The Gift of Inspiration

If your holiday shopping list is anything like mine, there are gaps in it. Figuring out just the right gift for some people is as tricky as catching Santa Claus doing his job on Christmas Eve night. I suggest you do what I plan to do: I’m going to fill in the gaps by giving books to the readers on my list.

                Throughout this month, I will turn this blog over to authors of books that I recommend you consider as gifts to the readers on your list. The authors will tell you in their own words what they want you to know about their books. The first among the group is Paulette Mahurin, an award-winning and best-selling author of The Persecution of Mildred Dunlap, who on this page will feature her brilliant new novel His Name Was Ben, which is based on a true story. All proceeds from His Name Was Ben are donated to dog rescue efforts. Paulette is a great friend to me and I'm honored to have her as my guest. Welcome to my blog In Good Company, Paulette:

The Gift of Inspiration

By

Paulette Mahurin

 

The sun rises over the eastern horizon flooding my bedroom with light, and I awake with gratitude for the gift of my life; a life I do not take for granted. Many years ago, while in college I had the great fortune of meeting and working with a couple who inspired this way of thinking in me. Both of them were diagnosed with a terminal illness when they met and fell in love. It was this love, their expression of a deep intimate sharing that really opened me to what living is all about; right here and now. After meeting the real Ben and Sara, about whom my new book His Name Was Ben is written, my life changed. Into it entered gratitude, a thankfulness for the simplest yet most powerful of things: my vision, my hearing, and that the physiology of my body continues to function to keep me alive.

His Name Was Ben was initially written as a short story while in college and earlier this year published as a full-length novel. The synopsis from the back cover reads: Hearing the words “it’s cancer,” threw Sara Phillips’s life into chaos, until an unexpected turn of events and a chance encounter with a stranger changed everything—his name was Ben. Based on real events, Ben and Sara discover that when all else fails, healing can come in the most unexpected ways. Chilling and heart wrenching, His Name Was Ben is a triumph over the devastating circumstances and fear experienced when faced with a terminal illness. In this narrative, the power of love conquers shadows and transforms the very nature and meaning of what it is to be fully alive. From the award winning, best-selling author of The Persecution of Mildred Dunlap, comes a story filled with soul and passion that will leave the reader thinking about it for days after the last page is closed.

Some read this and are turned off when they see the word cancer and make the mistaken assumption that it’s a downer story of suffering and loss. Those who have read it and taken the time to review it have a common reaction; it’s a story about life, living it to the fullest, and the healing power of unconditional love and gratitude. On this Thanksgiving holiday, as I reflect on Ben and Sara, this beautiful couple I met so many years ago, I am reminded of the expression “from the ashes the phoenix will rise again.” I never understood the expression until meeting Ben and Sara, and then I saw that it is never too late for a miraculous comeback. And, it can all start with gratitude.

http://www.amazon.com/His-Name-was-Paulette-Mahurin-ebook/dp/B00NTACZ5Q/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1417458945&sr=8-1&keywords=his+name+was+ben

Life is Good!

Award-winning author, Paulette Mahurin lives in Ojai, California with her husband, Terry and their two dogs, Max and Bella.  A Nurse Practitioner in a women’s health clinic, she writes in her spare time.  All proceeds from her recent novel, The Persecution of Mildred Dunlap are going to the Santa Paula Animal Rescue Center  in Verona County, California where Paulette Lives.  It is the first and only no-kill shelter in the area.  This is a cause very close to her heart. 

It is my great pleasure to have Paulette as my guest today.  Although she and I only became aware of each other a few months ago, I have come to regard her as a dear friend, a mentor, and certainly, as one of my heroes.  The following is her powerful and inspiring story, imparted in her own words:    

 

Thank you to the wonderfully talented author and artist, Linda Lee Greene for inviting me to her great blog site to talk today.

 
Fifteen years ago, my life as I knew it, ended, all because I rescued a dog named Tazzie.  She came to me with ticks; one latched onto my side and infused my body with bacteria that would be diagnosed as Lyme Disease six months later by an orthopedic surgeon.  By the time I was diagnosed, it had infused through my arteries and settled in my cardiac valves, brain and spinal cord tissue, muscles and nerves, and to many other areas of my body.  I was out for the count.

There’s a Zen expression that says to die before you die, in every moment.  I never understood this till becoming seriously ill, and in that time, it was my body that was boss, not I.  I had never taken a second seat before, but now, if I did what I wanted, my body violently protested.  If I stayed up, beyond tiredness, to watch a TV show, I became worse and the bouts of illness became protracted.  I remember the night there was a movie on TV that I wanted to watch; yet I was exhausted.  I overrode the tiredness and stayed up.  That was the night my body’s protest turned into crippling meningitis; it leveled me for weeks.  The next time my body was tired, I listened to it and went to bed.  As my resistance decreased, something started to change.  At first it was barely perceptible, but within a few months, I noticed I was feeling better.  What I came to realize was, I had died.  Well, almost; but I certainly diminished.  I got out of my own way.  And what it gave way to was miraculous.

My body, this magnificent healing machine that strives for homeostasis, taught me something invaluable, it taught me that life has its own rhythm, a flow, a vastness of intelligence that I cannot begin to explain, nor fully understand.  Life just knows what it needs; every living thing has its place and purpose; our bodies know this all too well, but our thoughts get in the way, the beliefs and ideas, our little stories that we identify with.  A tree takes in carbon dioxide and gives off oxygen and we exist in beautiful balance with this wonderful part of nature.  A bee pollinates and up shoots nature in abundance; an ant does its thing; a spider weaves and catches what it needs; the weather changes and snow melts; waves move closer to shore, all occurring without any thought or intent; all simply occurring.  Before the tick bite, I never knew my place as being a part of this cosmic whole, an organism within the organism of life, in unity, all coexisting in this weird, yet magnificent, chaotic harmony.

