Beth Fehlbaum's Blog, page 3

The Power of Words--OR--When Swearing in YA Novels Makes People Lose Their Damned Minds

Do you know people who look like this when they read a swear word?
Once upon a time, a blogger requested my novel, Hope in Patience (the second in The Patience Trilogy), for review on her website. She contacted the publisher, the now-defunct WestSide Books, for a review copy.

My editor at the time told me that she informed the reviewer, and I’m paraphrasing here:  “This is not the sort of book you will approve of,” but the reviewer insisted that she’d be fair, so my editor sent a copy to her.

You know, there’s not much about that review that I remember, except this: there are 77 curse words in Hope in Patience.

77. Honestly, I thought there were more.

I had to wonder: really? You counted the words?

77.  

Out of 79,027 words that comprise HOPE IN PATIENCE, the reviewer felt it important to point out SEVENTY-SEVEN curse words. And to think that even though(!) there are SEVENTY-SEVEN curse words in the book, it was a 2011 YALSA Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers! (And, the entire Patience Trilogy is available for acquisition. Contact my agent for info. Gotta throw that in!)

It’s not unlike a time that I was preparing for a speech—my first ever in such a large venue—to be given in the Hall of State in Dallas, for National Crime Victims Rights Week. I was the Keynote Speaker, and I was nervous about it. I asked my coworkers at the time to join me in the library after school so that I could practice the speech, figuring, Hey, if I can give this speech in front of them, I can do it in front of anyone.

So, I go through the entire speech, which included my history of having lived through childhood sexual abuse, my walk-through-Hell journey that took six years of intensive therapy to become the “Me” I am today, and the connection The Patience books have to my own life.

 I concluded with reading Chapter 13, which includes a scene where the protagonist, Ashley, who was abused by her stepfather, Charlie, for the bulk of her childhood, has learned that Charlie has been killed in a drunk driving accident, and when Ashley finds out that her mother was in the vehicle and is in the hospital, she rushes to her mother’s side, knowing how much her mother fears being alone. After all, that’s the reason her mother gave Ashley for not divorcing Charlie when he was drunk and abusive, which was pretty much all the time.

Here’s the scene:

            I started to stand up, but my mother grabbed my arm. “Ashley—” she whispered and tilted her head for me to come closer. She closed her eyes, and I leaned down, mindful of not crushing her again. She whispered again, “Ashley.”

            I softly said, “I’m here, Mama.”

            “Ashley. You know. You know . . .” Her eyes were pleading with me.

            “I know what, Mama?”

            Her eyes half closed, she murmured, “You know . . . Charlie was a good man.” She opened her eyes fully and nodded at me. “Say it.”

            A feeling of repulsion filled me, and I started to pull away from her. She grasped my upper arm with surprising strength, and it almost hurt. Bile reached the back of my throat, and I shook, inside and out. I held my breath, and whoosh . . . echoed through my mind.

            My mother struggled to sit up, to get her face even closer to mine. Her eyebrows knit together, and she gritted her teeth against the pain. “Say it, Ashley—because you know it’s true,” she whispered as tears ran down her cheeks. “He was a good man.”

            I closed my eyes tightly and forced myself to take a breath. “I—can’t say that, Mama. Please understand. I—I just can’t.”

            Memories of Charlie tackling me, grabbing my breasts, his face like a madman’s, blacking out and then coming to in our guest bedroom and finding the lower half of my body covered in blood—it all sped through my mind.

             I shook my head hard against the images and barely recognized the little-girl voice that was coming from me. “Noooooo, Mama, please, please don’t ask me to say it.” I lowered my head to her shoulder and whined, much like a puppy does when it’s lonely. 

            Then, in a voice so low, it almost sounded like a growl, she said, “Then, get out!” I opened my eyes to find that hers were fixed on me in an icy stare. “Get out. Get out. GET OUT!” She viciously twisted the skin of my upper arm, then abruptly released it and turned her face away from me.

            I gasp-sobbed; I was falling into a spiraling black hole. I felt David’s hands on my waist, pulling me away from her. He took me into his arms and half carried me from the room as my mother wept, “He was all I had. He was all I had.”          

                                                                            ***

            I lay in the back seat of Bev’s car and covered my head with my jacket. It wasn’t a closet, but it was the best small, dark space I could get, for now. But I was already mapping out a strategy for the day:

1. Get home

2. Lock bedroom door

3. Crawl into pine wardrobe

4. Stay there

            About halfway home, David pulled to a stop outside the Cotton Gin restaurant off Highway 175.

            I popped up in the back seat. “Why are we stopping here?” I demanded.

            “I’m hungry; Bev’s hungry. . . . You hungry?” David asked me in the rearview mirror.

            I grunted indignantly. “No! Why can’t you just eat at home?”

            His eyebrows high, he said, “Because . . . it’s been a helluva night. I need some coffee, and we want to eat now. You don’t have to come in if you don’t want to—”

            “I want to go home!” I said and kicked Bev’s seat like a five-year-old.

            “Hey!” Bev said. “Cut that out!”

            I threw myself against the back seat and crossed my arms, feeling as much like a little kid as I was acting. David rolled his eyes and sighed. “Come on, Bev.”

            “Goddammit!” I kicked Bev’s seat again and again as I watched them walk into the restaurant, furious with them for not knowing I had plans. Big plans. 

   (You’ll have to read the book to read the rest of the chapter. Anyway…)

…I finish reading the chapter, then the speech, and I feel shaky but strong at the same time. I’m walking back to my classroom, and one of my coworkers comes alongside, puts his arm around me, and says, “You know I love you, right?”

“…Right.”

“Well, could you do me just one little favor?”

“What’s that?”

“Could you take that GD word out?”

            I don’t remember what I said in response, but I’m fairly sure that I did not promise to somehow magically recall all the copies of Hope in Patience so that I could go to page 248 and blacken the word Goddammit with a Sharpie.  I do, however, remember having this thought: “Out of everything you just heard. . . the descriptions of abuse and knowing that I drew on my own life to write these books. . . out of all that--- you latched onto the word GODDAMMIT?”

    If my coworker thought THAT was bad, I suppose the scene in Big Fat Disaster where Colby tells her grandmother that her (Colby's) weight is none of her fucking business would positively blow his mind...but I digress.

          Here's how I feel about swearing in YA fiction: used in context, as a human response to what is going on around them, why shouldn’t characters curse as a real person likely would? I’d love to read your thoughts in the comments below.

"My life changed forever the night my mom met Charlie Baker." Ashley is 15 now. Her stepfather is a pedophile.

