Dear Followers and New Visitors,
Write On has changed to Memoir Writer’s Journey and the new address is:
I appreciate you stopping by and hope you’ll join in the conversation about writing,memoir writing and life over at the new site.
Happy 2012 and may all your writing dreams come true!
Kathy
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“CHANGE IS THE ESSENCE OF LIFE. BE WILLING TO SURRENDER WHAT YOU ARE FOR WHAT YOU COULD BECOME .” Author Unknown
I have been a Registered Nurse for forty-four years and for the past fifteen years, a Family Nurse Practitioner. Nursing has defined me since the day I decided I wanted to be a nurse:
Back in my eighth-grade study hall, while reading “Anne Snow,Mountain Nurse” my heart was thumping so loudly, I felt certain my classmates could hear it. Riding a horse through the mountain passes of Virginia, Anne Snow ministered to poor people and their families in their rundown cabins as a community health nurse. I could just see her bringing healing and consolation to those families. Staring out into that sunny March afternoon in 1959, I visualized myself on that horse, in those mountains, with the sun breaking through the trees as I found my way to those cabins. I would reach out to wipe a beady brow or console a crying baby while an anxious mother looked on. I soaked up every word, all the time seeing myself being Anne Snow. I could hardly wait to tell my best friend, June.
In 1971, my Dad,bless his heart, encouraged me in this letter to go back to school for my Bachelor in Nursing degree with these words :
“Give a man a fish and he will eat tonight. Teach him how to fish and he will eat every night. I’m not concerned with an estate, but with seeing you develop so you can create your own estate.”
I did go on to get my Bachelors, Masters and Family Nursing Practitioner degrees. Nursing became my best friend through divorce, single parenting, cancer, life. I have always had a job, not a job, a calling. When I needed to be there for my young children, I found a day job.When I was too sick to work in the clinical area with patients, I could be a consultant for an on-line nursing program. I’ve been a staff nurse on general medical floors, emergency departments and in ICU,a camp nurse for emotionally disturbed adolescents, a director of an emergency department, a director of nursing of several small hospitals, a nursing faculty member for baccalaureate and associate degree nursing programs. I am finishing off my career as a Family Nurse Practitioner doing primary care for children and adults. I have loved,loved,loved my calling. I am humbled and honored to have had the privilege of this calling, the opportunity to make a positive difference in the lives of people who trust me with their care.
So when the time came to consider retiring from Nursing, I balked,agonized, cried, knowing all along that I wanted to take leave when I was at the top of my game. I wanted to know when it was time to gracefully bow out. But I didn’t want to retire. I wanted to just simply transition into another phase. I wanted to go to something better.
Travel writer,Alexis Grant talks about taking the big life-changing leaps in this post, citing that it may never be the right time to follow your dream-“making the decision comes down to just that-making the decision.”
And so,it is time. I have made my decision. I will transition from Nursing,my calling, and move on to this next phase of my life in August where I will continue following my dreams. I am looking forward to spending more precious time with my family and friends, playing the piano more, reading more,writing more,planting flowers and just breathing in the fresh air.
Remember, how my Dad showed up while I was floating in a rowboat a few weeks back? Well,while he was there, he asked me,
Kathy, do you remember what I taught you?
Yes,Dad. You already taught me how to fish.
OK, then, cast your net , and reel in your bounty.
That’s when I knew it was OK~bittersweet , but OK.
I know that I have to surrender what I am now. I can hardly wait to see what I will become!
How about you~ What are your bittersweet transitions?
What do you dream of becoming?
” GOOD COMMUNICATION IS AS STIMULATING AS BLACK COFFEE, AND JUST AS HARD TO SLEEP AFTER.” Anne Morrow Lindbergh,Gift From the Sea.
My daughter Leigh Ann called me on the fly this morning. She was on her way to work as I was getting packed for my trip to New Jersey to participate in A Women’s Writing Workshop with Eunice Scarfe sponsored by Heather Summerhayes Cariou,bestselling author of 65 Roses.
