Get your sh*t together in January! The book’s ready for shipment on the 17th!!!! Yayyyy!
Paperback – $14.95
“The world breaks everyone and afterward many
are strong in the broken places.”
Hemingway, A. Farewell to Arms
“I can’t believe this is happening!”
“If one more thing hits I don’t know what I’m gonna do!”
“My life is pure crap!”
“How did I get into this shitty situation?”
“Is EVERYTHING this horrible?”
“WHY ME?????”
“HELLLPPPPP!!!!!”
Okay, you and I already know that shit, indeed, happens – literally and figuratively. You don’t need to read a book to know that this is so. But I’m presenting you with a book—It Takes A Lot of Sh*t To Make A Garden Grow—with a different twist. What if, just what is the possibility, you could take the challenge you’re dealing with right now and look at it as a kind of compost to help you re-landscape and ultimately grow a brand new perspective?
That’s what I was forced to do when I found myself knee-high in metaphorical muck. I knew I had a choice as to either slide deeper into that dark abyss of hopelessness…or start shoveling out of it. After a series of life-stuff had hit me almost simultaneously—divorce, a health scare and some other terrifying losses—I was convinced I was going to die. All that I knew about who I was—or thought I was—was being challenged. I had been given a Cosmic Kick—the rug had been pulled out from under me big time.
As a recalcitrant student in school, I still wasn’t learning my life lessons and an inner voice simply said, “You’re not getting it. You have your health and your loved ones and now the chance to learn about who you are for the first time. No more hiding…”
I was starting my life all over again at almost fifty years of age. I had barely any money, lost my beautiful family home and along with stacks of boxes from my past life, had gathered my six animals I adored and depended on me as much as I depended on them. (Thankfully, my two sons were grown and I did this personal pilgrimage solo. I don’t know how single parents manage to do this with young children. My heart goes out to them.)
I remember looking at my emaciated reflection in the mirror in a crammed, one-room studio far away from anything and anybody I knew before. I was miserable; filled with terror and self-pity and one step in the grave. What a shitty way to die. This was NOT the way my life was supposed to be—or end. And who, by the way, would feed my animals? That question alone was a significant turning point for me. I needed to find jobs to feed my little kennel (two large dogs, two cats and two birds) and myself—and I needed to do it fast.
So this was the beginning of a journey that continues to this day. An adventure I now understand that I longed for but never realized I did until it happened and it ultimately helped inspire this book.
“Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.”
Helen Keller
