Meet author Lisa Braxton, who is visiting us on her WOW! Women on Writing virtual book tour. Lisa's lyrical memoir about grief - Dancing Between the Raindrops - will make you want to hold on to your loved ones and protect their memories for your lifetime. She also assures you, you are not alone. Lisa has also written an essay for Choices about how a writing group saved her manuscript. We all need to listen to that. Here's Lisa: My Writing Group Saved My Manuscript by Lisa Braxton Since childhood I knew I wanted to write a novel. I’d curl up with my copy of Little Women or Charlotte’s Web and dream of creating stories of my own. But I wasn’t able to begin the work of fulfilling my dream until many decades later. My career in journalism helped me learn the fundamentals of writing a story, how writing doesn’t really begin until rewriting, and the importance of a good editor making a story even better. But journalism was all consuming. As a reporter covering stories about … [Read more...]
Introducing Anoop Judge and Mercy and Grace
The story of Gia Kumari and how she finally leaves the Delhi orphanage where she was raised is almost miraculous. You won't want to put this new novel, Mercy and Grace by Anoop Judge down. Also Anoop has written a guest post for us - about how beneficial writing is to help us work through our grief. I know that is very true. After my own son died, I wrote to heal and it helped me a lot. Here's Anoop: Writing Your Way Through Grief by Anoop Judge Grief is a profound and complex emotion that can arise from various sources, such as the loss of a loved one, the end of a significant relationship, or even the loss of a cherished dream. It’s a universal experience, yet it’s deeply personal and can feel isolating. In my own journey through grief, I’ve found writing to be a powerful tool for healing and self-discovery. The Power of Writing Writing has long been recognized as a therapeutic activity. It allows us to express our emotions, thoughts, and experiences in a way … [Read more...]
Selling, getting rid of the stuff, and moving
My house has been on the market for three weeks with no offers yet. Bub I assume that will happen in good time. In the meantime I'm nervous about it and I work hard to make sure my home is in perfect condition when people come by to see it. In the meantime I also write my daily poems - hoping my words will help the process along. I'm abandoned Put upon Left to do All the work. Arrange for repairs Take care of the garden Sign the listing papers And make sure Everything is perfect before a buyer Comes by. Then I’m the one Left to decide On an offer If one ever comes through Next I must take care of all the work Of the move: The throwing away, The giving away, The taking away, Handling all the things We lovingly bought together And put into this home. And touching each One by one while deciding What to do with it. I resent it I want him by my side. After he died I had to take care Of the finances Pay the bills Do the taxes Manage the money. This other stuff The selling, the … [Read more...]
Living with grief
I've lived alone now for over three months. first while my husband was in the hospital and then after his death on November 22, 2020. And I have to say living alone is a lonely business. I don't find anything to redeem it. And it's made much worse these days because of the COVID shut down. There is no socializing with friends and family - PERIOD. Of course I've received lots of heartfelt and loving cards, phone calls, texts, and notes on social media. However, what's missing the most is a real live hug. So I've been keeping myself busy by writing - here, in my journal, and my poem a day. I've given myself those assignments to help with the grief and to produce something meaningful throughout this time. I'm also spending a lot of time doing all the things a person has to do when a spouse dies. Coincidentally, the LA Times had an article about it just today. Here's some of the things I've been doing: Call social security about survivor benefits Cancel his health … [Read more...]
How do you react to interview questions?
I welcome Rina Z. Neiman today, author of Born Under Fire - a historical novel - while she's on her WOW! Women on Writing virtual book tour. As I am the author of a recently published historical novel, Papa's Shoes, I can totally relate to Rina's book about a family's immigration struggles. Rina also struggled to get the information she needed for her book. Here she provides her thoughts about conducting interviews with people who are (and who are not) willing to talk with you. Here's Rina: Interviews are a great way to collect information, and when working on a biography, sometimes the only way to get information. When I started to write my mother’s story, I went to Israel to conduct interviews with my mother’s remaining friends and relatives. My first interview was a disaster. My phone ran out of battery. I couldn’t figure out my recording app. Why didn’t I buy that selfie stick/tripod? I did the interview, but took very poor notes. Yes, this could happen to … [Read more...]
Writing memoir helped me deal with grief
As I am inching toward December 31, which would be my son Paul’s forty-seventh birthday, I think it makes sense to revisit some of the tools I used in dealing with the grief I felt after his death and still feel now. Memoir writing and writing in general were/are a huge help. Maybe that’s why I’ve turned to memoir again. I’m almost twenty thousand words along on a new one; however it’s not about Paul, as my memoir, published in 2011, Leaving the Hall Light On: A Mother’s Memoir of Living with Her Son’s Bipolar Disorder and Surviving His Suicide, is. Here’s a piece I wrote early on about how writing memoir, journal entries, and poetry all worked for me. In fact, everything I wrote in the piece below still applies today. How Memoir Writing Helped Me Deal with Grief I signed up for a writing class three months after my son Paul’s death. We sat in the instructor’s living room on couches and big easy chairs in a comfortable and forgiving atmosphere. Each week the instructor told us … [Read more...]
