Category: Life in general

Food For Thought · Life in general

I’m still here….

Tori LennoxLeave a comment

It’s been a long three months for a lot of reasons. Mainly because I was torn by my writing. I wasn’t sure which book I should finish or whether I wanted to continue submitting manuscripts to publishers. Not because I’m bothered by rejection notices. Actually, the rejection notices were promising. However, I continued revisiting the reason I wanted validation by a large publishing house in the first place for a few weeks and realized it was no longer relevant. I decided to learn everything I can about self-publishing and do what needs to be done to promote my books myself instead. It just makes more sense since I already have several books finished and I have the time to do the work now.

Another reason I haven’t blogged is because I had family coming in from SC in February. Actually, it was Mom’s family. That was a hoot and not in a good way. I ended up getting verbally attacked in a restaurant because mom wasn’t there by her sister-in-law, her daughter, and her son-in-law who seemed to believe I could have influenced her to come with us as she used to do. They missed that Kathy and thought I was either to blame for her staying home or that I could have made her change her mind.

Neither was true and I miss that Kathy, too. But she doesn’t exist anymore. First off, Mom is 93 years old. Two and a half years ago, she had a bad fall that almost killed her. Two years ago, she had her first stroke. A year and a half ago she had her second stroke which led to me leaving my job to come home full-time. Added to that, she has health issues that make her a poor candidate for the covid vaccine, so no shot. That’s the downside.

The upside is despite all of that, she’s doing great. Her mind is sharp, and she has no bad deficits from the stroke. She’s healthy and vibrant. However, she uses a rollator and she doesn’t have a lot of endurance. It takes everything out of her to get ready for an outing. But she’s living her life to the fullest the way she wants to. She no longer does things just to make other people happy like she did before her fall. She dictates her life and I let her unless it’s something unhealthy or potentially dangerous for her. That’s the “influence” I have over her.

You might wonder why I’m writing all of this. It’s because this whole incident made me realize something important – we need to love people for who they are. Not who we want them to be or who they used to be. I was deeply wounded by the attack until I realized how pathetic those three really are. They’re so preoccupied with their selfish wish for what used to be that they’re missing out on the pleasure of what is.

I love spending time with Mom watching the birds and the squirrels. I enjoy watching tv with her. I enjoy going outside to sit in the swing with her. I enjoy knowing she’s still as sharp as she used to be in so many ways. I love the fact she has so much life in her. They should too; but they don’t. Mom’s response to the whole situation was, “They just won’t let me get old.” She’s a wise woman who doesn’t mind being old because she still finds so much joy in her life. That’s a lesson we should all learn.

Another reason I’ve been gone is because, in addition to visiting family (we had another family member down from Tennessee the next week), I was editing my best friend’s novel. It was an “interesting” take on a common theme and, I believe, it would have been great when it was finished. Unfortunately, I received a call from his girlfriend six days ago informing me my friend had passed away three weeks earlier. She found him on his bedroom floor. “They” think he died from a blood clot. While I didn’t cry, I felt like everything inside me was going to implode for a couple of days. I just couldn’t process the whole thing. I was too shocked he was gone. The sad part is I’d sent him an email a couple of days before to check on him and promise to send the rest of the edited manuscript up soon.

My friend was a 58-year-old attorney who’d recently retired due to health issues. However, his sudden death was not expected! We’d spent a lot of time talking about what he was going to do next. We were talking about finally starting that publishing company we’d been tossing around for six years. He was starting to write again and hoping to develop a whole new career path. The last time I spoke with Robert, he was doing well.

Due to conflicting schedules and the fact we lived almost five hundred miles apart, I hadn’t seen my friend in close to twenty years. However, we were still close. We spoke on the phone every month or two and emailed more often. My friend was more than a friend. I loved him dearly. I would have done almost anything for him, and he would have done the same. We’d been friends over forty years.

What started as acquaintance in junior high became casual friendship in high school became deep friendship in college and law school over “Crazy Kate” to eventually a dating relationship a few years later. Unfortunately, although we tried to make it work three or four times, I never felt the degree of love for him that he felt for me and that wasn’t fair to him. However, we both valued our friendship more than a failed romance despite the bump in the road.