The tick bite and all those microscopic bacteria that still live in my tissue gave me something nothing else ever has:  life and the absolute sense that I am alive.  But, first I had to die.  This carried over into my writing, and it was during my illness that I penned The Persecution of Mildred Dunlap, a story about intolerance, a story that is making waves all over the place, with press and magazine coverage; a  story that is being featured by prestigious Art Center’s Literary Branch as their pick for the read of the month, and being read and reviewed all around the world.  It was during the writing of this book that I learned my most important lesson on writing, and that was to get out of the way of the story, the characters, and to not arrive back into my old ego-self of wanting to show off how much research I had done, or make it about what I wanted to say, when it didn’t serve the scene, the dialogue, the action of the book.  I’ve always loved to write, but when this happened, writing became joyful and flowed.

I am grateful beyond description for so many things.  I wake up every day to my own little gratitude prayer:  that I can see, that I can hear, that I can feel, even if the feeling is pain, and then I give gratitude for all my loving and significant relationships, including my dogs, whom I love with all my heart.  I feel alive and life flowing through me, and as long as I wake up, for me that’s a good day. There is always something I can be grateful for.  Even when the negative, shadow emotions surface, they don’t bother me as much as they did when I had a bunch of stories attached to them, and hey, if I can let go of me, I can certainly let go of them.  Life is good.

 

AMAZON.COM:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=The+persecution+of+mildred+Dunlap

AMAZON U.K.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=the+persecution+of+mildred+dunlap

GOODREADS:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14061559-the-persecution-of-mildred-dunlap

SHELFARI:
http://www.shelfari.com/books/28821838/The-Persecution-of-Mildred-Dunlap

FACEBOOK:
https://www.facebook.com/ThePersecutionOfMildredDunlap

BOOK'S BLOG:
http://thepersecutionofmildreddunlap.wordpress.com/

TWITTER:
https://twitter.com/MahurinPaulette

BOOK'S WEBSITE:
http://bookpromogroup2.weebly.com/paulette-mahurin.html

PRESS ARTICLE:
VC STAR Sept. 9, 2012 Sunday Life Section:
http://www.vcstar.com/news/2012/sep/08/ojai-authors-historical-novel-teaches-tolerance/

SHELTER PROFITS ARE GOING TO:
http://www.santapaulaarc.org/

 

My Gift of Multiple Sclerosis

This is the second time I have featured my friend, Karen Magill on my blog.  Her story is so inspiring that I wanted to include it in my month of gratitude stories.  By the way, Karen’s blog, the Vancouver Vagabond is chocked full of great photography and short essays, and has been nominated for the prestigious Vancouver Social Media Award.  The link to the blog is http://karen-magill.blogspot.com. 

I hope all of you will come back to visit me next week to discover the incredible gratitude story of my friend, as well as one of my heroes, Paulette Mahurin.  And now, heeeeeeere’s Karen:     

 

On June 5, 2000, I woke to find the left side of my body partially paralysed.  Nine days later, after an MRI, I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and I started down a journey unlike anything I have ever been on before.

The paralysis went away but I lived in fear.  I heard all the horror stories about how dismal my life was going to be now, or how I was destined for a wheelchair, or how I was going to lose my eyesight.  I am happy to say that twelve years later, none of those things have happened.

Although I do use a cane, I walk quite well.  In fact, I walk all over Vancouver, Canada taking photos of whatever interests me, as well as historical sites.  Then I come home and post the photos in a blog entitled the Vancouver Vagabond, combining the pictures with stories of my city’s history.

 MS has been a gift to me.  I was forced onto disability, so now I am being paid to stay home and write.  The fatigue that hampers many areas of my life requires me to make the most of the time I am able to write.  I have to learn how to focus my energies on the task at hand whether it be writing, or promoting, or even walking.  That is an advantage because now I take more care in what I am getting involved with.  I can’t join every social media site or every Facebook group–I have to target my audience and find where those readers would be.  I can’t enter everything and join all sites.  I also ask for advice and assistance more than I would if I didn’t have this difficulty.

Gone are the nights when I could stay up all hours writing.  My body can’t handle that any longer. So my books may take me longer to write, but I am more careful on what I put on ‘paper’ as they say.  I do have episodes of writing wildly and ending up with a lot of garbage—most writers do since it releases the tension and the creative juices, but those times are limited.  When I work on my novels I have a pretty good idea of which scene I am going to write.

My emotions can run wild—I can’t remember ever crying as easily as I do now.  Those emotions that can sometimes be so raw and intense are translated into my writing now.  A writer has to bring the reader into the story and make them feel something.  It may take a few attempts, but I can translate the intensity of what I feel onto paper.

Multiple Sclerosis may have taken a lot away from me, yet in so many ways it was one of the best things to happen to me and my writing.  There is a new maturity and perspective to my writing.  I wonder if I would ever have reached the levels I am at now if I were still working a full time job and struggling in the rat race.  I doubt it.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Missing-Flowers-ebook/dp/B009GL6ULM/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1353890589&sr=1-1&keywords=missing+flowers