Terry Helwig's Blog

Signs from Loved Ones Who Have Crossed Over

At 25 years of age, I didn’t know what to make of the eerie feeling that Mama, who had passed only two weeks earlier, was “hanging” around. I was scared and unprepared for what seemed to be communication from another dimension.

In fact, several weeks before her death, I had confided to a friend that “death” seemed to be hovering near me. More than once I was stopped in traffic for a passing funeral; the newspaper seemed to fall open to death notices or an add for a funeral home. That very night, after confiding my concern to my friend over dinner, we walked out into the restaurant parking lot. Chills crept up my arms. A black hearse had parked next to me.

“What do you make of it?” I asked.

“Maybe you’re being prepared,” my friend had answered.

Looking back, I do think I was being prepared for my mother’s sudden and unexpected death at 40–yes, she was only fifteen years my senior. Her life and, consequently, the life of our entire family was chaotic and fraught with crisis after crisis. Mom married six times, was addicted to prescription drugs, and attempted suicide on more than one occasion. I was the oldest of six girls and, sometimes, Mama felt more like my child than my mother. It would not be out of character for her to look to me again.

But I was ill-equipped to deal with matters beyond the grave. So, I apologized.

“I’m sorry, Mama,” I said aloud in my kitchen. Tears filled my eyes. “I don’t know how to help you. All of this scares me. The only thing I know to tell you is go toward the light. Go toward the light.”

I feel like that’s what she did. I didn’t feel her after that. Not for another 49 years.

Now that I’m 73 years old, I’m more ripened. I would handle things differently today because I believe we are spiritual beings having a human experience. I believe that we crossover into another dimension or vibration when we die — much like waking from a dream. I don’t picture a heaven of winged angels and pearly gates, but I do picture an existence of something — an essence, a vibration, an energy of love that continues on, much like an eternal footprint upon the universe.

I believe the scientists, physicists, and near-death folks who tell us time is an illusion. My finite mind has a hard time grasping the concept, but I believe it. That’s why I had the idea one afternoon, during my yoga practice, that 49 years was not too late to try and connect with my mother. Only this time, I would not be spooked. I asked her to send me a sign if she wanted. I didn’t ask for a specific sign, but I said I’ll know it when I see it.

At the end of class, I walked into the parking lot. And, this time, instead of a black hearse parked beside my car, there was a white car with a license plate I had never seen, before or since. It said only: HEAVEN.

So, I’ve offered Mama a chance to “mother” me a little from the other side, in case she feels like she missed out when I was younger. I’ve made her my business partner, and some very nice opportunities and synchronicities have come my way. And I can’t help but feel that, someday, when the time comes, Mama will be the one showing me the way to the light.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mama.

Terry Helwig, author of “Moonlight on Linoleum: A Daughter’s Memoir,” and “Shifting Shorelines: Messages from a Wiser Self.”
www.terryhelwig.com

Goodreads Giveaway

I want to thank everyone who signed up for my Goodreads Giveaway for an autographed, first-edition copy of “Shifting Shorelines: Messages from a Wiser Self,” which was a Finalist in the 2022 Feathered Quill Awards. We had over 1,960 entries! I mailed books to the winners today, and I hope to run another giveaway for Mothers Day, as I believe “Shifting Shorelines” would make a perfect gift for mothers, daughters, grandmothers, and granddaughters.

Here are a few comments from some of my readers:
“Shifting Shorelines,” inspires, comforts, and enlightens…Exquisite…How many ways can I say I love this book…It is a heart-warming invitation to the treasury of the shoreline and reawakens the joy of being alive…At the close of each chapter, Terry Helwig shares a few words of encouragement to her younger self, about the path that awaits ahead…Terry’s wise, universal messages inspire hope and offer a welcome respite from a troubled world.

Dolphin Bone

I posted a picture on my Instagram account https://www.instagram.com/terryhelwig... of a sun-bleached dolphin bone that curves perfectly inside my closed fist; it is approximately the length of three-pound weight. My friend Sue and I delighted to find it one afternoon washed up on the beach of a nearby barrier island. Not only do we love dolphins, but it seemed to us that the bone also symbolized the indestructible nature of our friendship.

Since friendship is about give and take, we decided to share the bone. Sue displays the bone in her study six months of the year and I display it near my desk the other six months. We have passed it back and forth for over twenty years.

Life-long friendships are like bone—enduring and indestructible.

Get-lost Days, Good for the Soul

In our fast-paced, information-age society, setting aside chunks of time to reconnect is becoming a lost art. While I envy Thoreau’s year in the woods, my nurture and nourishment have, by necessity, been parceled into smaller increments—mostly in the shape of days I call "get-lost days."

The premise of a get-lost day (or a get-lost afternoon) is to block out time to dawdle, explore and connect with the world. Get-lost days fuel my creativity. I often back out of the garage not knowing my destination. The mystery of where the day's current will lead is part of the fun. Years ago, my husband waved to me and my daughter from the garage and called out: "Don't forget your map."

My daughter Mandy, a veteran of get-lost days by age ten, rolled down her window and yelled, “Dad, you don’t use maps on get-lost days.”  For the most part, she was right.