Although it may seem otherwise, there is a point to this rambling mess and that’s to treasure the people you love where they are for who they are. Find great joy in your relationships knowing they aren’t perfect and never will be. Don’t take advantage of others’ feelings even if you can. I could have made it work with Robert; but I would have been settling and denying him the depth of love a truly good man deserved. My mom’s relatives are missing out on incredible moments by not accepting her as she is. Honestly, their loss is my gain.

The best advice I can give anyone is spend every second you can with family and friends just basking in the little things. Don’t take for granted the idea they’ll be here when you have the time. Or when it’s more convenient. They won’t. I lost my mother when I was 32 and she was 51. My now “mom” is my ex-mother-in-law. I lost another close friend last year on March 4. She made me want to pull my hair out more often than not; but I loved her, and there’s a huge hole in my heart where she used to be. Brenda was only 66, and like Robert, was found dead unexpectedly on her bedroom floor. Likely from a heart attack. She was much too young to go that way. They both were.

In closing, this is Brenda, my mom, and me. Yes, I have an eyebrow that decided to do its own thing at some point after I’d left home! It’s okay, I still like the picture, and you can laugh with me!

Until next time,

Calla

emotional healing · General Quirkiness · Judeo-Christian Perspective · Life in general · observations · Opinions · Religious · Supernatural

I’ve struggled with this one…

Tori LennoxLeave a comment

In the, “Do I or don’t I” write this piece sense. It took me a few days to finally decide that, Yep, this one’s kind of out there, but it’s true so I’m going for it. I’ve been honest about my life and my journey from self-loathing to self-respect in so many ways. But, I’ve never shared this part largely because it’s easier to speak about abuse than it is to speak about “Spiritual” or “Supernatural” beliefs some of which seem foolish with hindsight. Not foolish that I believed certain things on my spiritual journey. That’s what a “Seeker” does. Foolish because I let my beliefs control me when I believed I was controlling my beliefs.

I’ve also debated opening up about this aspect of my life because it’s not only out there; but incredibly long. More than one blog long. Probably a two or three-parter. However, I’ve made allusions to “my journey” in terms of my spirituality and stated outright that I came by my Christian beliefs the hard way. However, I’ve never shared that much about how I went from practicing a form of “Christopaganism” to my current belief system. I think it’s time to weave that story with the same candor I’ve tried to exhibit in all of my posts.

The sad part of my story is I considered myself a Christian while I dabbled in Occult practices. I didn’t comprehend it’s one or the other. The two don’t mix. Like it or not, when you try to have it both ways, you’re going to favor one side over the other. I’ll let you guess which one. I’m not saying these statements because I’ve heard or read them somewhere. I’ve lived the events I’m writing about so I’m not just sharing beliefs. I’m sharing experiences. I can assure you the lure of Astrology, or psychics, or Tarot Cards or whatever soul poisoning dabble you choose isn’t worth the price you’ll pay down the road. It wasn’t for me.

My dance with the dark side started in elementary school as a smart kid with a fearless mind and a thirst for knowledge that continued for most of my life. The dark, musty downstairs “Vault” of my small town library was a treasure trove of resource books that entertained me for years. There were tomes on everything from gardening to true crime to history to travel to the 19th century Spiritualist Movement and everything in between. I grazed through all of them; but I was drawn most to the books about hauntings, the preternatural, and the Spiritualists. I devoured every ghost hunting book Hans Holzer wrote. I read about Atlantis, Lemuria, and Mu as well as the Order of the Golden Dawn. I digested the writings of Edgar Cayce. I became fascinated with UFO’s, crop circles, and ley line theories. Don’t get me wrong, I pursued other interests like medicine, history, quantum theory, FBI profiling, forensic facial reconstruction, and history among other things. As I’ve already said, I liked knowing a little bit about some things and a lot about others. Unfortunately, for the most part, the “lot” wasn’t the right stuff. My favorite dance was with Astrology, Tarot Cards, ghosts, ET’s, and things that go bump in the night all under the guise of knowledge.

