Guest Post : Forward

Thank you Nelle for sharing her life with this wonderful post. You can check her blog on nellewrites. She is truly talented and amazing writer and I am eagerly waiting for the day when her book will be published.

Also I will like to congratulate her for upcoming award for her volunteerism at Planned Parenthood. You are a good example of how commitment and hard work pay off.

My appreciation and gratitude to Nepaliaustralian for her invite to write a guest post for her fascinating blog.  She takes us on such wonderful journeys and mini-tours with each new post, through two places and more what seem so exotic.

Fiction writing flows easy from my soul.  My own blog exists as a relief valve replete with short stories.  On occasion, my writing ventures into the personal, shared glimpses at the last dozen years.  I cannot take you all on a tour of wondrous places, so the logical writing for this guest post flays open part of my life and exposes a path fraught with experiences I care not to repeat.

Sometime just short of fifty-eight years ago, a physician declared me male at birth.  Gender assumptions ruled, through childhood, adolescence, and decades of adulthood.  One big caveat occurred in 1960, year America elected John F Kennedy president.  My gender exploration as a six year old earned a declarative statement from my father.  “You’re sick.”

So I believed, through the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and three quarters of the 1990s. What ensued I’ll truncate and spare much detail.  Married, parent, businessowner, these descriptive terms of my life collided with jumbled works within beginning in the late 1990s.  Gender pressure ratcheted to an unholy level.  It worked over my ability to function, a steady slide into oblivion, to the detriment of all around me.

The worst of it fell within a thirty-month window, 2001 through 2003.  I crossed gender lines nine years ago, and in 2008, faced an expected indictment that led to a two-year sentence and twenty-one months served in a federal prison camp, from June 2009 to my release in March 2011.

The dysfunction would not define my life.  Eight years ago, I pulled myself together, driven by some inner will to overcome and rebuild.  It required fighting through severe depression.  It meant re-commitment to personal and work ethics.  Over the ensuing four and a half years as a state employee, I rebuilt integrity lost in those thirty months, manifested in my commitment to each claimant and in distinguished service to my employer.

People fall into horrid circumstance.  Sometimes we act in irrational ways or shut down when faced with unimaginable pressure.  If one stumbles as I did, don’t accept it.  Strive for better.

Don’t stay down.  Don’t accept failure.  Learn from the adversity.  Get back up and dust off.  Learn from weaknesses and overcome them.  Commit to the truth no matter if it carries adverse consequences.  Commit to make amends, to rebuild and move forward.  And after, consider precious rebuilt integrity.

I’m a student, again.  I’m a Planned Parenthood volunteer, less than two weeks from receiving an unexpected state award honouring my volunteerism.  I’m a writer, new, four years into the creative path after a lifetime of business writing.  My first novel, now in its eighth edit nears an end.  I anticipate at least two more edits before the agent process begins.

Regrets?  Many.  Guilt?  Much.  Stronger?  🙂

Please click here if you are interested to write a guest post for me.