Over the years, we hiked Thoreau’s Walden Pond; stained our fingers blue picking wild blueberries; slurped fresh watermelon under various oaks; and bought antique china cups for a tea party. We discovered new trails, tucked-away restaurants (yes, a few dives) and quaint neighborhoods. Once, we even stopped by a roadside stand advertising "Piglets for Sale." I'm happy to report we didn't buy any piglets, but the fresh vegetables were divine!

I have celebrated get-lost days for forty years, and I have never returned empty-hearted. Truly, none of us knows how a given day will unfold. Get-lost days merely celebrate this mystery and create a space for the soul to loiter and revel in the unraveling of time.

Writing in the Shadows

It's near the end of January and I have one chapter, 16 pages, of my novel completed. My sister Joni made me laugh when she said 16 well-written pages are a lot better than 100 badly written pages. Very true! My lesson this month has been learning the importance of "massaging" my material--my first draft of the chapter was only four pages long; it was but a shadow of the finished product. Shadows are good--they prime the pump--but the key is to flesh out the shadows until you have a living, breathing piece of work. Hopefully, I've accomplished that. Today, I'm in the shadows of Chapter Two.

Does Oprah Read Elle

Paper signifies one-year anniversaries—maybe because paper embodies humility. Perhaps the grandiose imaginings of what marriage could be mellows out, in the course of a year, into a more full-bodied picture of what is.

Whatever the reason, it seems apropos to celebrate the one-year publication anniversary of Moonlight on Linoleum by confessing (on paper) some of my more grandiose imaginings that mellowed out this year. Maybe I’m the only writer to be afflicted with grandiose imaginings, and then again, maybe not.

1) Contrary to my wild imagination, Oprah did not read Moonlight on Linoleum—nor did her people contact my publisher for a free copy.

2) My social-media skills improved but, contrary to my wild imagination, I have one less zero than 1000 followers (and two less zeros less than 10,000 followers) on twitter @TerryHelwig.

3) Despite my logging onto Amazon.com several times a day to check book sales, Amazon never ran out of copies. Luckily, this addiction wasn’t harmful to my body--unless carpal tunnel counts.

4) Contrary to my wild imagination, I wasn’t deluged with endless calls. My need for an unlisted number never materialized. (FYI, I never once imagined Hollywood calling—okay, maybe once.)

5) A writer writes. It doesn’t matter if a book makes it onto the New York Times Bestseller List; but, of course, in my wild imagination, my book spent months there.

Lest it sound like I’m not a 1000% grateful that Howard—a Simon & Schuster imprint—published my book; let me be clear. I am. I am deeply appreciative and humbled by the recognition and kudos the book has received. And I admit even my wild imagination did not anticipate how profoundly I would be impacted by readers’ comments.

One reader, after reading the book, picked up the phone and dialed her mother, breaking an eight-year silence. A few weeks later her mother died. “Without reading your book, I would be devastated by the way things were. Your book made a huge difference in our lives. Words cannot even begin to tell you.”

My sisters and I were humbled to know our story impacted the lives of people we never met.

My wild imagination and I have much to celebrate. And, just when I thought the celebrating was over, Elle Magazine has just selected Moonlight on Linoleum as their 2012 Grand Prix winner for the Best Non-fiction Book of the Year.* Thank you, Elle.

But, here I go again! I’m trying hard to bridle my wild imagination, but I can’t help wondering: Does Oprah read Elle?


*December Issue 2012, pg. 232

Memoir Can Read Like a Novel

A comment I love hearing about Moonlight on Linoleum, is: "Your memoir reads like a novel." This comparison to literary fiction affirms the countless hours I spent constructing floor plans of our trailer house, perusing old photographs with a magnifying glass, locating marriage certificates and divorce decrees, interviewing relatives and friends, and creating an elaborate time line that spanned two decades. My voluminous research became the building blocks for vivid scenes in my memoir that anchored the action of our family's story.

Instead of telling our story in generalities (we lived in a trailer), I tried to invite the reader into our trailer. I described the roughness of the wood Daddy used to build two benches and a picnic table for our tiny kitchen--the only way eight of us could fit around a table. No need to tell the reader that picnic table became the heart of our home--it's presence in scene after scene said it for me.

Imbedded in my scenes were bits of dialog and descriptions that stirred the senses. I wanted my readers to "meet" my parents, to smell the rose-water on Mama's skin and the Old Spice on Daddy's cheek. I wanted them to see Mama fiddling with the beaded fringe on her white moccasins and listen to her own description of her unfaithfulness: "When the cat's away the mouse will play." I wanted readers to hear Daddy whispering "Lookie there," while pointing to one of the world's wonders, whether it be a sunset, an arrow head or tarantula lumbering across a two-lane highway.

I looked for the narrative arc in my story, seeing myself as a protagonist. What was my emotional truth? When were the desires of my heart thwarted or rewarded? More often than not the emotional truth I uncovered revealed a universal truth, which novels often reveal. Plumbing the depths of human longing is not exclusive to either fiction or memoir, nor is writing scenes laced with dialog that tell a story with a beginning, middle and end. There's no reason why true stories can't read like novels, too.