"My life changed forever on the night my mom met Charlie Baker." 
               - -Ashley Nicole Asher, the brave fifteen-year-old protagonist of THE PATIENCE TRILOGY

My agent and I are seeking a new publisher for THE PATIENCE TRILOGY: Courage in Patience, Hope in Patience, and Truth in Patience.

Beginning today, and continuing every Sunday through the end of 2014, I am sharing bits & pieces of THE PATIENCE TRILOGY. COURAGE IN PATIENCE was first released in 2008 by a small publisher in Canada. It was released only in paperback; never released in hardcover, library binding, or ebook. It was not even marketed as a YA novel, but as General Fiction. Within a year, COURAGE IN PATIENCE's publisher was out of business. I regained my rights, and the book has been out of print since 2009. I did an extensive revision, cutting 10,000 words/40 pages. What follows is an excerpt of the revised edition. My agent's contact info may be found here: http://bethfehlbaumbooks.com/contact.html

CHAPTER ONE

My stepfather, Charlie, explained it all to me a long time ago. He was at the kitchen table cracking pecans, and I was making cheese toast in the microwave. Mom was not home.

“Do you know why I’m mean to you, Ashley?”

My stomach clenched. Ah, Jeez, he’s already drunk. Must’ve started in his truck on the drive home. As usual.

I shook my head and watched my cheese toast revolve in the microwave.

[Crack.]

He crushed another pecan, its shell splintering loudly in our small kitchen. “I’m mean to you so you won’t trust me. You can’t trust me. I don’t want you to trust me.”

[Crack. Crack.]

I stared at the spinning bread. Am I cooking this too long? Is it going to be rubbery?

He continued. “You know what? You’re one sexy girl. . .  a hot little thing. You can do anything you want, Ashley. You can sleep with any guy you want, and you could tell me, and I wouldn’t tell your mother.”

[Crack.]

“But if you ever tell her what I’ve done. . . why you can’t trust me, I’ll leave her. I will be gone … just like that. And you’ll have to tell her why I left.”         

Charlie shifted in his chair, which squeaked under his considerable weight. He leaned over to a burlap sack of pecans and scooped out a handful. He sat up, jostling the table, and his usual after-work cocktail splashed out of a tall plastic cup.

He stared at me, and I immediately looked away. I closed my eyes and willed numbness to overtake my body, the way it does when I go somewhere else in my mind, in the dark, and Charlie is standing over me in my bed.

I swallowed hard, hoping he was through reminding me of what would happen if I told my mother what he does to me. . . as if I could ever forget. He resumed his pecan shelling.

[Crack.]

His speech slurred a little. “Just don’t come home pregnant. If you ever do, I’ll leave. . . I couldn’t take it!”

Why does he always talk about me getting pregnant? I don’t even have a boyfriend. I knew Charlie had a vasectomy four years before. I don’t know why I thought about that in connection with his pregnancy comment, but I did. At the time of his surgery, he was quite obvious about his discomfort, and my mother’s sympathy for his pain was all she talked about. The nine-year-old I was didn’t want to know about his shaved testicles. I don’t think I would want to know about them at the age of ninety-nine! I didn’t want to think about his stitches and how they itched, or if his incision was puffy. Leave me out of it, for the love of God.

I tuned back in to his words. “Your mother … doesn’t like sex. She hates sex. I … have needs, Ashley. Needs that your mother doesn’t want to meet. It’s—”

 I stopped listening.

The cheese was beyond bubbly—actually starting to grow brown spots on the surface—and the microwave was filling with steam, but the sight took on a dreamy quality as I stared at it so long that it blurred before my eyes.

Charlie lifted the newspaper he’d been shelling pecans over, dumped the fragments into the wastebasket, then stretched out his fingers, popped his knuckles, and noisily drained the contents of the plastic cup. He shook the ice, the way he does when I’m supposed to make another drink for him.

I’d been playing bartender for Charlie since I was ten. Every night he walked in the door, reeking of beer, and, as required, I thanked him for working that day to support me. Then I hurried to fill a tall plastic cup with three-quarters Wild Turkey Bourbon, one-quarter Diet Pepsi, and not too much ice. If I didn’t move fast enough when he wanted another, he shook the cup and said, “Chop-chop.”

But not this time. He accidentally spilled the ice and a piece slid off the table then bounced off my foot. I pretended not to notice.

[Ding!] Saved by the bell. My cheese toast was shriveled to what resembled a piece of varnished wood. I took it out of the microwave, threw it atop the pecan shells in the wastebasket, and went to my room to do my history homework.

Charlie called after me, and he may have even sounded angry, but all I heard was, “Whoosh.” That’s the sound I hear in my head when I mentally go somewhere else, when where I am gets to be too much. “Whoosh.”

My name is Ashley Asher, which has to be the dumbest name in the world. I guess my parents thought it would be “cute” to make my first and last names nearly identical. My family and friends call me Ash. My mother calls me by my first and middle names, Ashley Nicole. Her husband, Charlie, thought he was real clever and called me “Ash-Hole.”

I’m fifteen years old and I live in Patience, Texas, an East Texas town of about 3,000 people. In my wildest dreams, I never thought I would end up going to a school where the unofficial year-round footwear is flip-flops, and there are only two things to do on Friday nights: cruise the aisles of the Wal-Mart in Six Shooter City or see one of the two movies showing in Cedar Points. Piney Creek is across the lake, but there’s even less to do there than in Patience. One thing a lot of kids do is have pasture parties. That’s where a bunch of high school rednecks see how shit-faced and stupid they can get before they run out of beer they got from the Gold Buckle liquor store, since the clerks don’t check i.d.

I’ve been alone for so much of my life, I wouldn’t know what to do if I suddenly had a social life. I’m a quiet person who loves to read and write more than anything in the world. There’s just something special about falling into worlds created by other people. I spent a lot of time pretending that I was somewhere else when I was still living at home, I  mean, with my mom, and I think that helps me write stories, too.

I live with my dad now. My dad.  Sounds so funny, because I never knew him until last summer. I call him David, and he doesn’t seem to mind.  He and Mom split up when I was three months old and except for child support checks and birthday cards, I never heard from him.

My life changed forever on the night my mom met Charlie Baker. Nobody in Mom’s Third Thursday Bunco group thought he’d ever go for someone like her: no longer high school cute, a little overweight with a big caboose, and saddled with a kid. Mom’s friend Neshia was dating a guy who worked construction, and his friend Charlie had just been transferred in from West Texas. Charlie was six feet tall, with a very short haircut and a shy, closed-mouth smile. He has six-pack abs in one of the pictures I’ve seen of him.  In it, he is wearing a red-and-white-striped Speedo, and he’s posing like a model.

