Author Reading “The Tree of Happiness”

Series: Self Publishing Book Cover De... Local author releases her book on men...

Author Reading “The Tree of Happiness”

Here is my first sneak peek reading of “The Tree of Happiness”

Mental Evaluation

I need help. It is my belief those are the three hardest words

to say.

My name is Cindy.

Rewind a half a century, and that is where my story begins.

I was the second of four children. My sister, Cheryl, is the

oldest, then me. Bobby came along five years later and Peter, who

could have been a prodigy, came eight years after that.

Neither of my parents graduated from high school. My

mother was sixteen and my dad twenty-three when they got married

in 1963. I was born eleven months after my sister. I always felt like I

was an accident. I was born into struggle.

I’m on the middle of the introvert scale.

I’ve always liked solitude.

My mother excused my behavior as “shy” when I was

younger. I hated to talk because I had a stutter. I attended speech

therapy when I started school to improve my speech impediment.

People told me that I was wise beyond my years. That I was

an old soul.

But I wandered aimlessly. I thought mostly about my

security. Scared and trusting of no one.

I pretended to be brave for my siblings who leaned on me,

but really, I was terrified, too.

My father was alcoholic until I was five. We didn’t realize

what this meant until much later in life.

I always wanted to fit in. I wanted friends, but I didn’t know

how to communicate outside of my own head.

My mother once identify me as a “loner.”

Sometime around kindergarten, my dad was saved and

became a Christian. We started going to church. We learned of God.

We went to Sunday School. We sang “Jesus Loves Me.”

Page 41

The Tree of Happiness

I had loved nature since a young age.

I spent much of my free time on a tree platform with my

brother, Bobby. We were closest.

That tree with Bobby was the first place I can ever remember

experiencing internal joy. The trunk held us up high on the branches

as we constructed our tranquility. The wooden platform was nailed

with hundreds of nails.

I could feel God in this tree. Yes, God as I knew him.

Genuine love!

This tree, without purpose or intent, gave me shade and

shelter from the chaos in my childhood. The bark was fractured,

coarse and grayish brown. The height reached sixty or sixty-five feet.