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‘Family History’ Category

  1. Mining the Rough

    May 3, 2013 by admin

    This morning, I dredged up the past.

    I sat on the floor in my closet with two shoeboxes full of journals and combed through them, looking for one in particular. In the process, I came across a lot of dusty old memories: boyfriends gone bad, seething insecurities, angry prayers to God.IMG_5138

    I had procrastinated diving into this part of my work. Because I knew it could potentially bring up some long-healed scars, exhibit a glaring reminder of my obvious imperfections. But when we moved to Kansas in January, I had unearthed from a box an essay I wrote 12 years ago – an essay that was good but had gone nowhere. I needed to revive it. And to do that thoroughly, I needed to revisit a particular corner of my past.

    Diving head-first into our own history can be one scary endeavor. Among the nostalgic and forgotten memories quite potentially lurk some dark emotions, deep insecurities, experiences and feelings we’d rather keep deep and buried. It’s risky business to go there.

    But sometimes, we have to. If we want to weave stories that are meaningful and raw with truth, we often have to dig deep. It can be rough. It can be painful. It can downright suck.

    But you know what? I submit that, nine times out of 10, the effort and the risk will be wholly worth it. Sometimes you have to mine to get to the good stuff. Mining is unglamorous work at best. But a diamond never starts out smooth and beautiful.

    We have to believe in our work so much we’re willing to do the hard work, take the big risk.

    What is holding you back from going into that place? If it is fear, acknowledge it. Join the club. But at some point, take a deep breath and dive in. Hold someone’s hand if you have to. Chances are, by visiting those spaces where emotions run raw and deep, you will emerge with something worth holding onto.

    *My interview with writer, colleague and friend Alissa Johnson, in which I share some thoughts about the writing life, balancing motherhood with writing, and the writing process of Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood, was posted on Writing Strides yesterday. It also includes a beautiful testament to real friendship, and the bond that writing can weave. You can read it here.

    Category Creativity, Family, Family History, Ideas, Inspiration, Life, Self-doubt, Writing, Writing Life, Writing Process | Tags: ,,,, | No Comments

  2. Seeking Story in Tradition

    November 21, 2012 by admin

    Tradition.

    It’s an idea we all find ourselves coming back to this time of year. Be it falling into the comfort and warmth of old traditions or seeking joy in starting new ones, we all crave the same thing: something to celebrate.

    I find it intriguing the way years come and go, how some holidays are busy and exuberant and bouncing with life while, in other years, they are quiet and mellow, low-key. One only has to map the ups and downs of life through a single holiday to see how time works: how people come and go, how places transform, how we, ourselves, grow up.

    My strongest Thanksgiving memories will always center around my Grandma and Grandpa’s house in Wyoming, the place where, for so long, Thanksgiving took place with no questions asked. I write about it in Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood, this way:

    “Thanksgiving has happened at Grandma’s and Grandpa’s every year for as long as I can remember. The tradition runs so long and deep that no one questions it, even with the family tensions that ripple quietly just beneath the surface: Grandpa’s reckless ways and Grandma’s bitterness – driven, I think, by loneliness – the way he and she seem to like each other less every year, the fact that neither one of them has ever shown up for a school play or a band concert.

    Grandma and Grandpa sit at opposite ends of the table, paying no attention to one another, while my parents and I and my great uncle John fill the spaces between them. I scoop up big helpings of my mom’s turkey and her Swedish corn pudding. I pass on Grandma’s mashed potatoes and gravy because the gravy is an awful brown, and like every other year, I fear she has salted it with a rabbit carcass. She served fried rabbit on the first Thanksgiving my mom spent with them – no turkey. Mom, a wholesome girl from the Midwest, cried.”

    The memories are rich, but so, too, is the story.

    This is a story of tradition. What is yours?

    Later on in this piece, I share what still hangs on as one of my favorite Thanksgiving memories:

    “A cozy quiet hangs in the Thanksgiving afternoon: the ancient dishwasher hums through its cycle, the coffee percolator brews weak Folgers coffee for my mom. Soon, my grandmother will call for a game of hearts and we will gather around the Formica table, pie in hand, for a long game of steering clear of the Old Biddy.”

    I want people to see themselves here. I want them to resonate: with the tension, with the details of tradition, with the desire to bring the familiar to life.

    This Thanksgiving, we will celebrate in a new way, with a family that is not ours in a state where our roots are only temporary. It will be my oldest son’s fourth Thanksgiving, my youngest son’s first. Still, I will make Mom’s Swedish corn pudding in the CorningWare dish. I will bring it to the house we have visited only a few times, an act of both sharing an old tradition with new friends and hanging on to something familiar for the holiday. Will we eat cranberries out of the can? Will there be sweet potatoes? A card game after the meal?

