These past three years of writing sometimes feels like I’ve exiled myself from the only world I have known; and I did. No longer participating in life’s race to accumulate, instead emptying my heart through writing my memoir while sharing smaller scaled stories on my website and on Substack. Writing became both my resuscitated passion and my recent profession. Reinventing myself after a lifetime of drugs; marketing pharmaceuticals.
My initial days of writing transitioned into years; the engine of time chugging along its cosmic route. Momentarily saying goodbye to those I love as they departed from this terrestrial track. Family and friends, including my father. My days of writing under the desert sun, interrupted by life’s sorrowful storms.
While past colleagues and friends continue their life’s vocation, I abandoned mine to pursue something else. Making the decision at fifty-five that I could never return to pharmaceutical marketing. A topic that’s expanded and expounded upon in my memoir. One of several enlarged topics as I looked back on my lost life; crafting lines of loss and love.
Fortunate to have spousal support and stashed savings which provided the means to share my song of salvation. Humbled to honor the wisdom of no longer needing to chase stuff or status; a sacred pearl paving the way to pen and publish my personal story.
Even for an introvert, these days of isolation have been a test at times. Writing about my life has been both a blessing and a burden. Reliving my painful past, my depraved decisions and my aura of arrogance. Rescued and revived, my story doesn’t end with my own self-destruction but with my redemption.
I believe this “time out” was needed to prepare me for what’s next in my life while leaving something sacred in this world because every life story is sacred. My life, my learnings, and my love are now aligned to reflect my faithfulness to God and my fidelity for my Creator’s creatures; knowing that time will erase me and my words. Knowing that nothing is lost because love and life are eternally linked.
Silence is a gift. Something that I intuitively knew but now know with a satisfied sureness. Writing without worldly distractions allowed me to think through what I was putting on paper. It helped me to progress and produce short stories simmering with poetic insights and amusing vulnerability.
Sitting in stillness, I emptied my mind while filling my heart. In this quietness, I not only found the space to write, but I revived my love of reading. My sense of curiosity, my feelings of empathic sensitivity and my relational responsibilities to God and all people. God is love.
Just like my future and your future (knowing that future itself is always an assumption), I don’t know what will happen next in my life as I begin to publicly share my memoir with the world. I don’t know if it will resonate with anyone. I don’t know what, if any, difference it will have on the world.
I do know that writing and reliving scenes from my life has been therapeutic and has helped me heal as a child of God. I do know that my life isn’t all about me; it never was even when I wanted to believe otherwise because that’s what my heart desired. I do know that my life and the love I create, is in loyalty to God alone.
I do know that am I sharing my personal story with an impersonal world. A world hostile to truth, trust and tenderness. I do know that my life is no longer in service to the substance of this world. I do know that Love conquers fear and shame, pride and desire, and even death; especially death.
My memoir is a love letter to all the people who came into my life; a love letter to God. Words that are full of gratitude for a blessed life. A life that I didn’t deserve but one that was generously given to me. I believe in God because I believe in Love.
Peace. God loves you.
PS-My memoir will be available early September, you can sign-up here to be notified.