Despite all that, I considered myself a Christian. I would have corrected anyone for suggesting otherwise. I believed in Jesus. There were things I didn’t do because they were “wrong.” I had the guilt, the condemnation, the rules and regulations without ever having the relationship with the Father or the Son. Forget the Holy Spirit. He was just a word. I believed I was right. The occult interests I dabbled in weren’t my “religion.” They were just passing fancies I found interesting and I had “rules” in place to protect me.

Those rules were laughable. For one thing, I was already in a dark place from the time I was molested the first time. To even think I could wallow deeper in the dark without being affected takes a serious disconnect from reality. You can’t. I believed I could read about witchcraft as long as I didn’t read the spells or chants. I could read about other religions if I didn’t read the rituals. In fact, I could read anything I wanted to read as long as I kept the wrong words out of my head. Right. I was playing with things I didn’t fully understand although I knew enough to know words have power. Looking back, there was something in me that drew a line in the sand I couldn’t cross. One that said I was willing to dabble this far; but not cross the line. While I’m grateful for that restraint, I went too far.

Far enough I didn’t like the dark and I didn’t like to sleep. I was born an insomniac. My mind was always churning. The fear of the dark came later. About the time I learned there might be things to fear in the dark like that cold, malevolent presence I encountered at the top of the stairs one night in my family home. It should have clued me in when the “whatever” departed and let me pass when I cried out to Jesus. It didn’t. Not really, I brushed it off as “one of those things.” Not my brightest moment. I don’t claim to know what that was or why it happened. It just did. I don’t even claim to know what it’s intent was beyond the fact I felt like I was being pushed down to a kneeling position and I didn’t like that even more than I didn’t like it.

For one thing, I was standing on the top step of a second floor staircase, not the landing, and that wasn’t safe. For another, the whole experience was terrifying. For the third, I don’t like being forced to do anything so there was a degree of anger in the fear. While I’m grateful the story ended with me walking safely to my bedroom, I wish I’d had enough sense to be scared back in the right direction. I wasn’t. Not beyond putting my Bible by my bed and reading it. I was fourteen or fifteen at the time and already too damaged for that degree of common sense to bleed through the youthful arrogance. Added to that, the hamster was already galloping around the “if I can control my life, I can control the pain” wheel in my brain and had been for several years by then.

As my occult interests expanded, my boundaries became more defined. I had enough sense to know I was flitting where I shouldn’t go and I needed to do more than just not read certain words. So, I decided what I would and wouldn’t do; but, I didn’t give up my quest. Knowledge is seductive and I wanted to know. That mindset is dangerous. It can take you places you’re not meant to go. But, as I said, I had boundaries. Right. I thought I knew everything when I knew nothing.

I understood I wasn’t going to play with Ouija Boards. I’d heard enough spooky stuff about that to steer clear. Crystals didn’t interest me. The idea of channeling or automatic writing scared the hell out of me. Literally. The idea of something overtly having control of me that wasn’t me wasn’t anything I wanted to tangle with. I wasn’t interested in astral projection. I didn’t know what would crawl in when I crawled out. I wouldn’t dabble with anything involving Satanism, grimoires, spells, or blood sacrifices. None of the yuck stuff that ended up in horror stories. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t joyfully prance around in shadowy areas I considered “safe.” I did and it all started innocently enough with imitating my Mother’s interest in magazine horoscopes.

While my goal isn’t to freak you out, real life is messy. Most of us drift into things without realizing we’re doing it. I dabbled in things we consider mainstream now like astrology and tarot cards. I consulted psychics a few times in my life. I did more than that as I’ll share more in depth in the next post. In closing, I wasn’t that stereotypical weird Goth kid everyone knew something was wrong with or the woman who cut herself in private. I wasn’t an addict or an alcoholic. None of that. I was a very normal, very average woman with a love for learning. Or so I thought. In reality, I think subconsciously I was a woman searching for some way to end the pain and find a degree of peace and happiness anyway I could find it

Until Part II,

Calla

Been There, Done That · Been There, Done That Part 2 · Life in general · writing

Taking The Next Step

Tori LennoxLeave a comment

As you already know, I’m living under the same stay-at-home-order so many of us are trying to handle. How you choose to deal with this unfamiliar, unpleasant “brave new world” is up to you. Personally, I’m trying to stay safe, keep others safe, pick battles I can win, and be at peace with the insanity I can’t change. Sometimes that’s hard; but, I can’t be content if I don’t try. So, I try, and when I fail, I try again.

