Back to Life

After leaving grad school in 1977 to have babies, and run a working farm complete with cattle, horses, chickens, raising a garden, raising four children, mowing pastures with a tractor, stocking a catfish pond and finding the simple pleasures of feeding the fish daily.  So much has passed under the bridge.  So much.  Grief has a hold on me and I cannot let go because if I let go I am afraid her face will fade away and with that the memories which kept me alive with her.  So now I am back on school.  I am taking an MFA class at the University of Alabama where I dropped out in 1977, it was after my first breakdown, that horrible place that finds you and suddenly makes your depression an "event".  So, I had two options to tell my parents I was indeed in a serious fixation of suicide or buck it and do it by myself, I spent many days sitting in the back of my car wrapped in a blanket fixating on leaves falling off trees and counting the acorns as they fell onto the windshield.  Who could I tell?  My friend G rallied and convinced me to seek professional help and I did and wouldn't you know I got a freak for a therapist first time around, he was fixated on masturbation as a cure to depression?   So my assingments were to go home, masturbate (what if I didn't know how?) and come back the next week and give him a detailed translation of my experiment in dedepressing myself through "pleasure".  It still seems surreal to me and after many therapists, I have had the same one now for 11 years who knows me inside and out and has never asked me to masturbate to alleive my depression. 
The funny thing about untreated depression, it grows and grows and grows into a mountain you can't possibly scale and with it comes anxiety, mood disorders, cycling, rapid cycling and finally you are told the reason behind the depression, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  Oh.  But, isn't that reserved for army vets and people with really, really bad memories like 9/11?  No.  PTSD is a result of abuse I learned.  Oh, you mean the beatings from my parents, locked in basements because I misbehaved in church, beatings that become cathartic for my parents so they assume if it makes them feel better then let's do it more, and more, and more, until they have nothing left of their daughter but a battered shell of who she was or might have been or could have been.  There isn't a solid place to walk.  The ground feels shakey and there are goblins under every bed in every room you have ever slept in.

This journey has been a hell of a ride for me.  I have taken a vow to speak out on mental illness and give it a face, a face of a woman many look at and think "she has it together, I mean look at her, four children, 5 grands, a wonderful husband, nice house, nice car, blah, blah, blah"  My new pscyhiatrist suggested it is time to divorce my family or origin and start a family of choice only it is hard to talk to strangers and no normal person would want to join my family of choice if they knew how difficult it is to pull myself up by the boot straps each day and face life.

Slowly each day since I learned about the concept of divorcing your family of origin I feel empowered and sad.  Sad because aren't we supposed to love our family.  No, not when you have been the victim of abuse either physical or emotional.  We owe it to ourselves to love ourselves first and foremost like when they give the talk on the airplane and tell you to put the mask on yourself first so you can help others.  That is what this new freedom feels like for me.

I am back in school, in a new place of grace for myself to myself, and I am learning to talk again, it is hard to know the right words, with the right way, but I have a feeling saving myself is going to be easier than I ever imagined.  I have even learned to tolerate the bleak face of winter. 

Novel is finished and ready for publisher!

Hi all,

Yes, I changed the name to SINNER FROM THE SOUTH. I had the original title out there so long, THE AVE MARIA DIARIES. I had many very polite rejection letters from agents and publishers, but that wasn't good enough for me.

I felt a need to have my novel published. It was for me like planting a seed. You don't wait for permission, you just go outside, dig a hole and plant the seed and watch the plant grow. That is why I chose Print on Demand (POD) publishing. You can go to www.sinnerfromthesouth.com and purchase the book, wait a few weeks. Or contact me directly here on my blog and order it from me.

I am planning to tour the south this summer and promote my novel by doing signings at local book stores. I hope to come to your city! Just keep me posted if you are interested. You can always contact me here or at alabamaauthor@gmail.com.

Keep reading!
Thanks,
Alabama Jane Brown

Autumn

Back in Tennessee for the past week, so hard to believe I have five grandchildren, Marte is sick, Catlin's wife so I have had Grandmother duties for the past week. Diapers, bottles, laundry, the smells of a baby should be bottled and sold for stress. Memories of my own four and the work, the endless work. I still hear babies cry in my sleep.

Autumn in Tennessee is like no other place. There are the mock orange trees that drop the round green balls that look like alien brains all over the ground, all along the roadways they lay and when run over by a car wheel they explode with a pungent odor that clings to the car for days, yet I love it, only in Tennessee. The pumpkins that dot all the produce stands along the way and corn stalks and fields full of horses running rampant with their tails high and heads higher, they can feel the change in the air and know autumn has come and the promise of cool nights cuddled into a featherbed and the sleep that comes and lingers throughout the day, there is nothing so fine as autumn in Tennessee.

I miss my friends here, they all seem scattered. I miss Rosemary and grieve I no longer have her in my life, her son committed suicide two years ago and I suppose with his death she threw out friends also, was the past too painful for her? I suppose I will never know. I miss Vicki and her wisdom and her kindness that carressed us all and gave us a core to belong. I miss Margaret Conners and Kathy S. Emerson. Cecil, so many of my friends are gone and I can't find them.

I miss my dearest Cindy M and the lifelink of J that can not be broken, blood is thicker than water but water carries the grimness of tears that go on and on, still 26 years later.