We catch these moments of quick updates when we can as we navigate around our busy days. With a fulltime job and my writing, capturing time with my family is a challenge. I find myself appreciating these little moments of connection. Sometimes they come in quick phone calls like this morning. Sometimes they come in the form of social media when I steal glimpses of my growing grandsons with snippets of their lives on Facebook. Where else can I find a jaunty pose of four year- old Ethan claiming to be “Mr Incredible” or the delight in five year- old Jacob’s eyes as he nails his little brother with a snowball? Precious moments in time sent out into cyberspace to savor. They brighten my day.
“Well, I’ll let you go ,Mom.” Leigh Ann chirped,catching her breath after giving me a litany of happenings in her world: the kids are healthy, Dave, her husband is recovering from his recent jaw surgery, her teacher friend just lost her job in the wake of school budget cuts and by the way, Dave’s parents are stranded in a shelter in Hawaii.
All of this in the span of about three minutes.
“Have a great weekend.” she said.” I’m sure I’ll read about all the stories on your blog.”
That statement really got me thinking. Social media really does reach out and touch lives. I hope I am making meaningful connections with my blog, not only with my family but also with my fellow writers and followers.
Our assignment in Dan Blank’s “Build Your Author Platform” Course this week is to define our Brand. I did discuss this in this previous post, but now I have to put into words the very essence of what I stand for and how I plan to communicate my message, as well as identify who I want to send this message to. That will be the foundation for building my author platform.
Distilling my passion and zeal into a few carefully chosen words that will do it justice seems insurmountable at the moment. I will contemplate this as I ride the train to New York today. And I will aim to cover as many bases as Leigh Ann did in her three- minute update to me this morning.
It’s really all about making meaningful connections. That’s a good place to start.
Speaking of meaningful connections, meet John. He got me from Penn Station to Port Authority in a heartbeat and just in the nick of time to catch my bus to New Jersey in this bicycle cab:
John will get you there in a flash, weaving in and out of NYC traffic and chatting all the way.
How about you?
What meaningful connections are you making in your life or in your writing?
I’d love to hear from you~
“LIFE IS NOT A ‘BRIEF CANDLE.’ IT IS A SPLENDID TORCH THAT I WANT TO MAKE BURN AS BRIGHTLY AS POSSIBLE BEFORE HANDING IT ON TO FUTURE GENERATIONS.” Bernard Shaw.
Before cell phones, twitter, the internet, video games, microwaves, garage door openers and even TV, there was a generation that survived the Great Depression of the 1930’s, fought an honorable war in the 1940’s as they were coming of age and went on to rebuild America in the 1950’s. Their patriotism was high, work ethic strong and priorities clear~God, family, country. They have earned their title of the “Greatest Generation.” They danced to Big Band sounds, pulled together to fight World War II,gathered around radios in parlors to listen to FDR’s Fireside Chats and made their own fun.
Personally, I feel very fortunate to have been born a “boomer” as I have been the beneficiary of hardworking parents who instilled their values of God,family,country in their children. Of course, they were old-fashioned to me as I came of age in the 1960’s especially when they prevented me from wearing makeup or attending boy-girl parties until I was sixteen.
But the older I get, the more I appreciate what they have given me.
Then I read this post on Any Shiny Thing by my writer friend, Lynne Spreen, about the lessons she has learned from her Greatest Generation mother. Hop on over. It is delightful.
And, it reminds me of my own parents, Bob and Kitty, who devoted their lives to taking the lessons they had learned from growing up at a time when money was tight and went on to provide while making sure their children were self-sufficient, responsible and respectful. At eighteen, they kissed me goodbye and wished me well as they sent me off to nursing school. They had already taught me about God, the pride that came from earning my own money, the importance of education, the basics of common courtesy and the value of family~no matter how bad things would get, my family would always be there for me.
