HERE GOES: It's a bio I wrote this morning for one of our members newly joined, as encouragement for his very difficult life. As I wrote it I thought this prose more nearly belonged here, because we talk about our lives normally here, not in regular G2G: If any of you had a very difficult situation (few are able to tell that, I realize), I hope you'll "get something" from mine, a gloss (abstracted and short take) on one small boned single girl-child from a upper-lower class trying to turn her life around. And there's a real gift for your grandkids and maybe your younger, but old kids at the end.
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Dear xxx, Your difficulty with all of the principle details that come out of your story is definitely full of earned high moralism in terms of universal religious/moral values, the ones we humans adhere to regardless of which religion we camp in. Our family roots often have, for want of a better metaphor, some diseased parts. Some gain strength from them, as you seem to have done, bravo!.
I'll share equally here, in this story from the mid-20th c.:
Neither of my parents graduated from high school, AND my father was a German immigrant (no English) at 4 years old in 1911--yes, total immersion. His strict German mother didn't speak English either. My mother was an alcoholic and a smoker. My father was not successful in business or in holding corporate jobs, and he had no training in the arts, which he'd hoped for with great intent. Also alcohol and cigarette dependent, he quit both habits cold turkey in his late 60s. (Dad, I'm so grateful!)
My childhood was, despite these things, normal, California girl. I knew I had to get out of the pattern they'd set up, and so with the free college education California offered and driven about it, I learned how to work very hard, succeeding at using my brain (thank you for that DNA, Mom!) and for growing my gentle nature (I fight when I must tho), dear Dad!
I got two tuition-free degrees in CA's state college system, saving my own life and future, also by marrying pretty early (20.5) and helping him thru his BA after he helped me and baby through earning mine and then an MA, allowing me the right to teach college English. I earned another degree at 60, an MFA in the fine arts literary world of writing poetry, not in CA.
My most notable publication, however, is in creative non-fiction: the celebration of my storied life with my 2nd husband (a respected, long term English prof; he left the family in 1978) when we went to Kenai, Alaska, to do gill netting from a 40-salmon boat in Alaska for 8 summers.
The story of those summers in my 2013 story could have be found on line at Turtle Island Quarterly, Volume 2, issue 4, but today I've had to contact the editor since it is apparent that they are only leaving poetry in their first years' issues. (I'll let those interested know when I find out if I can still acquire it--they say I have the rights to it, so I'm hopeful.)
My life in support of my second son, particularly, involved learning the advertising trade and doing what seemed normal to me then, public relations which req'd writing skills. Inside a yer and a half I started my own cottage industry, an agency, run from my home and all about the fine and performing arts, which I matured into loving. ("Fine arts" include writing and all kinds of museum and gallery arts.) Later, I went into freelance Journalism (newspapers and magazines--a whole lot more fun, and at that time equally paid -- as adjunct faculty in AZ's community colleges; don't ask me to comment on the quality of undergrad writing coming out of AZ's high schools, please!)
Not all of us are so fortunate as I've been, but to all you grandparents out there, I MUST share this: I've been given to understand that California residents are again being offered free state college tuition, and I know with our community of genealogist's "researcher genes," our grandkids and middle aged kids can do this again, now!
So, to Anonymous and all of us, Keep trucking!!
