I have a confession to make. My new book Living in the Heartland: Three Extraordinary Women's Stories is not a story about three women. It's actually a story about four women. I am the fourth woman.
While Nancy, Ife and Ellyn, the three heroines in my nonfiction story, belong to racial minorities my story is intimately tied to theirs. At the heart of all our stories is the importance of family and tradition. Family and traditions have helped the women overcome many challenges in their lives. I didn't grow up with a strong sense of family or tradition. I was raised, for the most part, as an only child. My siblings were significantly older than me and left home when I was a toddler. Their was little other family, besides my parents and siblings. For these reasons, I never developed a strong connection to family that is until I had my own, but as my sons grew older, became more independent, that connection began to unravel. When my parents died I became more disconnected. Then my sons left home for college. All sense of family felt as if it had evaporated. I decided I needed to search for a definition of meaning of family, and that's the story behind my book.
I have learned that while there are things I cannot change; for example, I could not choose the family I was into, I have the freedom to create my own family and to adopt my own traditions. I also realize that it is possible to find support and inspiration from women who may on the surface seem very different than me. This is what ultimately lies at the heart of my book and my blog.
There is no need for anyone to feel lost, to feel isolated. There is a world of people from whom we can find guidance, inspiration, even love, if we recognize that we are all one family.
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7 Mar 2010 2:22 PM
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