While critics may carry on about the glut and futility of memoirs, author and scholar William Zinsser, the Father of Memoir, reminds me in this post that these boring and ordinary true life events are the very ingredients that will enrich my story. What better way to preserve history than to tell stories experienced against the background of the times; to capture its spirit and character.
I have never known a hungry day in my life,but my Mom tells me of opening an empty cold box to find nothing. Then she regales me with stories of warm summer nights when her uncles harmonized barber shop tunes under street lamps. My Dad told me of bullies who taunted him in the school yard about the knickers he was forced to wear until his older brother,Dick came to his rescue. They were poor but they both had loving families. They made their own fun. Now, these are treasure troves to share with the next generation, the torches of light that will be passed forward to preserve a time that will never be seen again.
I am told to write what I know. I know that I want to share the great legacy of love that my parents passed on to me. I hope my tribute will be a fitting one. The lessons from my “Greatest Generation” parents will be the spice in my memoir.
What lessons have you learned from the Greatest Generation?
What is the spice in your story?
” LIFE IS NOT SO SHORT BUT THAT THERE IS ALWAYS TIME FOR COURTESY.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
In the world of writing, we are supposed to bring the reader into our story so that they can experience whatever emotion we are portraying. This may evoke a certain level of discomfort. When was the last time you read a book you had to stop reading because it was too uncomfortable? The Slap:A Novel by Christos Tsiolkas is getting a lot of buzz about the degree of discomfort it creates. It is a story about contemporary middle -class life centered around the act of a man slapping a child who is not his own at a neighborhood barbecue and the series of repercussions that result. But if we are uncomfortable, we can simply choose to stop reading that particular book.
What happens in our day-to-day life when we are confronted with someone who is rude,discourteous and downright ill-mannered? Let me take this one more step. What happens if you are obligated to interact with this person by virtue of your professional role?
My nurse practitioner friend and colleague,Sue posed this question on Facebook and when I commented,she challenged me to blog about it. So let’s get some discussion going because this is a real issue that sticks in the craw of many professionals in the service sector.
Sue is a respected,seasoned professional who offers her patients the benefit of many years of experience and sound clinical judgement. So you would think that any patient who comes to her for health care would respect that and appreciate that there is someone of her caliber to provide relief for whatever is ailing them. It seems that one day a patient launched into a string of expletives because she asked him to put on a mask in the office, followed by refusal to follow her instructions. She was so incredulous at his rudeness that she felt compelled to get some insights from others.
Now I know, everyone is fighting their own battle, there is a reason why people act the way they do and rude people reflect more on themselves than on the people they are targeting BUT (and I’m told, it’s what comes after the but that counts) Whoa~ enough is enough. While the majority of my patients are courteous and grateful, in this case, the patient(customer)) was NOT right.
I had a similar encounter where a male patient rolled his eyes and sarcastically replied,”Yeah,Whatever” to my history taking attempts. When I fed back his obvious resistance to my questioning, he rose to his full 6’3″, 300 lb frame and started pointing his finger at me,
“I’m sick of repeating the same information over and over again” (Yes, I agree that can be annoying, but a little manners please. I was only doing my job.)
So I made a judgement call right then and there.
” Sir,I will not be talked to like this. I am leaving the room and you will have to schedule another appointment with Dr XYZ.”
He followed me down the hall,with raised voice and clenched fist and left just in time to avoid me calling Security.
One week later, I received a note of apology written on a card with a sketch of a flower arrangement on the front. A happy ending in this case. I have seen him since and he has been pleasant and cooperative. That’s not always the case as with Sue’s patient.
So while rudeness, poor manners and discourteous behavior may make a good story for a book, real-life encounters with ill-mannered people especially people we are serving require more of us than simply closing the book. I can only hope I never do that to others.
What are your experiences with ill-mannered people and how do you deal with them?
Thoughts? Reactions?
Let’s talk~
Write On... 