Behold, The Power of The Wind

"Don't tell me what to do! Don't tell me, I can't stand it any longer. I'm dying here, so just leave me alone. Leave me alone." That is when I woke up and the search for me, myself, and I began. The journey was a long one-an odyssey-one that many women must take and don't know how. Oh, I read all the self- help books, but those writers can't help because they just want to tell women what to do. They don't understand what is happening to the insides of women; it hurts and we are pretty much tired of hurting.

I was not that stupid, I was that numb, and change? Any kind of change was so frightening that I was willing going to my grave rather than rescue myself. I am the creator of my own reality. As I visualize it, so I create it. Whatever I can take away from me, I can give back to me. I am responsible for me-no one else can truly share in that decision-making act of choice, good and bad. Just as the reader chooses a book, just as a writer creates a novel, I chose and created my life's experiences.

The people involved along the way were my secondary characters, just as I was theirs as they made choices and created their own reality. If I had been more care filled toward my self, I could have had the "happily-ever-after" novel. Instead I had created a Grimm's fairy tale.

I was a Baby Boom child, and I dreamed of reaching into the '60s with Prince Valiant determination. My world changed before the '60s arrived. It collapsed around my little eleven year old head. People don't live forever. And death can cause change. Instead of taking care of myself during that change, I gave up. It wasn't a fairy princess story. It was a nightmare, but I didn't wake up, not for thirty years.

I looked for a husband who was older and more experienced, who would rescue me (a Prince Charming in the rough) and keep me safe from the dragons and demons which haunted my sleep. The lost aspirations were not lost but suppressed, driven down, forced to sleep, but haunting me nevertheless.

The body knows when the mind wants to die and will surely accommodate. There was ulcerative colitis, asthma, and bronchial pneumonia. There was venereal disease twenty-three years later. But the dreamer, the storyteller, kept remembering that all of her stories were supposed to have happy endings. So I hung on.

The money started in 1977: a corporation, then five corporations. In the background-way in the background-were my four children. I was slashing away at myself, giving all the energy I had to everyone else. I was burning; burning the candle at both ends to burn up the rage and indignation I had toward myself for allowing "me" to die and be buried so long ago. I was not taking care of myself, doing what was good for me. How could I have truly expected to believe I was taking good care of others? I was committing slow suicide, but did not know it at the time. I was destroying through lack of knowledge, and I was destroying myself.

Education saved me from self-destruct, and I restructured "my house". My storytelling evolved into the books which were becoming the eaves of a new lifestyle of writing, teaching, and learning. I began the process of rebuilding the beautiful structure I had once been, and in doing that, began to find my lost identity and my values. Through the learning and teaching, I met and interviewed successful people who revealed me to myself, like I reveal myself to other men and women who may have or are now experiencing life's hardest lessons.

Here then, is the story of this time of my life. While it may take the reader by surprise at the thread that runs though this book, it is a healing process that creates the mentality to be more than just a survivor. My gratitude toward the people who willing played the parts and to the talented and successful individuals I interviewed, during the creation of this book, is expressed with a heart full of love.