The guy in the peppermint stripes looked nothing like the Charlie I came to know: a pot-bellied alcoholic madman with wild auburn hair, almost clear gray eyes, and a shiny gold front tooth. Charlie’s appearance is off-putting to people who don’t know him. His long bushy hair seems to have a mind of its own, like Medusa’s hair of snakes. When Charlie is pissed, he radiates hatred, and it’s scary. When Charlie chases me down and tackles me, it’s downright terrifying.

The Bunco group held a singles night, and Charlie was there. I was there, too, playing waitress to the adults as they played the game and progressed from table to table. I was enjoying my job—I’d done it before—and I didn’t mind being the only child in attendance. Charlie paid a lot more attention to me than any of the other guests did, even my mom’s friends that I knew. I kept telling him that my name was Ashley, but he insisted on calling me “Kiddo.” It’s a name I would come to hate.

The next night, Charlie took Mom and me to a carnival that was passing through town. I was riding the bumper cars, and when I got rammed from behind, I bit my tongue—hard. It stunned me, and I sat with my bloody tongue hanging out of my mouth while other bumper cars zoomed around me. Mom called my name, but I was frozen.

Out of the crowd, Charlie bounded across the floor, dodging bumper cars and looking for all he was worth like a super hero. He scooped me up out of the seat and dashed back to my mother with me.

“You’ve got to keep that tongue in your mouth when you drive bumper cars, Kiddo.” He winked as he gently set me down. I felt like Lois Lane when Superman rescues her from being squished by a meteor. I’ll bet there were actual stars in my eyes.

My mother and I were sold on him that night, but Charlie sealed the deal by bringing me toys and games every time he came over to our house. Four months later, in a ceremony held in my grandparents’ living room, my mother and Charlie were married. After years of being without a daddy, I finally had one.      

Within a few months of the wedding, Charlie announced that he wanted to start his own construction business. He decided we needed to move to Baileyville so that he could land construction contracts easier than he was able to in LaSalle. My grandparents, Nanny and Papaw, were not happy about it, and neither was I. I loved my house, my neighborhood friends, and the only school I had ever known. I heard Nanny and Mom arguing about it on the phone.  “Mother, I am married now, and my loyalty is to my husband. I am selling the house. We are moving, and that is final.”

We moved in the middle of the school year to a very small town and a ramshackle house out in the country. There were no other neighbors nearby, so I had no other kids to play with. When I got home from school each day, my only companions were the turkeys, geese, ducks, chickens, rabbits, and two stray dogs that wandered up and adopted us. My mom went to work for a podiatrist’s office in town as an assistant, and, irony of ironies, the only construction contracts Charlie could land were in Northside, right next door to LaSalle, so he went to work early and arrived home late most days. I got the feeling that things weren’t going too well. Mom asked Charlie about money all the time, and he didn’t like her questions one bit.

About the same time, my body decided it was time to start changing, and my mother bought me a training bra. I hated the idea so much that I insisted on spelling the word, b-r-a, instead of coming out and saying it. I outgrew my clothes. Mom talked to Charlie about asking Nanny and Papaw to help us out so she could take me shopping, but he screamed at her, “You’re stupid and fat, and if Ashley wasn’t a pig, she’d still be able to wear her clothes!”

Who was this incredibly mean person? Where was the guy who risked life and limb to be my white knight on the bumper car ride?

My fourth grade school year, instead of dressing like the other girls, I had to wear my mom’s clothes to school—and cowboy boots. The only shoes in our house that would fit my feet were some thrift store boots. Charlie said my feet were as big as beaver tails, like I could do anything about their size. He said that if my feet weren’t so abnormally large, he’d buy me shoes like the other kids had.

So here’s the deal: my boobs have, against my will, burst upon the scene. I wear my mom’s old lady clothes to school, and, in spite of Baileyville being “country”, nobody, but nobody, wears cowboy boots to school. When the teachers weren’t looking, the fourth-grade boys stared at the girls’ chests, made squeezing motions with their hands, and whispered, “Cush! Cush!”

Between the boys at school and Charlie, I was under constant scrutiny from creatures of the male persuasion. I became very self-conscious about having breasts, and at night, before falling asleep, I tried to claw them off my chest. I still have deep grooves in my skin where I scratched myself senseless. I hated them because I thought that if it weren’t for those damned things, my life would still be pretty easy. I prayed to God to please take these things back; I didn’t want them and never had.

Charlie stared, not even seeming to care when I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at him.  I always had a creepy feeling when he got that look in his eyes and started breathing funny like he did when he was alone with me.

Less than a year after they married, he gestured to me to sit on his lap. I did so, enjoying the idea of having a daddy like my friends did. I got so relaxed and content there, I dozed off. He started rubbing my brand-new breasts. I wasn’t actually all the way asleep, but it freaked me out so much that I pretended I was.

The next morning, a Saturday, my mother told me to go outside because Charlie wanted to talk to me. I approached him like I would come up on a King cobra, full of dread and feeling like a tightly wound spring. His back was to me as he bent under the hood of our car, changing the oil.

I spoke to the sky as I watched a black vulture circle over something dead.
                                                        ----------------
WANT TO READ MORE? The entirety of CHAPTER ONE is here: http://bethfehlbaumbooks.com/courage-in-patience-ch-1.html

I'm peeking at you from behind a stack of ungraded papers. . .

I recently wrote a blog post for the group website I founded in July, 2 about what I do when I'm not writing, for  the group website I founded in July, 2013, and I'm cross-posting it here:

When I’m not writing, I’m. . .

. . . grading or writing lesson plans.  In my day job, I teach 7th grade English Language Arts and Reading, so during the school year, the time I have on the weekends is usually devoted to “domestic goddessing” and teacher stuff.  I won’t lie: this is a frustrating situation for me. I work super-hard on Saturdays to get everything done, but it’s never enough time, and I usually end up grading papers and writing plans on Sundays. I’m working at finding a balance between teaching/prepping/grading and my job as an author, but I have yet to discover anything that works as well as extended holidays (when I’m “Mom” because all my kids come home), and [just saying it makes me smile:] summer vacation.  

. . . adding content to the website I created as an extension of my classroom, and which I hope serves to provide helpful content for other teachers, too.