Writing to heal in times of grief
Wendy Brown-Baez and I are soul mates. We're both advocates and beneficiaries of writing to heal and survivors of a loved one's suicide. Please welcome Wendy today as she stops by Choices on her WOW! Women on Writing book tour. Her literary fiction book, Catch a Dream, is described below. Here are her words about experiencing loss and grief and the benefits of writing to heal that experience. Writing for Healing by Wendy Brown-Baez, author of Catch a Dream My healing story begins not with my own healing but with seeking solutions for my companion’s depression. Sometimes Michael was unable to get out of bed for days at a time. Other times, he was energetic, gregarious, spending money wildly, followed by aggression. With a diagnosis of bi-polar disorder, the puzzle pieces fell into place. I was involved in two writing groups at the time, a writing support group called Write Action and a women’s poetry group. Michael became more and more mentally unstable and finally killed … [Read more...]
Review number 220 is a true gift
Thank you, Janine Ward, for this sensitive and insightful review of Leaving the Hall Light On. I won't say more. The review speaks for itself. Inspirational. For anyone who has known untouchable, unimaginable grief that no one deserves and on one survives without lifetime scars, Madeline Sharples' Leaving the Hall Light On is a must read. It is a book that will shine light into the broken crevices of the soul, and if you are healing, if you feel you are alone, Madeline's book is the perfect company. It is her transformative story about accepting the grief of unanswerable questions, parenting into the unknown territories of mental illness, losing everything and deciding to live anyway. Along the way she describes it in detail, the intersections she crossed and why she turned the way she turned, proving that anyone can survive anything if we put our minds into it and one foot forward, one day at a time. Joy can return, it will never be the same but the capacity to accept what it … [Read more...]
Shirley Melis writes about dancing through grief
I feel so grateful that I got the chance to interview Shirley Melis as she participates in her WOW! Women on Writing blog tour. As I'm no stranger to grief I was interested in how she deals with it and writes about it. Ultimately for both of us, we've learned to survive. Thank you, Shirley, for being here at Choices today. About Banged-Up Heart: is an intimate and clear-eyed account of finding love late and losing it early and of the strength it takes to fall deeply in love a second time, be forced to relinquish that love too soon, and yet choose to love again. When her husband of thirty years dies suddenly, Shirley Melis is convinced she will never find another man like Joe. Then she meets John, a younger man who tells her during their first conversation that he has lived for many years with a rare but manageable cancer. She is swept off her feet in a whirlwind courtship, and within months, made brave by the early death of a friend's husband, she asks him to marry her! What … [Read more...]
Seventeen years ago
Tomorrow it will be seventeen years since our son Paul died by suicide. Tomorrow my husband and I will visit his grave, leave a small stone, as we do every year on his birthday and death day. Today like all days is a time to reflect. I wrote the following poem a few years after he died. It is included in my memoir Leaving the Hall Light On: A Mother's Memoir of Living with Her Son's Bipolar Disorder and Surviving His Suicide. Yes, we have survived all these years, but the grief has never gone away. I'll Always Remember I'll always remember he slept without closing his eyes all the way I'll always remember he walked fast and way ahead of us I'll always remember he had long, thick, black eyelashes surrounding clear blue eyes I'll always remember he played the piano, legs crossed at the knees, leaning way down over the keyboard I'll always remember he liked to wear second-hand clothes and didn't mind if they were ripped I'll always remember the way he stood at the pantry … [Read more...]
Turning grief into art
Chanel Brenner, Alexis Rhone Fancher, and I are reading our poetry tomorrow night at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Tustin, CA. Our theme is turning grief into art. Each of us has lost a son, and each of us have turned to writing as a way to deal with our grief. There is no cure for us, however, writing can be a soothing balm. If you live in the Los Angeles area, please join us tomorrow night in Tustin. … [Read more...]
Happy sixth anniversary
Our son and daughter-in-law were married in our garden six years ago today. That is significant not only as a celebration of their love for each other, but that they wanted to get married at the sight where my son's brother, our son Paul, took is life in 1999. For a long time Ben didn't want to be here, but that all changed on his wedding day. The wedding was beautiful and the event was not tarnished by unhappy memories. My memoir Leaving the Hall Light On was published less than a year later. It is, as the subtitle says, A Mother's Memoir of Living with Her Son's Bipolar Disorder and Surviving His Suicide. Although the story is sad, the memoir is also about survival. That said, I decided to end the book with an Epilogue about the Wedding in the Garden, on a very upbeat note. Here is the poem that ended the Epilogue. I hope you'll read the memoir and entire epilogue as well. And if you have read Leaving the Hall Light On, please leave a review here. Five star reviews help … [Read more...]
