Dear Literary Loves,
Oh well, you know it's been quite a full load these days when it comes to my life. Someone recently asked me what I write and of course, when I said "memoir", this person asked me, "Are you famous or something?!" Well no, but there's always tomorrow, dude. Not all memoir writers are celebrities. This confounds a great many people, but seriously folks, have you checked out the biography section of your bookstore lately? Some of us memoir writers aren't famous, but damn, do we have great stories to tell! Don't get me wrong, I am no Joan Didion or Sue Monk Kidd. If you want lyrical, poetic, and fancy schmancy writing, I am not your woman or writer. On the other hand, if you want a forthright southern gal who lays it on the line, doesn't mince works, and gets on with the story, hey, I might be your gal!.
These days I have four manuscripts that I have completed. The first is about life with Meniere's disease in which I chronicle what it was like to get diagnosed with Meniere's disease at age eighteen when no one in the ENT department at Chapel Hill Hospital had ever seen anyone that young with the disease. I go on to relate the other strange and intriguing syndromes I have acquired as I have journeyed into my twenties, thirties, and now mid-forties. I discuss some really revealing interactions and gross mistreatment I encountered while navigating our health care system and some of the best research hospitals in the country. Some of these situations would make you drop your teeth.
Also, I have a manuscript about what it was like to be a first year teacher thrown into the mix of an inner city middle school. I discuss some of the pitfalls first year teachers encounter, the violence within our middle schools today, and reveal some of the real reasons teachers are leaving our public schools in droves. I never went into teaching to get rich; I taught because I am good at it and have especially strong interpersonal skills. Teaching is like being a lead actress in a movie; you've got to know how to really engage kids or you lose them right from the start.
I write about family strife, in particular, the year in which my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer, my dad's lymphoma returned and required a stem cell transplant, I had to undergo Baerveldt surgery at Emory Hospital for Uveitic glaucoma, and my husband was let go at a tech company and went on to start his own company. If that's not enough to make you sit up and say, "well damn!", I also reveal how my family came to grips with my sister becoming my brother. My life is one wild ride after another and I'm not ashamed to say it. It actually provides me with a lot of seriously good writing material and helps me understand the world in a deeper manner.
Additionally, I wrote a manuscript about what it was like to help a friend and former teaching colleague through a distressing diagnosis of neuroendocrine cancer. The interesting part was that this was accomplished via phone calls as we both lived in different states. My friend was a fiercely independent woman who absolutely loved teaching. Her life was turned upside down when she was diagnosed with cancer. She had no family history of cancer and was truly frightened by her diagnosis. My colleague relied on mostly her friends to help her through what would eventually be a terminal illness. And the book brings to mind the importance of family involvement, taking care of advanced directives, the helpfulness of Hospice programs, and what happens when you find yourself staring down the barrel of your own mortality.
Presently, I am reading a great many books on life and death and what it means to "be mortal". This was brought about by my dad's third recurrence of anaplastic large cell lymphoma. He's undergoing monoclonal antibody treatment now and I've seemingly become an expert in not only his treatment, but how to interpret lab results, what dangerous symptoms and side effects to look for, and how to be present in the moment. It's an adventurous life.
Till next time,
Grace
(Amy)
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