I don’t have a choice. No. There’s always a choice. I don’t give myself a choice. There are so many unknowns right now. So many scenarios we need to handle carefully with a degree of wisdom and prudence not everyone possesses. Myself included. We’re living through something none of us have experienced in our lives and it’s hard. Crippling if we let it. This whole situation is like that recurring nightmare you can’t quite escape. The one you have night after night until you either deal with it or decide you don’t want to sleep any more. The big difference is we will escape this one eventually. It will end. We might have to modify our lives for a while; but, we can do it. We’ve done it before. Throughout the life of this country.

If you don’t know I’m speaking truth, look up the real history of this country. Not the Revisionist history that’s taught today if it’s taught at all. Yes, we’ve done bad things in the past. Every culture has. But, that doesn’t negate the fact this country was settled by strong people who fought through bad situations. I’m speaking of both the Native Americans and the European settlers. Both had to roll with a lot of tough situations they couldn’t control. Yet, they persevered.

We can do the same today. If we’re willing to do what it takes. Whether we accomplish that goal or not is up to us as individuals. For me, that’s where prayer comes in. I pray our leaders, all of them, act with wisdom. I pray we the people act with wisdom and consideration for others. That isn’t the easiest thing to do. Where I am, I see a lot of people acting foolishly. When I do go out, I stay as far from everyone as possible. I wear my mask and my gloves. Not just to protect myself and my Mom. To protect the people who don’t protect themselves. The flip side of that coin is when I go walking in my neighborhood I pass a few people here and there along the way. We always wave or smile silently acknowledging each other in passing as we maintain social distancing. I respect those people for being responsible as we all should be.

As I write this blog, I realize I sound like a person I’m really not. I’m not a cheerleader. I can be when I need to be; but, that persona is foreign to my more introverted, scholarly demeanor. However, I’ll admit I’m writing this post as much for myself as for my readers. I could struggle with depression if I allowed it. I won’t. If you’ve read Been There, Done That…you know I spent most of my life in self-loathing and depression. I refuse to go two steps forward and ten steps back. I refuse to be that person again. When I find myself slipping, I cry out to God and give myself a swift mental kick in the rear. I remind myself I’m not “her” anymore and I have positive things to do.

Like writing the next book in the Been There Series. It started downloading yesterday the way it should be. I’m just starting; but, the flow is natural which is everything. If I can’t write in an open, honest way that touches the heart, I shouldn’t write. It doesn’t matter whether I’m writing a novel or my life story. Again, this book will be part two of my life story. It’s dealing with my dabbling in the Occult. I’m not really interested in writing about how wrong that is from a religious standpoint. I’m more interested in exploring how what I was doing and believing preyed on my weaknesses and fed my self-loathing. How I thought I was controlling my life when I was, in reality, being controlled. That’s all I can really say at this point since I’m just starting the book.

Anyways, I’ve said enough for now. Somewhere back around my first blog, I admitted I would go all over the place in my posts and I think this one shows I have. In reality, unless I’m focusing on writing a book, my thoughts are all over the place. I’m fifty-five; but, there’s a part of me that will always be that little child chasing butterflies that light here and there only to move on to the next flower in the blink of an eye. I tend to flit from subject to subject absorbing as much as I can before I move on. I’ve finally accepted that’s who I am just as I’ve finally accepted I’m a legitimate author even if I haven’t been published by a major publishing house. Not yet. But, I believe that’s coming.