Beware of Flying with a Copy of Moonlight on Linoleum

I’m pleased to announce that the paperback of Moonlight on Linoleum will debut on bookstore shelves Tuesday, May 1. Only six months have passed since the hardcover debuted last October; however, my publisher moved up the pub date of the soft-cover edition to arrive in time for summer vacations. Now the soft cover can be tucked easily into bags and satchels headed for beaches, parks and airplane rides.

Dare I admit that I would love to see someone sit down beside me on an airplane and pull out a copy of Moonlight on Linoleum? I surmise I could keep quiet for all of 60 seconds. My daughter seems to be afflicted with the same tendency. Just recently, she confessed that she stalked an airline passenger all the way to her seat and excitedly explained to the unsuspecting passenger: My mom wrote the book you’re carrying.

I’m reminded of the time my daughter and I flew first class for a once-in-a-life-time trip to Africa. (If you’ve read Moonlight on Linoleum, you know how important this trip was for me.) I saved enough money to fly my daughter and myself first class so we could sleep on the long overnight trip—I didn’t want to waste a single minute in Africa on jet lag. As my daughter and I slid into our leather seats on the airplane, the other passengers in first class wore ho-hum expressions. They casually shook out their newspapers and thumbed open their books, none of them mine, as they settled in for the long flight. My daughter and I, on the other hand, wore expressions that said something like: Wow, have you ever seen anything like this?

We repeatedly pushed a button that raised and lowered a dividing screen between us. Not only that, we found another button that reclined and retracted our seats into a lounger. It looked like we were experiencing an electrical malfunction, except we seemed to be enjoying ourselves immensely. Whenever the screen descended between us, we passed a bowl of nuts, taking only one, and making sure our little finger curled into propriety. We had almost as much fun in first class as we did on safari in Africa. Almost…

I’m happy to announce that my daughter will be traveling with me once again; this time to New Mexico and Colorado to promote the paperback of Moonlight on Linoleum*. Neither of us is flying first class so we should be fairly inconspicuous—unless someone pulls out a copy of Moonlight on Linoleum.

Then all bets are off.

*If you’re in one of the cities I’m visiting please stop by and say hello. See my travel schedule on the calendar page of my website http://www.terryhelwig.com/calendar.aspx

The Light & Shadow of Writing a Memoir

When I began writing Moonlight on Linoleum six years ago, I had no way of knowing the outcome of unbridling my family's story and turning it loose into the world. It was a time of blessing and curse, excitement and apprehension, light and shadow.

Cocooned behind my desk, I wrote to make sense of the chaotic life my family and I lived, moving from one oil town to another in the American Southwest. I wrote to piece together the puzzle of our lives, to better understand my mother, to examine the undercurrents than ran beneath my every-day existence. I didn't think much about readers looking over my shoulder as I wrote--which probably kept me from closing too many curtains.

Still, I'm caught off-guard when I realize strangers know me better than most of my friends. If I casually mention something about one of my sisters, I'm often asked which one. Then I realize people now know my sisters by name. I'm literally "an open book."

Writing my memoir has brought much light into my life. In addition to being given coupons for 12 free malts (those who have read the book will understand), I have re-discovered lost friends and family my sisters and I didn't know existed. For decades, I had puzzled over a photograph in my possession of me, my sister Vicki, and a blond, curly-headed child a few years older than either of us. Some fifty years later, via ancestry.com and a chance glimpse of another photograph, the mystery was solved. The child's name was Bonnie; she is my cousin. She's coming to our family reunion this June.

Unfortunately, writing my memoir also has cast a long shadow over my life. One of the persons I most wanted to pay tribute to was not pleased--my stepdad. Even though I consider him to be a hero, he is not happy that I unbridled the past. I have to live with the absence of his approval.

And still...I find myself cocooning behind my desk, continuing to open myself up to the movement of light and shadow.

The Power of Story

Maybe Mama was right. “Never judge a person until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes.”

Since the publication of Moonlight on Linoleum: A Daughter’s Memoir, people have been pulling me aside and quietly telling me about their childhood or the childhood of someone close to them. I’ve heard about the family of a coal miner with ten children living in a cabin without electricity and running water; a refugee who was sent to a concentration camp; a sister addicted to prescription drugs; a son who never heard the words “I love you,” and a husband who survived great hardship and decided, like Tom Robbins: “It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.”

Recently, a member of a book club wrote me: “Everyone loved the book. It generated some amazing conversation about our own childhoods, and a lot of revelations about each other through the conversations. Someone even commented that it was probably the most connected we had felt at book club. I've known some of these women 20 years and learned some new things all because of Moonlight!”

I’m discovering that listening to one another’s stories is often the doorway to love and compassion. Indeed, when we slip our feet into another’s shoes (which memoir allows us to do), we feel with and for the other. A son’s sorrow becomes our sorrow; a daughter’s triumph our triumph. Such is the power of a human story—written or told.

Note: If your book club is reading Moonlight on Linoleum: A Daughter’s Memoir, you can find discussion questions at http://www.terryhelwig.com/discussion...