God is good to me, and He loves me and has taken such good care of me, and in the midst of trying to figure out what happened and why the noonday demon, the black dog of depression still haunts, I have found that the only cure is taking care of myself first. That has been the hardest thing to do.

I wish I had my Jim here with me to see this Tennessee autumn and feel the blueness of the sky and the full moon kiss us goodnight with the promise of what tomorrow brings.
Do random acts of kindness.

Novel out the door.

Today I gained the courage to send my novel, HAIL MARY! THE AVE MARIA DIARIES, to Ms. Ellen Levine.

What an interesting day too.
On this day, Tennessee Williams was born along with many other Literary greats, my favorite poet, Robert Frost and it is the day set aside to honor the Arch Angel Gabriel, who was the guardian of Mary, Mother of God, while she lived on earth! How amazing that I would choose this as the day to send off the novel. I took the name Alabama of course after Tennessee and the novel is in fact based on Mary and her powers and of course the fictional part is all about seeking redemption which was the basis for many of Tennessee's plays.

So..............with a wing and a prayer I send my novel to be judged and I pray Ms. Levine likes it enough to find a publisher.

Today the sun can not decide what to do, yet again, clouds reign.

Thanks, friends for stopping by.

Being Liberal, what it means

If you give a damn for the child in the house with no food, no electricity and no parents, pull out your pockets and pay up, then you are most likely a Democrat and Liberal.

Why, does this simple test pass the test of time over and over and over again.

Ask your friends, when was the last time you went to a slum and lent a hand.

Our country is in trouble, people not because of these threats, we are in trouble because of the PEOPLE doing these stupid acts. These people are REPUBLICANS, yes, face up you people who also believe abortion is murder. I can't even think right now, to write, I am so angry, so upset at the ignorance of this breed we call the human race. Some people are at the same level as rats and pond scum.

I wish Michael Moore would answer my phone and help him plan a REVOLUTION, a billion man/woman march to take back our country, it isn't too late, in another month it very well may be.

Good Save Obama.
Sarah Palin, stay at home with your children where you belong.
And both sides, stop fanning these flames of ignorance.

We have lost too many. Lincoln, JFK, RFK, MartinLK, too many good ones are gone
by ignorance.

We are killing the peacekeepers.

Today

Silence. Stillness. Silliness.

There is something there in those words as they dance today in my head.

I need silence to write rand stillness to quiet my spirit and soul, and silliness to remind me
what is important in life.

Many people ask me how I write.
Well, it always comes with an image. My screen play came from an article I read in Vogue about a woman in Manhatten who had a maid who was Amish and she swept the front porch each day in her Amish attire, that image stuck in my head for along time until I realized it was a seed for Rienhart's Bend, my screenplay.

Then for THE AVE MARIA DIARIES, I had the thought about redemption and how to receive it back. After years of mis-guided choices, I thought of our blessed Mother, Ave Maria and wanted to talk to her, so I came up with the diary notion, then all these characters broke free in my head and it came to life. Of course, there was much food from growing up at Northport Baptist where the great scandal of Stanley took place, so I embelished, as I am prone to do even in everyday conversation and started this whole murder of a sorry ass preacher, they do exist. It was fun, and revealed to me what was important in life. Listening to God whisper, in a quiet way, not the hail and brimstone of growing up Baptist where each Sunday I felt I needed to walk the walk and be rebaptized over and over and over again. I know now that feeling stems from emotional preaching they learn at a Seminary.

So for today, Silence, Stillness, Silliness. I got to figure out how to be silly, any suggestions?
I could roll a yard, harmless, except for being an eyesore, or maybe just buy a bottle of bubbles and go in the sun and blow bubbles until the jar is empty and then that would make me feel
a connection to rememberances past.

A thing of beauty is a joy forever----------J. Keats, dead at 25, never knew how great he was,
I pray he does in Heaven.

Thank you my friends.
Love.
P. aka, Alabama Brown

Random Musings

Tonight I am really down, low, sad, blue, melancholy. It is real, and familiar.
The pines stand tall against the ancient river outside my window.
A barge passes and doesn't know I am standing at my kitchen window wanting to go there too.
Where? I don't care, as long as it is somewhere other than here,
Where pine trees compete with me for the river view.

I love Spring.
I love Autumn.
I love Summer.
I detest Winter.

I love birds, and thoughts of angels, and fairies who come at midnight and kiss my eyes.

I love bowls of oranges in my kitchen and orchids blooming against my windows.

I love the way I feel after I have cleaned the oven. Why?

I love the way my pillow feels after I iron my pillow case with lavender water.

I love life most of the time and the rest of the time, I try to sleep.

I believe in goodness.

I remember going to the Dairy King and standing at the "white's only window" and watching my black friends wait in line at the "colored window".

I remember Martin Luther King when he was living, and knowing he was right.

I remember going to see George Corley Wallace after his famous stand in the schoolhouse door and being frightened.

I remember Mississippi burnings.

I remember too much in my head.

I am a writer.

Because I choose to remember and write it all down for the generations to come so we won't ever forget.

I remember Gale and I dancing to David Bowie when Patti Hearst was held in prison, and causing a riot in Birmingham with our chant, "Free Patti Hearst", what night that was.

I have loved poets, painters and photographers. I married the engineer.

Spread love.

Seek God and He will draw closer to you.