    I don’t know. But I do know there is plenty to celebrate, from the warm memories of the past and the people who are no longer with us to the new friends we’ve made, the new life we’ve created and the new traditions that will blossom from it.

    This holiday season, I encourage you to seek the story in tradition, whatever that means for you.

     

    Category Family, Family History, Feel-Good Stories, Home, Inspiration, Life, Life Stories, Place, Writing, Writing Life | Tags: ,,,,,,,,,, | 1 Comment

  3. What is Your Life’s Theme?

    September 13, 2012 by katemeadows

    If you could pull one theme out of your life, what would it be?

    For me, that theme is “tough.” As in, “What does it mean to be tough?”

    I didn’t know this when I first set out to write a series of essays profiling the colorful characters of rural western Wyoming around whom I grew up. That series of essays now comprises my first book, Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood, published this month by Pronghorn Press.

    The essays were, at first, quaint and almost fluffy, mere sketches of people and experiences in my life that I found interesting. One piece did not necessarily relate to another; they just sort of fell out of me, one by one, like stones. I knew I had to write them – but I didn’t exactly know why.

    It was a long time before a pattern started to emerge, some sort of thread or echo that started resonating within each piece. I realized I wanted to know how these people – people like big-bellied bachelor Uncle John, the rancher-turned-writer woman named Chris, and my wild and impulsive Grandpa Bucky– helped to shape my upbringing and, consequently, shape the woman I am today.

    The resounding thread? Each of the characters I wrote about exhibited some form of tough. And moreover, they displayed senses of toughness I never felt I had. Having to homestead on a desolate landscape so barren that nothing grew? Not me. Driving cattle home at four in the morning? Not me. Spending lonely winters alone in a boxy cabin miles off a main road? Not me.

    Through writing, I started to look hard at this theme of “tough” and ask myself, “What does it mean to be tough?”

    All of these things, yes. But wasn’t there more to the meaning of that word? If not, I realized, I wasn’t tough at all.

    Except I know I am tough. Just not necessarily in the ways a rural Wyoming life demands. Through writing, I realized that my notion of “tough” was narrow. By holding myself up so sharply against these people who had truly lived hard and noble lives, I had for far too long denied that “tough” badge for myself.

    Looking back on the essays prompted me to examine my life via other questions as well.

    If you could re-do any moment of your life, what would it be?

    If you could live one sweet and precious moment of your past, what would it be?

    Thinking about our lives from a variety of angles can help give us a better grasp on ourselves, who we really are. Peeking through multiple lenses can help us to better understand ourselves – who we have been, who we are, who we hope to become.

    The former New York Times and Newsweek columnist Anna Quindlen writes: “It’s odd when I think of the arc of my life, from child to young woman to aging adult. First I was who I was. Then I didn’t know who I was. Then I invented someone and became her. Then I began to like what I’d invented. And finally I was what I was again. It turned out I wasn’t alone in that particular progression.”

    I am not yet 30 years old. As someone once told me, “You’re not old enough to write a memoir.”

    But in writing about my younger self, I discovered a powerful theme at work. It’s a theme that, piggybacked with a theme of confidence, I take with me into the wilds now of motherhood. It’s a theme that is molding me now, and a theme I believe will continue to shape me in the future.

    And all because once, I wanted to write about and therefore recall some colorful and strangely admirable characters of my past.

    Look at how these “tough” people defined me. Because of them – and because of the writing process – I am now tougher and more beautiful, a more complete person.

    You can receive a signed copy of Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood here.

    So? What about you? What is your theme?

     

     

    Category Books, Creativity, Family, Family History, Home, Ideas, Inspiration, Life, Life Stories, Motherhood, Parenting, Place, Quotes, Writing, Writing Life, Writing Process | Tags: ,,,,,,, | No Comments

  4. Book Publication and Birth: A Tale of Two Converging Loves

    September 4, 2012 by katemeadows

    I never meant for it to happen this way.

    I couldn’t have planned it if I tried.

    Indeed, truth is often stranger than fiction.

    Here I am, though, with a new baby and two books being published this month. Yes, two.

    How? I don’t quite know, except that life happens.

    Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood, published this month by Pronghorn Press, recounts my experience as an only child growing up among the raw and grisly characters in rural western Wyoming. It began in 2008 as a collection of essays for my Master’s thesis in creative nonfiction writing. I knew from the get-go I would go all the way with it, writing the pieces one at a time, piecing them together with a thread of a theme (what does it mean to be tough?), and eventually pursuing publication, sending out query after query until a “yes” finally came.

    The “yes” did come – but, unexpectedly, so did a positive pregnancy test, three days later.