. . .working behind the scenes at UncommonYA.com . In July, 2013, I founded this group website for authors who write “gritty” YA. We collectively produce a blog post fifty-two weeks a year, five days a week, with the goal of growing our Internet presence and supporting each others’ marketing efforts. Now standing strong with over 30 authors,  UncommonYA has a growing audience. I administer the site, send out weekly blog post reminders, upload posts by 6 A.M. Monday through Friday, send out tweets, & share them on the UncommonYA Facebook page (“Like” us, won’t you?) And please follow us on  Twitter!

. . . interacting with my friends, family, & readers on my Facebook page. Two of my daughters live out of state, so Facebook is a great way for me to keep up with them, and I enjoy the friendships I’ve formed with other authors, teachers, librarians, & readers.

. . . so, what about writing? Even though I am severely strapped for extended storyweaving time from mid-August to the second week of June, I’m continually jotting down notes and mentally prewriting during the year. Come the first day of my summer vacation, I keep an office-like schedule, writing from 9 – 5, with the goal of producing a complete novel by the end of the summer.

The 3 Things I Held to When My First 2 Publishers Folded: Perseverance, Resurrection, and Most of All, Hope.

by Beth Fehlbaum
Sometimes publishing houses falter, leaving their authors rudderless and wondering what will come of their babies: their books. I daresay, this is how authors feel when this happens:

Recently, there was news aboutEgmont USA being for sale, and I can empathize with how its authors must feel, having been through the experience of my first two publishers closing their respective doors. I hope a company picks up the Egmont USA authors’ books and they are able to keep going as they were, with nary a bump in the road.

Unfortunately, that’s not how it has been for the novels closest to my heart: Courage in Patience and Hope in Patience.

My first book, Courage in Patience, was “birthed” in 2008, only to be orphaned in 2009, and my second book, Hope in Patience (WestSide, 2010), in spite of being a 2011 YALSA Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers, found itself without a home within a year of being published.

It's enough to make a person say. . .
This word: Resurrection: it’s been rolling around in my mind as I contemplated writing a post in recognition of a life-altering milestone. The perseverance it requires to steady on as an author is in plentiful supply for me because of the life I've led.

In just about a month, it’ll be the tenth anniversary of the day I went on a journey to recovery from childhood sexual abuse, and when I came out of it six years later, I was a totally different person.

I could claim that I was inspired to get well because I the sky opened up and guardian angels sang,

The actual first step to recovery was much less dramatic: I had a mental meltdown. I broke at the age of 38, because I couldn’t play ‘Let’s Pretend’ anymore, as in, “Let’s pretend that I wasn’t sexually abused throughout my childhood while my mom pretended everything is fine, because if I keep doing that, I’ll still have a mom and I’ll be okay and… and…” . . . and I wasn’t okay. At all.. and my husband and kids and, oh, yeah, I, too, was paying a heavy price for it.

November 4, 2004, I took a psychologist up on his offer to help me recover from a traumatic childhood of sexual abuse perpetrated on me by my stepfather, and deliberate indifference to it from my mom. I was left with several disorders that I had to learn to manage, including PTSD, an eating disorder, OCD, and an Anxiety Disorder.

Even though I was an adult when I finally cracked, the eight-year-old girl who was initially felt up by her stepfather and eventually raped as a teen was still inside of me, and I was scared of the world, hiding, and trying just about everything to keep myself together. (Before your imagination runs away with you as to what I did to cope, I will tell you that my drug of choice is food. That’s where the idea for Big Fat Disaster came from.)

At age 38, when, guided by my therapist, I chose to stop lying to myself and dared acknowledge what had gone on in my childhood home, it turned my world upside down. Darkness descended and stayed for quite a long time. Going through what I did to recover/survive when my mom turned her back on me yet again (I had made an outcry at age 14 that fell on deaf ears) made me find out what I’m made of. I had to deliberately choose life instead of the myriad of other options zooming through my mind for the better part of a year, and I hung on to what I knew was real: the love of my husband and kids, and the unwavering tough love of my therapist, until I could stand on my own and know my worth and loveability (is that even a word? I guess now it is!) It took six years to become a whole person.  

I'm a testament to the power of love and a kick-ass support system. Nowadays, I'm mostly like this:
I would never say that I am glad that I experienced the losses I did from a young age and as an adult, but had I not had the experience of having to come back from the suicidal fantasies and the rawest emotional pain I’ve ever experienced, I’m know I wouldn’t be the person I am today, whose most basic credo is “Never Give Up.” It’s something that serves me well as a person in general but it’s especially handy as an author, given that my first two publishers went out of business, and my books have been homeless ever since. I choose to keep going, always. It’s a non-negotiable.

If you want to read more about my journey to recovery and the periodic reflections I’ve written, check out my blog. Here’s a link to a couple of posts.

You can read those blog posts to see what it was like for me to go through recovery, or check out the books I wrote while still in therapy and healed immensely by processing it through someone else’s life: Courage in Patience (First Edition, Kunati, 2008) and Hope in Patience (WestSide, 2010), and I’d love for you to read Truth in Patience (Book 3), but the only part available publicly is Chapter 1, here.

You can read the first chapters of Courage in Patience (Book 1) and Hope in Patience (Book 2), by clicking on the book covers, below:
Using what I learned by writing/revising/editing three more books after Courage in Patience, I revised it, cutting 40 pages and 10,000 words, wondering all the while how on Earth it ever got published in the first place, given the wordiness in its first incarnation.(I think most authors feel that way about their first books.)

The Patience Trilogy is complete. In the third book, Truth in Patience,I gave Ashley a gift that I have never gotten: a resolution in her relationship with her mom.

After I finished it, I knew I was ready to move on, and I wrote Big Fat Disaster (F+W Media/Merit Press, 2014). I’m thrilled to say that it’s doing very well, including a Starred Kirkus Review.  I’m in the beginning stages of my fifth novel, and I intend to continue writing gritty YA novels that tell the truth. I’ve had the rights back to Courage in Patience and Hope in Patience for some time now, and, given the success that Big Fat Disaster has found and the fact that many, many people seek out my other books after they read it, I am very hopeful that this tenth anniversary of my entry into recovery will also find resurrection for Courage in Patience and Hope in Patience, and the debut of Truth in Patience.

For information on The Patience Trilogy, please contact my awesome(!) agent, Gina Panettieri: gpanettieri@talcottnotch.net     

My all-time favorite review of BIG FAT DISASTER: A REALISTIC BINGE WITH A MESSAGE OF HOPE

This Amazon reviewer made my day, week, month, and year, because HE GETS IT. Thank you, Christopher Nelson!

