Writing this book has been a quite a journey for me. I started writing the book at a time when I felt very lost in life. My personal and professional life were in shambles as far as I could see. I needed to dig into the depths of my being to understand what was really going on with me. I was depressed with life in general, and felt disillusioned and hopeless. I knew that I had to make some quick changes in order to survive. My oldest child was fifteen years old, my middle child was 13, and my youngest was three years old. My recent marriage had failed...well, it felt like a "real" marriage had never started. I had quit my job of six years to start a business which was also failing. I was at a crossroads in life, and knew my change needed to be immediate. It was do or die. That was a little over twenty years ago.
I sat at my new PC and started writing one night. I just started writing about my childhood. Then I wanted to tell my story...even if it were to myself. I had no idea that I would publish a book at this point, but knew that I had to write it all down. The journey began with the vague memory of a little girl at three years old. I started getting flashes of what my life was and the memories began seeping in. Then as I wrote; I started getting flashes of memories I had long repressed...and I cried. As I cried, I wrote...every night...sometimes all night long, for a few months, unfolding my life and realizing the purpose of a burning desire to write it down. I needed to see how the tapestry of my life was knitted together to prepare me for now. I realized that the hurt and frightened little girl inside of me was alive and actively participating in every thing I did. That was unsettling. That little girl was making big decisions for me, and I needed to take control of my life if I were to survive.
I wrote about life as I remembered growing up in Belize. Sometimes I would stop and literally sob when a repressed memory would pop up. Suddenly I would be faced with an incident or situation that I was previously oblivious. .After a while, I had narrated most of my life story, and felt a sense of purging and cleansing as I worked my way through what had now become a project. About three years later, I shared it with a colleague I had met in one of my classes at LA Trade Technical College, where I was pursuing a higher education. She was totally awed by the experience of reading my "manuscript", which she suggested I should publish. I agreed with her, but I did not have the guts to put my story out there for the world to read. I also thought about the various people involved in my life story, and how my candidness would affect them. I made a conscious decision to put my manuscript, and the idea of even getting it published it on the back burner.
A year ago in 2009, I was reading Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, and learned that the manuscript for her book was put aside for about ten years before she retrieved it and got it published. That book turned out to be her masterpiece...and at that point, food for thought to me. I returned to my manuscript and decided to review it and consider getting it published. I realize this is my life, and the only life I have as this individual, and the book records those things in life that impact me the most from the time I can remember. I believe this book will impact someone's life positively.
As I once again painstakingly went through the process of reading and reading the whole book, I found so many corrections that I became uncertain as to whether I was even ready to publish when I initially submitted the manuscript in August. I have about thirty more pages to correct at this time. Feeling better now, even though I have been a very hard critic during this whole process. As the saying goes, we are our worse critics.