A wonderful 5-star review
Thank you so much for this great review of my memoir, Leaving the Hall Light On: A Mother's Memoir of Living with Her Son's Bipolar Disorder and Surviving His Suicide. That makes 206 reviews total, with 66 percent of them with five stars. This review made my day. "as she explores on the page what it is like to attempt to create normalcy within a family life ... Exploring the real life story of the unspeakable tragedy of losing a son to suicide, author Madeline Sharples has written an affecting and heart wrenching memoir entitled LEAVING THE HALL LIGHT ON. A deeply personal and first hand account of struggling with her son's battle with bipolar disorder and the effect on the family, the memoir delves deeply within the author's consciousness, as she explores on the page what it is like to attempt to create normalcy within a family life where little exists. She tells her story with courage and abiding honesty never shirking from the hard truths of a life filled with so … [Read more...]
Reading about Corita Kent at {pages}: a bookstore
This past Thursday evening I attended a book reading at my local independent bookstore, {pages}. April Dammann, author of Corita Kent. Art and Soul. The Biography. (Angel City Press), spoke to us about the wonderful artist and teacher of the 1960s formerly known as Sister Mary Corita. I was most interested in attending this event because I have four of Corita's serigraphs hanging on my family room wall. I fell in love with them in the 1960s when I first heard of this rebellious nun, modern artist, and activist for social justice who combined bright colors, whimsical shapes, and political and/or literary messages in her artwork. And I still enjoy having her work in my house. Her work is relevant. Her messages are universal. For example, she wrote two messages in the Life piece (upper right): Life is a complicated business fraught with mystery and some sunshine. P. Roth Let the morning time drop all its petals on me. Life I love you. All is groovy. Simon & … [Read more...]
Leaving the Hall Light On has legs!
This month has ended with the 124th five-star review of my book, Leaving the Hall Light On: A Mother's Memoir of Living with Her Son's Bipolar Disorder and Surviving His Suicide. Published four years ago, this makes me feel my memoir still has long legs, that there are many others who can relate to the story I tell about our son's bipolar disorder and suicide, and of how they affected the lives of my husband, our surviving son, and myself. The book ends on a high note - the marriage of our surviving son, but don't get me wrong. The grief will never end, I still miss our son desperately, and my memories of him are alive and active, but I've been able to move on and live a full life without him. We all have. Here's what the latest reviewer on Amazon had to say: Amazing story of a mother and her family's journey through the wilderness of suicide grief. This painfully honest memoir, parallels the experience I recently have had with my son's 3 year battle with schizophrenia and … [Read more...]
Let’s stop the suicide epidemic!
Suicide Prevention Includes Caring for the Bereaved I'm so glad Franklin Cook and I found each other. He's an expert on the effects of exposure to suicide on family and friends and has been part of a groundbreaking document he discusses below. I was so deeply affected by my son's suicide I considered suicide myself. Instead I decided to be an advocate for erasing the stigma of mental illness and helping to prevent suicide*. Looking at the effects of suicide on loved ones and working to help assuage their unique kind of grief is one way to do that. Please help me welcome Franklin Cook, my Choices guest today. He's an expert on grief after suicide. Groundbreaking Guidelines Address Grief, Trauma, Distress of Suicide Loss By Franklin Cook A historic document, Responding to Grief, Trauma, and Distress After a Suicide: U.S. National Guidelines, was announced earlier this month at theAssociation for Death Education and Counseling conference in San Antonio and at theAmerican … [Read more...]
Poems for Cynthia
I have been holding these poems in very close. They are personal and sad, all about my friend who died at the end of December. I wrote them in response to Robert Lee Brewer's November 2013 Poem A Day Chapbook Challenge. Here's the dedication I wrote: This chapbook is dedicated to my cherished friend Cynthia Rayvis Godofsky November 5, 1946 December 28, 2013 At the outset I decided to write a poem about Cynthia adhering to the daily prompt no matter what it was, hoping that my words might help keep her alive at least until the end of the challenge. Thankfully I was successful in weaving Cynthia into each daily prompt, and she kept rallying throughout the month. As you will see from these poems, she had a lot of love in her life and constant loving care during her last days. I'm sure that love helped keep her alive almost a month after the challenge ended. I thank Cynthia and her family for being my muses for this November 2013 PAD Chapbook Challenge (all poems written from … [Read more...]