After reading the author’s bio and discovering she is a teacher, I expected the typical YA drama about overcoming social/ inner conflict characteristic of the teenage world, rising above peer pressure, understanding the values of friendship versus status, volunteering and community service, etc. BIG FAT DISASTER is far from any PBS After School Special. Prepare to become very uncomfortable.

The story is told from the perspective of fifteen-year-old, Colby Denton, as she starts a new life in the one-church, East Texas town of Piney Creek. Having spent my first 22 years in South Texas, I can testify to the authenticity of Piney Creek and its people. Ms. Fehlbaum nails it. Every character speaks with a voice unique enough to tell them apart without dialogue tags and so real they could easily be the snobby Maybelline princess next door or vato loco punk terrorizing kids on the school bus. She even gets the dog in the front yard recliner right.

Colby’s voice gives us a brilliant view of the pressures for a young lady coming of age, accurate and heartfelt for any teen, yet Colby is far from typical. The conflict she faces daily, through both self-infliction and 360 degrees of abuse, creates a plot that gains momentum with each chapter, spiraling to an unavoidable climax and perfect landing. But what I loved most about Colby was her awkward moments where she is still a child, yet having to deal with adult issues around grown-ups who act like children. The best part? This is exactly how some parents act, and the author pulls no stops at revealing just how low some will stoop to save public face.

There are multiple themes present, but I felt Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter parallel of “hypocrisy of the judgmental” was perhaps the strongest. I also appreciated the way it is crafted into the story: seamless and invisible, yet deliberate.

Finally, a good portion of this book deals with suicide. The counselor, Dr. Matthews, serves as both a guardian angel for Colby, but more importantly, a voice for every educator or mentor with teen/ YA suicide experience. His lessons of hope are not fiction, but based on true intervention counseling. Given the framework of the story, I felt the self-actualization techniques of control were so much clearer as opposed to the mandatory suicide prevention training I’ve dealt with in the past. It really hit home. This book should be mandatory reading for every teen prior to high school.

For outstanding voice, plot, humor, and most of all, heart. I strongly recommend BIG FAT DISASTER with five-stars.

On Judging Robin Williams and the Media

Mmkay, here's my take on the criticism surrounding all the media coverage of Robin Williams' suicide, and, for that matter, that of Philip Seymour Hoffman's death from a drug overdose: I'm all for ANYTHING that pulls back the curtain that keeps people in darkness, shrouded in shame, feeling alone. Does the media go overboard with this stuff? At times, yes. They recognize what these icons mean to people and capitalize on the fact that we are thirsting for answers; some way to find the WHY behind the choices.

I am NOT IN ANY WAY comparing myself to Robin Williams in terms of being someone people know. I will say this: the number of messages & letters I've received over the years from people who read my books have convinced me that shining the light on deeply painful issues can not only give other people HOPE, but can also help them choose to enter recovery AND choose to live instead of give up the fight against the darkness. I chose to reveal my own struggles with shame by writing stories about people experiencing same. At the time I wrote my first book, Courage in Patience, all I was doing was trying to find a way to process my pain.

Little did I know that it would lead to the healing and inner-strength that it did.
For those of you who are new here, Courage in Patience and Hope in Patience are about a teen's start on the road to recovery from Childhood Sexual Abuse/Abandonment/Neglect/Suicidal Ideation/PTSD, and Big Fat Disaster is about a teen's struggle with Binge Eating Disorder/Rejection/Suicidal Ideation. I, like most authors, drew on what I know of those experiences, as someone who lives/lived them, and I did not hold back on what it feels like to be in those places. At times, I have been criticized for my bluntness. "It's too much," they say. "There's no way those things could happen," they say.  I know that the critics have not walked in my shoes, or the 25 million others who fight the same fight that I do.

Was it easy to publicly identify myself as a survivor of sexual abuse, or reveal that I manage an eating disorder--especially one that causes weight gain in our thin-crazed society-- on a day-to-day basis? NO. But in doing so, I healed even more because I was affirmed that the shame of what happened to me was NOT MY FAULT, and I realized that by speaking publicly about it, I was helping others find their voices, too. I know that others experience the same compulsion that I do, and that others have found hope for recovery as well.

I think Robin Williams' death is so impactful because so many grew up with him and perceived him as a happy, recovered person. Even those close to him are saying that he deflected with humor. Let's not rush to judge a person who, while bigger than life, was, at the end of the day, a person.

I can fully attest to backslides/relapses, because God knows I've experienced them-- and while I no longer feel suicidal, I am perfectly capable of coming undone a little if someone from my past drops into my life and reopens some of my scarred-over wounds. I am incredibly fortunate to have a kick-ass support system who remain steadfast and keep me grounded even when on the inside, I feel like the same little girl who was stunned when her caretaker did not act on her outcry, and experienced decades of self-loathing and a never-ending sense of guilt/shame, rocket-powered by unceasing anxiety. It was like being wired ALL THE TIME, always on the alert that I was on the verge of being attacked or touched without my permission, and waking up every damned day feeling like someone who had done something so terrible that no one would love me if they really knew who I was.

I was one of the lucky ones. My therapist saved my life numerous times by practicing tough love with me and using his ninja skills to help me separate facts from crap. It was sometimes only my fear that killing myself would screw up Daniel and our girls' lives that kept me with them all. I could not risk my children growing up wondering why I didn't love them enough to stay, knowing all too well what abandonment feels like and does to a person.

More than once, people who know me NOW will say to me, "I just can't imagine you being a victim. I can't see you as a person who is afraid of the world." All they have to do is ask my husband and children what I was like 10 years ago, and the stories they could tell you would convince you of the power of therapy with a talented psychologist, the power of tough love, and the immeasurable pull of unconditional acceptance of the ugly truth coupled with the absolute insistence that the ugliness does not belong to ME, but to my perpetrator and caretaker.

 Sometimes, I even pass for "Normal"  (whatever that is) these days, which makes me laugh, I won't lie.

Love saved me. I was lucky. But I don't think of Robin Williams as someone who did not give a damn about those who loved him. I think of him as someone whom the darkness overtook, and he wasn't strong enough at that moment to separate facts from crap. In other words, he was human.

If one lesson can be taken from all the coverage of his death, or that of Hoffmann, I think it is the need to recognize signs of a relapse in a person with addiction issues, or signs of depression in a person who has struggled with it, and reach out to them with love and determination to convince them to seek treatment from a qualified, experienced mental health professional NOW. Don't be afraid of offending them or making them mad: be bold and express your concern and desire to see them get well. Help them make an appointment and take them to it. Don't assume that they are strong just because they can be self-deprecating and funny. Hold tight to them.