Until next time,

Calla

Life in general · writing

Best Laid Plans…

Tori LennoxLeave a comment

It seems like the universe is continually conspiring against me getting this blog going the way I’ve promised. It isn’t. It’s just life with it’s ups and downs. Since I last updated, my Mom had a mild stroke in the middle of March and made a miraculous recovery. However, she couldn’t stay alone once she was released from the hospital. That meant I had to come home temporarily. My job wouldn’t give me paid family leave since my Mom is actually my ex-mother-in-law I’ve lived with for the past thirteen years. I understood; so, I elected to use my vacation instead of taking an unpaid leave. Not ideal; but, workable. Again, things were stacking up; but, they didn’t seem insurmountable. Not yet.

In the midst of this mess, the world got Covid-19. Like most of us, that led to a whole new can of worms for me. Things like my hours got cut at work before I took my leave, my paid vacation suddenly became unpaid furlough when our hours were cut even more, and finally my employer closed temporarily due to a stay at home order for all non-essentials. Like millions of other Americans, I suddenly found myself with no income struggling to get through to unemployment for weeks with little success.

Anyways, if the world’s current craziness wasn’t enough, my Mom had a sudden, serious Potassium crash on Sunday. She ended up back in the hospital until they got her stabilized enough to come home. I brought her home late Tuesday afternoon. She’s slowly recovering her strength and doing well. However, I’m having to do far more for her temporarily than I did before this happened. So, once again, my time isn’t my own.

In the midst of all of this, I did try to write three blogs. I failed miserably. I just didn’t have anything positive or edifying to say. I do now. As much as it sounds like I’m complaining, I’m not. I just want you to know I’m writing from the same kind of challenges so many of us are suffering at the moment. As overwhelming as the last five weeks have been, a lot of good has come out of it.

First off, all things considered, my Mom is doing wonderfully. I finally got the overflowing “junk” room otherwise known as our den/living room restored to it’s former pre-renovation glory. I cleared the garage of unnecessary “garbage” and neatened it up. I replaced the box springs on my bed Hurricane Allie destroyed as a puppy. While my bedroom isn’t fully set up, it’s getting there. So, like the people in my neighborhood working on their yards, I’m slowly getting things accomplished. Just inside instead of out. I’m also taking care of my Mom until she can take care of herself again.

Added to all that, I finally got around to editing and reposting a contemporary romance I’d posted on Amazon a couple of years ago and pulled down. It needed a serious overhaul for a lot of reasons. I also found my cd’s with all the novels I’ve started/completed over the years when I was packing up my old bedroom. The significance of this is I lost all of that work when my computer crashed unexpectedly six years ago. I thought I’d lost twenty years of work forever. While I kept the hard drive, I haven’t had the extra money laying around to pay someone to see if it was possible to retrieve any of my work.

I still thought all was lost even after I found the cds. In a dumb moment I started to toss them since my last two computers didn’t have built-in cd readers anymore. Thankfully, I didn’t. I bought an external cd reader instead. Honestly, I’d forgotten they even made those things until I started to throw those cds away for the second time. Fortunately I remembered reading about external readers when they were just coming out. I don’t think I put two and two together because I’d forgotten I’d made those backup cd’s years ago before Cloud and the like existed.

Thanks to resisting two “stupid moments” I now have a completed historical romance to edit plus three other novels in the series to complete. I also have a completed romantic suspense I’m going to edit and submit to a major publishing house. That one was a third place finalist in a Romance Writers of America contest a few years ago so it’s worth submitting after a good edit. I also have several other historical novels in various states of completion on those discs – seven or eight novels total. I’m still pinching myself to make sure this really happened. It did.

I guess the whole point and purpose of this blog is to say hold on and don’t give up hope. Good things are happening in the midst of all the trauma and drama. Grab a hold of those little things that give you joy. Appreciate your family and your pets. Appreciate having too much time for a change. Know this will end and things will get better in time. Find the little positives and cling to them when all of this seems too much. If you’re a person of faith, don’t lose it. God knows what we’re going through. While my journey through years of a personal hell brought me back to the Christianity of my youth, everyone’s journey is their own. I respect that.

The point of this blog is to say stay strong, cling to the little things, don’t lose hope, keep fighting, and we’ll persevere in the end.

Calla