single mother for 7 years. I was one of the nameless, faceless working poor. Unexpectedly, I was cured of a 3 1/2 pound ovarian tumor that was found by "accident". I found real, true love with my best friend. Marrying Michael has been the single greatest thing I have ever done, barring having my children. These were just some of the things that were happening in my life. These are some of the things in my book Advancing Backwards.
The book is listed as a personal memoir; it's some of my life story. In truth I think it is the story of so many people. I believe that is why I started to write it all out in the first place. My reason for writing was more about reaching out and letting others know they are not alone. It was also to show that I am neither heroic or a martyr. I can't find a cape that doesn't make my butt look big and sack cloth and ashes washes out my complexion. I am merely one woman who has dealt with whatever came in my life the best way I knew how with help and love from my family and friends. I haven't gotten anywhere alone. If not for those precious people in my ridiculous and eventful life I would never have survived anything.
The book is my first. It represents some big changes in my past, present and future. My last chapter talks all about when change happens to you. I am a firm believer in divine interventions and watching for signs that my life is sometimes meant to be bigger than I could have ever possibly dreamed. Advancing Backwards is about making my attitude all about gratitude. Every time I fell down the rabbit hole, I could always find a singular moment to be grateful for, even when it was the last thing I wanted to do.
I have been so lucky, blessed, fortunate, all of the above, to have been invited to this party. I have been even luckier to have been able to write and share some of it. I look back at the pictures of myself when I was 3 and 4 years old when the world was my oyster. I was happy, hopeful and believed anything could happen. Relieved, I am overjoyed to report I feel that way again. It turns out I have been circling back to my authentic self the entire journey. It's wonderful to know I will continue to be Advancing Backwards.