Even if you've never been where they are, trust me, it's real and it's scary and it's loud with the lies that no one will care if they're gone.
Don't let them believe those lies.

http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org/
https://www.rainn.org/
http://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/

BIG FAT DISASTER featured in School Library Journal!

 BIG FAT DISASTER is featured in the July 23rd issue of School Library Journal! Check it out, here!

Why I swore off book signings. . . pretty much

This is a cross post fromUncommonYA. Check out UncommonYA for authors of gritty fiction who tell it like it is!
“Hey, there!... How are ya?...Fine, thanks.”

That’s me.

That’s me, asking strangers how they are and, out of nervousness, answering myself in the same breath.

Because they ignored me.

That is me at an in-store book signing.

I go all George McFly...(see "Rejection")

I suppose it’s a rite of passage. It’s something I assumed all authors are supposed to do, and I know that many of my author friends are great at them. 

But this is how it usually goes for me... One of my daughters added the speech bubble to the above postcard at one of my early book signings. I keep it in a plastic frame on my fridge because every time I look at it, I laugh. It’s one of those “Oh, God, did that suck or what?” laughs.

This is what authors imagine it will be like: From a Neil Gaiman signing... If you're not Neil Gaiman, the fantasy book signing, at least for me, is like this: the author shows up and sometimes they do a reading and everyone comes and they even have cake and punch and fête the author as the best thing since sliced bread and… and…they post pictures on Facebook of rows and rows of folding chairs with a bottom in every seat and people just dying to talk to the author about the book.

Right? Isn’t that the dream?

But how often is it the reality? Even the greats, like David Sedaris, have an off-day now and then, for example, this appearance at a Costco. 

I’m thinking for an introvert like me, my experiences are much more common than many authors realize when they publish their first book and begin those all-important marketing plans.

This will come as a shock to people who know me as a gregarious person, but I am actually an introvert, particularly in situations where I’m supposed to be attracting people to stop at my table and talk . . . especially when said people came into a book store with one mission and one mission only and they have no desire to be interrupted by the Blob of Awkward sitting at a folding table at the front of the store. I practically choke on my own spit. It’s not pretty.

Prior to realizing how NOT comfortable I would remain in spite of repeated exposure to the experience, in 2008, when my first book, Courage in Patience, released, I filled nearly every weekend from September through April with book signings, many of them hard-won, after lots of verbal tap dancing for the store manager.

Why hard-won? Back then, prior to the Indy Author Boom, book store managers were skeptical as to why an author was booking her own signings. They’d never heard of me or my publisher, Kunati, which was a small traditional publisher in Canada. Oh, you never heard of them, either? I’m not surprised. They went belly-up within a year of releasing my book. My second publisher, WestSide, followed in Kunati’s footsteps, but that’s a story for another time.

With Kunati, it was made clear from the start that authors were expected to do most of their own local marketing, since the actual publishing house would be spending tens of thousands of dollars on ads in major trade publications.
All right, all right, fellow authors, I’ll pause here to give you time to mop up your coffee or whatever seeing as how it’s splattered all over your monitor. Go ahead, fetch a dishtowel and clean yourselves up. Yes. You.

 Now…I know this is going to come as a shock, but…my publisher didn’t help me out with marketing except for designing a poster I could use for my signings. They sent a file, which I had made into a small poster.

Still have it somewhere.

I think.

So, I dutifully booked signings, and I pursued local media coverage to coordinate with every signing, and if you Google (or look on the media page on my website), you’ll find some archived interviews and articles from that time.

Okay, so out of the 2008-2009 Courage in Patience book tour, I sold maybe twenty-five copies at signings total, and that is so generous an estimate, mainly because of friends who showed up to support me and bought my book.

Could have been the topic, but I think it was a combination of the topic plus my connection to the topic: my Patience books are NOVELS about a teen girl’s recovery from childhood sexual abuse, and I drew a lot on my own experiences as a survivor to write them. They are NOT autobiographical. It took a lot of courage for me to initially identify myself as a survivor of same, and when people would ask me what Courage and Hope are about and I told them, it was like watching a curtain descend on their faces.

The few people who did not practically run from my table would ask questions like, “Is this a true story?” To which I would repeat my initial pitch of it being a NOVEL about a teen girl’s. . . ya-da-ya-da-ya-da.  

Then I would explain what a NOVEL is. a fictitious prose narrative of book length, typically representing character and action with some degree of realism. And sometimes I was asked questions like this: “Is it a godly book? I only read godly books.”

To which I sputtered, “N-n-n-o-o-o…I mean…um…” while thinking, “What the hell?”

To force myself to speak up at those first signings, my (now former) therapist (he’s retired, and it was planned ahead of time. I did not break him) and I came up with a plan that I would bring chocolate chip cookies to work as a conversation starter. That way, I could call out, “Hi, there! Would you like a cookie?”

I think I came across like this: I’ll be honest: all the cookies did was cause the figurative curtain to fall over chewing frowning faces instead of merely frowning ones. And, I watched a lot of grubby-handed little kids clean off my cookie plate while their parents read the back of my book cover before dropping it like it was hot and grabbing their grubby-handed children and heading for the hills.

I usually booked a slot for a couple hours, and within the first thirty minutes, I found myself checking my watch to see how much time was left. When my daughters still lived at home, I usually recruited one or more of them into going with me by promising them we’d go out to lunch or a movie afterward, and they’d sit next to me or go troll the YA section and try to talk up my book to patrons. I even tried walking around, handing out my postcards and attempting to not be a Blob of Awkward.

When my second book, Hope in Patience, came out, I hired a publicist, and then she booked signings for me, which I thought would make a difference in the turn-out, like, book stores would be invested in promoting my appearance because I had an actual publicist AND I even appeared on a couple of local morning shows. I didn’t bother booking my own signings, since, hey, I was paying someone else for that, and didn’t that make me more of a legitimate author?

 But I just did fewer signings, and I sold maybe five books all together.

In spite of blowing my advance on a publicist, having a professional vouch for my authenticity as an author made no difference in book stores’ doing anything to drum up enthusiasm in my “appearance”.  One fine Saturday, I drove 3 hours each way to an indy book store in a large metro area, only to find that there was NO sign in the window promoting my appearance, the owner had forgotten I was coming, and he seemed pretty pissed that I bothered to show up. It was December. I had baked a tin of Christmas cookies to share with ALL the people who stopped to talk to me about my book.

