You Guys Are Awesome

Now that the dust has settled from that last post…whew!  People, thank you for the kind responses you made, and those of you who contacted me privately with your own stories, thank you for trusting me.  Please, don’t carry things like that alone.  Find someone you trust, or find a stranger (because sometimes that’s easier) and unburden yourself.

I think what you’ll find is that sharing your story not only helps you, but also creates opportunity for others to heal.

With that said, I’m going to put in a quick plug for your local rape crisis center.  Find out where it is, and support them.  Women and girls, men and boys, and the elderly all suffer, and your rape crisis center is sometimes the only emotional support a child, young person, or senior adult has access to. 

Think about how hard it is to share a story like that, then multiply it by police stations, emergency rooms, and evidence collection kits.  We need crisis centers, who are there to help people pick up the pieces, and hold it together before, during, and after the authorities and health care professionals do their investigations and necessarily intrusive examinations.

There.  I’m exhausted of being serious!  Let’s talk about something fun.

Have you read any good books lately?

I develop serious relationships with books, so it isn’t easy for me to read fiction.  I approach fiction like I approach friendships.  I want to find out all about the book before I commit to spending any amount of time with it.  If I like it, I’ll keep coming back to it, until it has become a part of me. 

If I’m not happy with what I find out about the book, no matter the recommendations, I am just not going to take it to coffee.  Nope.

Non-fiction, I’ll gobble up happily, any time, any day, don’t really care.  I love memoirs, but those don’t become my friends like other books have.

And then, there are the books I loved so much, I will only ever read them once because to read them again would only bring me the pain of realizing I can never get back to that first time experience.  Where’d You Go, Bernadette is one of those.  If you haven’t read that, you are cheating yourself.

Slummy Mummy is a book I read over, and over again.  The protagonist reminds me so much of a friend that I hear her voice in my head as I read.  Oh!  Your Voice In My Head is another book I won’t ever read again, but loved.  Non-fiction, memoir.