    That “yes,” along with the blue “+” sign on the stick, came while I was knee-deep in work on my family’s small business history. Bucky’s: Stories and Recollections from 50 Years in Business, commemorates the grit and determination of a small-town service, repair and retail shop doing whatever it took to survive off of a quiet western main street. I began the project while Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood grinded its way through the query mill, back before a pregnancy was even on the horizon. The business history was a grand effort in helping my family carve out its well-deserved legacy. It was to be for me a venture in self-publishing, my intention to learn the ropes of the trade to be better informed and equipped as a writer during this tumultuous time in the publishing industry. I planned to publish the “Bucky’s book,” as it affectionately came to be called, in June 2012.

    Then the nod came for Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood.

    Then I got pregnant.

    In other words, life happened.

    And here I am, with a baby who was born the end of July, a book of essays to be published on schedule by a traditional publisher, and a self-published small business history that, due to life circumstances, was postponed for release until September – the month of the business’ annual grand open house.

    So we leave next week, traveling from California to Wyoming, where for the better part of the month I will be promoting my work. September will be a crazy month. But I can’t wait.

    I go into it with heart racing and eyes bright with excitement. Here are the moments where the hard, dogged work will be worth it. Finally, I will meet the finished products.  Works of art into which I put my whole self. I will get to talk about this craft I love so much. I get to share words, encourage others to share theirs, and talk about the value of preserving life stories and leaving legacies.

    This is work that I love. I am packing my bags now.

    Please, join me if you can. Click here for a list of events.  Stay tuned for upcoming readings and get-togethers in California. And, if you’re interested in using Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood as a pick for a book group, ordering copies of either book, or learning more about the crafts of creative nonfiction writing and/or telling your own life story, please get in touch.

    Writing, at its very core, is about communication. If I can reach people, if I can inspire and encourage, only then can I smile and say to myself, “Job well done.”

    Category Books, Bookstores, Creativity, Family, Family History, Home, Life, Life Stories, Motherhood, Parenting, Place, Self Publishing, Small Business History, Writing, Writing Life, Writing Process | Tags: ,,,,,,,,,,,,,, | 2 Comments

  5. Imperfect Books

    August 21, 2012 by katemeadows

    I have a confession to make.

    I published an imperfect book.

    Why do I tell you this?

    Because, if I’m honest, it’s a bit of a jubilant thing for me.

    I am so much a perfectionist that I miss sometimes the whimsy, the messy and out-of-place pieces of life for what they really are: reflections of reality. I am known to take things too seriously, not laugh enough, not cut myself any slack.

    I had a vision when I set out to piece together the history of my family’s small business. That vision, after a year and a half, is nearly realized. Bucky’s: Stories and Recollections from 50 Years in Business, is finished. Soon a box of what I hope to be beautifully crafted books will arrive. The moment of truth awaits on the doorstep.

    Will this book be loved by those who have a stake in it? Will it be treasured by those who have already purchased a copy?

    Even with its surefire blemishes – certainly there is a comma missing here, a missed paragraph indent here – I am daring enough to think so. I am also daring enough to say there is no such thing as a perfect book – because there is no such thing as a perfect human or a perfect life – and that, in the end, it doesn’t matter.

    You know why?

    Because the readers of this book will focus on the meat of the thing – the language and the real-life stories that have stitched together a half-century of awe and struggle in a slice of small town America.

    The readers will see past the missed commas and indents and any other small slight to what really matters: lasting stories that are communicated on the page, a shared dialogue.

    A writer can work and work and work on a book and still, it will never be fully ready to enter the world. It’s a bit like having kids: you’re never truly ready to become a parent.

    But at some point, you set aside your fear and insecurities, the need for everything to be just so, and you say a prayer and you jump.

    If you can look beyond the missing comma, the stray hair – or, staying with the parent metaphor, the kitchen floor that is sticky with spilled orange juice – you will see a bigger, messier and more beautiful picture that is entirely worth embracing.

    You might smile to yourself, allow yourself a sweet deep breath and think, “Yes. This, this is worth it.”

     

     

    Category Books, Creativity, Family History, Inspiration, Life, Life Stories, Parenting, Place, Self Publishing, Small Business History, Writing, Writing Life | Tags: ,,,, | 8 Comments

  6. Slow Motion?

    August 7, 2012 by katemeadows

    I forget how the pace of life slows in the breathy moments of adjusting to a new baby. Moments – on life’s grand scale, that is what they are, fleeting ticks of the clock that will pass in and out, and life will go on. Already time is moving fast – our Elijah Owen is almost two weeks old, and my husband, my sweet and giving husband who has poured himself out in servanthood this week, will be returning to work soon.