Just before cutting out thirty minutes early, I handed off the tin to a store employee, not because I was so grateful for the outstanding reception I’d received, but to prevent myself from inhaling two dozen cookies within thirty seconds of fastening my seat belt.

That day, I sold ZERO books, although I did engage in two conversations: with a woman whose cousin wrote a book and wanted to know how much I paid to publish mine, and another woman who was thoroughly pissed that the store was sold out of the Mark Twain biographies. After giving two consecutive “book tours” everything I could, I swore off book signings unless I am invited, or unless it’s part of a bigger event, such as the YALSA Convention or the Texas Library Association’s Young Adult Round Table or something--anything (!)-- other than me, at a table, by myself, forcing myself to engage strangers who are seemingly on a mission to be Anywhere But At My Table.

My strategy worked. I found my comfort zone by placing myself in situations where there are generally open-minded people who love YA fiction. It's not my fantasy signing, since I have not created a scenario involving a reading and a bottom in every folding chair, but I don't have to beg people to talk to me or bribe them to stop at my table by offering pastry of any kind.

That said…I have signed up for the East Texas Book Festival in September, in Tyler, Texas.  With no on-site book seller, I will be selling copies of my newest book, Big Fat Disaster, as well as Courage in Patience and Hope in Patience.

I hope I will be selling them. . .

It's possible I will be selling them. . .

And I swear I'm going to give people a chance to answer how they're doing before my nervousness answers for them.

I’m telling myself that I’ll meet people.  I live in East Texas. I'll be less of a hermit. I’ll network. I’ll go in with no expectations, but I will be on the lookout for the author I met at the first book festival I ever attended, whose shirt, book cover, and chocolate M & Ms were all color-coordinated. We watched him eat his entire bowl of fuschia M & Ms while waiting for someone—anyone—to wander up to his table. 

It's pretty much what I feared I'd do with those Christmas cookies... So. . . come see me in September, would ya? Mention this blog post and. . . I'll give ya a cookie. Maybe even two.
In addition to writing Young Adult Contemporary Fiction, Beth Fehlbaum is an experienced English teacher who frequently draws on her experience as an educator to write her books. She has a B.A. in English, Minor in Secondary Education, and an M.Ed. in Reading.

Beth is the author of the Kirkus Starred Reviewed Big Fat Disaster (Merit Press/F+W Media, March 2014); Courage in Patience (Kunati Books, 2008); and Hope in Patience (WestSide Books, 2010). Hope in Patience was named a 2011 YALSA Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers. Truth in Patience, which rounds out The Patience Trilogy, is as yet unpublished.

Beth has a following in the young adult literature world and also among survivors of sexual abuse because of her work with victims' advocacy groups. She has been the keynote speaker at the National Crime Victims' Week Commemoration Ceremony at the Hall of State in Dallas, Texas and a presenter for Greater Texas Community Partners, where she addressed a group of social workers and foster children on the subject of "Hope".

Beth is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, like Ashley in The Patience Trilogy, and the day-to-day manager of an eating disorder much like Colby's in Big Fat Disaster. These life experiences give her a unique perspective, and she writes her characters' stories in a way meant to inspire hope.

Beth lives with her family in the woods of East Texas.

You can find Beth online at http:www.bethfehlbaumbooks.com, on Facebook, and on https://twitter.com/bethfehlbaum.

The value of a life lived unafraid

My child called me today, shocked and upset at realizing that her personal space had been violated when someone came into her apartment while she was asleep and stole her wallet. It unnerves her to know that she does not know who possesses personal information as well as sentimental articles.

After she called, it was difficult to think of much else, knowing that she is hurting and anxious. She's 800 miles away from me, or I probably would have gone running to her when she first called. I wanted to hold her and assure her that it would be okay. I used words instead of my arms and I did everything I could to help her negotiate the experience, i.e. telling her who all to call, calling to cancel the gasoline cards of ours that she uses, etc. Later, even while I was working with students, I could feel anger at the burglar rising. How dare he violate my child's space? How dare he (or she) enter my daughter's home and frighten her by doing so?

My daughter is strong. She has already pulled herself together. She didn't need mama to come running to fix it. This is AWESOME. I was not nearly the woman she is at age 23. That said, my protective tigress-claws are still out, and it may take a day or so for them to retract. Daniel was more frightened for her than anything else. His reaction, as usual, (thank God), is more emotionally balanced and practical than mine. (It's probably part of what keeps me as sane as I get.) I wanted blood. Still do. Should I ever find out who did this, I will do everything within the law to ruin his life. I believe the phrase I used earlier was "I will f*ck every corner of your life," in my imaginary letter to the piece of human shit who went into my daughter's home and stole from her while she was asleep.

Sometimes I shock myself at the intensity of the love and protectiveness I feel for my children. I don't know if it's a reaction to not being protected as a child. I don't know if women who grew up in non-traumatic situations feel this way--I mean, not that they don't feel tigress-y when it comes to their kids, but I have this churning inside that, were it to come out as a sound, it would be an all-encompassing roar. Like, have you ever seen "Dogma"? When Alanis Morrisette as "God" roars? Like that.

Seen as a color, this intensity would be the deepest red, a passionate purple, nearly black.

When it comes to my children being violated in any way, I feel an unapologetic thirst for vengeance and resolution that I don't feel the slightest hesitation about. I know there are people who pray for their enemies. I'm not one of them. I shed that credo somewhere between Texas and Alaska on a figurative trip I took through recovery. [When I first began therapy, my therapist told me that recovery from childhood sexual abuse is like a barefoot journey from Texas to Alaska and back, with all weather along the way. He was right.]

I feel no urge to ponder the WHY behind bad people's actions. Doesn't matter. That's an improvement, because I used to spend hours and hours asking myself "WHY?" victimizers do what they do. Then I learned to let that go.

I don't care what the burglar's situation is, or whatever justification he may have for doing what he did. I don't give a shit. I haven't met him and may never meet him, but I hate him for shaking my daughter's certainty of her safety in her personal space. I lived for years without a sense of security. I know how priceless it is to achieve it.

I am not one of those people who feels the need to forgive people who hurt me or mine. I feel no religious obligation to extend mercy or grace, and I'd never encourage my children to feel as if they have to do it, either. If merciful feelings well up in me at some point, it won't be out of a sense of duty to have it. I don't even think I'm capable of that kind of inauthenticity any more.

