March 21, 2018

Yesterday, I celebrated my eleventh anniversary of becoming a published author. There are times when it feels like I’ve been living this dream of mine a whole lot longer than that; and times when it feels like I got that first miraculous acceptance just yesterday.

I received the email that my first manuscript was accepted just a month after we buried our son. While I was pleased by the email with the subject line, “Made for Each Other for publication”, I didn’t, understandably, feel excited. That sense, that emotion, was delayed for the better part of a year. Though I had mourned, I had not dealt. That took time.

Eventually, of course, my numbness faded. I was always grateful my publisher said yes, right from that first moment—and I still am—because becoming a published author really was the only dream I ever had. The ability to slip into a world of my own creation was a talent I discovered quite young, and one I both inherited from and developed because of my father.

In the years since that first book came out, I’ve been places and met people I never dreamed I would. I’ve made a lot of friends, people with whom, either through these essays, or through my books, I’ve made a connection. Over the course of my life, I have evolved, as we all evolve, tempered and formed by my life experiences, and aided by the emotions and intellect with which I was born. We don’t, any of us, walk the exact same paths for our entire lives. We don’t share every exact same experience. We do share some moments, experiences, rites of passage. We are, each of us, given opportunities to reach out and help others, and in so doing, we really help ourselves.

We travel life’s road together, you and I, for a time. I know this intellectually. Just as I understand with my whole being, that how we use that time, each of us, determines the value of the experience we share. It’s been true that, for most of my adult life, my relationships with others have been very important to me. I know I’m guilty, more than occasionally, of letting those relationships become too important.

You’ve all heard that old saw, I’m sure. That people enter your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. My problem is that I can’t tell the difference. When I meet someone, I open my heart and I expect we’re going to be friends for a lifetime.

Some people, when they make connections with others, have walls. They’re cautious, revealing themselves bit by bit, and usually only to a certain degree. That’s not me. There are reasons to wish it was so—selfish reasons that involve protection of the heart against the emotional pain of betrayal and abandonment.

But I’m not willing to become that person. I’m not willing to limit my openness, my ability to empathize, or the inclinations I get to reach out to others.

Yes, I’ve been deeply hurt, and more than once. I’ve had people I believed were going to be lifelong friends turn and walk away. I’ve had them do it telling lies and taking others with them. Each time it happens, I’m devastated. My beloved often asks me why I let that happen. Why do I always welcome people with open arms, and an open heart?

The answer really is that even the sure and certain knowledge that some people are going to hurt me isn’t as horrible a fate—in fact, it’s nowhere near as horrible a fate—as becoming jaded, closed of mind and heart, and cynical.

When I was a young mother, when life was so full of lemons for me there was no room to make lemonade, I let myself feel all those negative emotions. For a time, I was bitter. And what I learned from that experience was that negativity and bitterness was a black sticky morass that, once it took hold inside of me spread like a cancer: heavy, pervasive, and feeling like death.

I made a decision not to be that way. I wasn’t sure how to affect that change, except to pray and to simply tell myself, every single day until I felt that belief, that life was terrific, and so was I. If life was a decision, then I was deciding that it really was, to quote an old Leslie Gore song, sunshine, lollipops and rainbows.

Oh yes, and emoji hearts. Lots and lots of emoji hearts. And do you know what I discovered? It really is!

Love,
Morgan
http://www.morganashbury.com
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury