I believed he could fly.

It’s appropriate that it’s the end of Brain Tumor Awareness Month, as I came to the end of my current memoir manuscript revisions yesterday, and sent them off to my freelance editor. It’s a good time to take a break from that project and round out my life with some gardening, building my social media…

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Why are some people private?

I’ve known for many years I was an introvert, and I dabbled in trying to understand more deeply what this meant. But when my book editor asked her probing questions on behalf of future readers, I didn’t understand how much my need for solitude went hand-in-hand with my need for privacy.

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What is a good literary citizen?

When I walked into my public library last week to return some books, I noticed a flyer for an upcoming book release party. The author was a local memoirist; it looked like she may have written about her journey with dyslexia; that was my guess anyway.

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Brain Injury: The anomaly of my story.

Brain injury

I almost missed it—National Brain Injury Awareness month, recognized in March. Maybe it wasn’t on my radar because I don’t talk much about my son’s brain injury; I talk of the brain tumor–a pilocytic astrocytoma–that caused it. They are intertwined in my story, the tumor in and the injury to his brain. Not much of my…

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Avoidance and Growth in Memoir Writing.

Avoidance is inherent in memoir-writing. We avoid our painful memories, avoid sitting down to type them on a page, avoid telling others of our endeavors. Sometimes, memoirists are our own worst enemies. When I started blogging in 2016, knowing very little about writing, I even avoided stating the core of my book: My adult son…

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Personal growth in a story I didn't want to tell.

In September 2016, when I realized my short-term disability leave was going to be long-term, I knew it was a gift from the universe and I couldn’t blow it again. The gift was time—time to finish the memoir I began over 15 years ago. When I started writing, I told the story of my son’s…

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