I suspect that this cynicism when it comes to a duty to forgive comes from repeatedly "forgiving" my perpetrator only to have him violate me again and again. I suppose I emerged from six years of therapy having washed away artificial, obligatory forgiveness inspired by guilt and the belief that without it I couldn't enter Heaven.

I gave myself permission to question the beliefs I'd been raised with, not only in church, but within my family of origin, where I was told that if I hated someone, that meant that I wished death on them, and not only that, but by wishing death on them, I could actually CAUSE it to happen. Talk about guilting a kid, huh? Imagine how that sets a kid up to feel responsible for bad things, like I had some kind of über-power to make bad things happen. Jeez.

When I learned that my anger was nothing to be ashamed of, and that it was also okay to question authority-- ALL OF IT-- what grew in its stead was a fierceness and certainty of my right NOT to forgive, and not feel guilty about it, and the certainty that a loving God would not ask me to sacrifice myself (or my children) on His altar. I grew to believe that I did not have to be sacrificed on the altar of excuses for other people's wretched behavior, either.

I learned that trust has a prepositional phrase and must be earned, not given. I began to break the cycle of women as victims and excuse-makers for bad behavior and poor choices on the part of those with the perceived power.

Raising our children, my husband and my primary goal was that they would grow up with a sense of being loved unconditonally; unafraid; self-confident; and they would know that they were capable of achieving their goals. We wanted them to know that they could go out into the world and they would be okay, always landing on their feet. That's our family motto: "We're Fehlbaums. We land on our feet. It's what we DO."

Someday, I hope that my descendents will be amazed that there were EVER victims of abuse in our family or that there were EVER women who made excuses for, let's be blunt, shit heads.

There's a lot I don't know about how other moms react to things like this, but I do know this: if I prayed, I'd ask that my child remain safe and find peace within herself again. Learn what she can from the experience she's having but recover from it and once again feel secure in her surroundings.

Most of all, I'd ask that she not be afraid, because to live a life free of fear is truly living indeed.

The future's so bright...in the Light of Truth

This is a slightly revised (one pic was changed) post that ran on Dear Teen Me on 5/26/14. Dear Teen Me is a VERY COOL site that features YA authors writing to their teen selves. Check it out!

Dear Beth,

There’s two things I wish, before I begin writing this. First, I wish I literally could go back in time and speak to you, because I think the things I could tell you—knowing how things would turn out—would stop you from even considering getting your stepdad’s gun off the closet shelf and shooting yourself.  I’m so glad you never picked up the gun.

And, I wish I had funny, light-hearted stories to share with you about your teen years, but I don’t. Sure, you laugh sometimes and, yes, you have fun, but there is a shadow hanging over everything you do. It’s a sense of shame and guilt that you will awaken with every morning of your life until you are in your late thirties, when you finally realize that the sense of having done something horrible and just not having paid the price for it yet does not belong to you. It belongs to your stepfather. I wish so much that I could take away that feeling for you now, because the way you try to deal with painful feelings now—by binge eating—is not working. It never will.

Not so long ago, I could not look at this picture without feeling sick. It’s not that Daniel and Angel, our puppy, are in it. I mean, Daniel’s your boyfriend—you’re already talking about getting married! Somehow, he sticks with you in high school, even though he is sometimes the target of your stepfather’s rage.

My eyes are drawn to the window behind you. It’s your bedroom window, and in that room, very bad things happened.  The abuse that occurred at your stepdad’s hands. . . it’s colored every area of your life ever since. Doesn’t mean that you’re not incredibly strong and resilient. Just means. . .you became that way because you survived. You’ll need some help to heal from it, and you’ll get it, but it’ll take years to find a place in the sun.

I want you to know this: you’re going to make it out of that house in one piece. But you’re going to come out of it with some scars. You won’t trust people easily, and you’ll have a sometimes disconcerting ability to cut people out of your life when they hurt you. I believe the phrase is, “You’re dead to me.”

 You’ll develop Binge Eating Disorder in high school and the fight with it will stay with you a lifetime.  You’re eating like that to try not to FEEL, but it won’t work.  It just trades one reason to feel like crap for another one. You’ll take a long time to make the connection, and put in a lot of hard work in therapy. But you’ll get there.

Normal, right? You look like everybody else, and you’re doing a damned fine job of covering up the way you’re coping with the circus of your stepdad’s alcoholism, verbal, emotional, and sexual abuse, and deliberate indifference to those things on the part of your mom.  Your mom’s indifference multiplies the other stuff by a thousand. You’ll be coated in a feeling of worthlessness but, honey, you shouldn’t. Her inability to take care of you like a mom should is a reflection on HER, not YOU. It’s easy to say and hard to really feel into the marrow of your bones, but someday, you will. Just hang on.

As if your homelife wasn’t hard enough, before you meet Daniel and have seeing him to look forward to at school, it’s pretty much a daily walk through Hell. God, I wish you had the power to see the future, to see beyond those girls who spit a loogie in your hair. . . the ones who made fun of you because your shirt was tucked into your underwear and everybody could see your undies. . . when the boys in the co-ed gym class of 60 people all jumped up and down, making fun of your bouncy breasts when you did jumping jacks, and when you sat down and cried, the coach made you get up and keep going. . . that Homecoming, when the cheerleaders caught you decorating Brad B’s locker and made fun of you because, well, HOW DARE YOU even possibly consider yourself worthy to touch a football player’s locker?!?

 {Yeah, yeah, cheerleaders: I now admit it: it was me. I decorated his locker. I lied at the time and told you it wasn’t me, and you all giggled and talked sh*t about me for considering myself your equal. I say this from the bottom of my heart, girls, er, I mean, ladies, because the sentiment is timeless: Suck it.}

. . . As wretched as what those people did was—when you felt like you wanted to check out rather than keep going through every day, those nasty children did something important: they revealed their true character.  And, guess what? From what I can tell on Facebook, life has taken care of those Mean Girls (and Mean Boys) quite nicely.

And, your stepfather, who you frequently prayed would be sucked up by a tornado or at least make good on his threat to leave your mom if you ever told her what he was doing to you (he lied, by the way. You told and he didn’t leave). . . well, Teen Beth, he died when he fell off a ladder and hit his head.

Hang in there, Beth, because you are going to have a wonderful life.  The dreams you have of being loved by someone who will never leave you come true. Daniel is an amazing husband (29 years now!) and father to your three beautiful daughters. You and Daniel succeed at the one big goal you make with each other: that your children will have different childhoods than you both had. Your girls are successful, educated, beautiful, and, most importantly, they live their lives in the Light of the Truth.

Steady on, Beth.  Steady on.