    Time. One of the many paradoxes of motherhood. How can the minutes slug away and fly by at the same time?

    Life resumes here. Slowly we must ease ourselves into a new normal. There are sad moments and confusing moments, funny moments and ecstatic moments. I look back on little Eli’s birth with a sort of muddy joy. Always I will remember how Bryan and I played gin rummy as we passed away the afternoon hours in the big hospital room, pausing for contractions as they passed. I will remember how the doctor came in and broke my water with what had to be chop sticks, saying something about speeding the process along. She was in and out of our room so fast, and the rush of hormones and fear overtook me, and I remember thinking (not for the first time that day) how odd it is that an act or a thought done out of routine or convenience for one person can be something entirely momentous and huge for another.

    I remember how the evening hours of July 25 passed so quickly, so fluidly, both Bryan and I thinking our baby would be here within the next hour, every hour. How, at 8:00, her hurried down to the hospital cafeteria to grab a bit and hurried straight back, knowing his son could be here at any time. How I finally started pushing at 10:30 that night and how, at a quarter to midnight, I had to stop, because it was time for the doctor and the doctor was in the room next door delivering another baby. How four babies came that night within 15 of each other, and how we were third in line. Eli was the only boy born in the hospital that night.

    And he came, beautiful and wet and big. His body was hot and alien on my stomach. I couldn’t see his face at first, but I didn’t care. He came. He was here, and that’s all that mattered. He made a July 25 birthday by two minutes; he was born at 11:58 p.m., 8 pounds 6 ounces and 21 inches long. And when I did see his face for the first time – smoke blue eyes and tiny pink mouth and shock of dark hair – I cried. Because he was mine, and he was beautiful.

    Now the days pass, some moments quietly and other moments chaos, as what once was a family of three gets used to being a family of four. A million questions linger and yes, sleep is a sweet sweet thing. But this job of parenthood is in full swing. It’s intense and tough and messy. But it is worth every minute.

    Welcome, sweet baby.

    Category Family, Family History, Feel-Good Stories, Home, Life, Life Stories, Motherhood, Parenting, Writing | Tags: ,,,,,, | 12 Comments

  7. Your Story is Bigger Than You

    July 16, 2012 by katemeadows

    What if your story, whatever life story you have to tell, is about more than you?

    I speak about and advocate for telling our life stories. At a recent workshop, I encouraged attendees to think outside of themselves when they resolve to put a story down – be it their own, their family history, their small business, what have you.

    One man, who has been at work on his family history for 30 years, asked why.

    Why do I need to think about others, he asked, when my primary motivation to explore my family history is to learn more about who I am?

    New York fountain. Copyright 2010 Kate Meadows.

    It was a good question, and I wasn’t shocked to hear it.

    But I think we so often fail to think outside of ourselves when we pursue our own endeavors. So often, we think, a) no one else will care; or b) this story won’t do anyone else any good, when in reality, the opportunities to speak to others through are stories are simply untapped goldmines waiting to be explored.

    This same man, in his tireless pursuit for names, dates and places of long-dead or long-lost family members, found a treasure trove of stories lurking beneath that hard data – stories I don’t think he necessarily bargained for. He wrote letters to people asking for information, and received stories and memories in return. You know what that tells me? Others in the family besides him have an interest in the family legacy.

    When I suggested this to him, he nodded, as if giving me the benefit of the doubt. Then, he was quiet for a long time.

    A year and a half ago, I set out to piece together a complete small business history. I wrote letters to 250 of the business’ mainstay customers, asking for their stories and memories of how the business had been a part of their lives.

    I had no idea who, if anyone, would respond.

    For a while, no one responded.

    Then, some stories started to trickle in. Followed by more. And more.

    In the end, thanks to the submissions I received, the history of the business was, in page numbers, twice as large as I had bargained for.

    Know what that means?

    People besides myself and my family became invested in the larger story. People had something to say; they wanted their hand in it. Now, still pre-publication, the book has sold almost 150 copies.

    That tells me this small business history is about more than just the business itself. It comprises threads of numerous people’s lives, people who care about their part in the larger story.

    Consider your own story. Who is a part of it? Would they care to know it? How can you reach out to others with your own message?

    Category Books, Creativity, Family History, Ideas, Life, Life Stories, Motherhood, Parenting, Self Publishing, Small Business History, Writing, Writing Life, Writing Process | Tags: ,,, | 2 Comments

  8. Taming the Lack-of-Confidence Beast

    June 28, 2012 by katemeadows

    At a recent Telling Our Life Stories workshop I hosted, a man attended who has been working on his family history longer than I’ve been alive.

    I was daunted at first, wondering what I as a (ahem) young writer could possibly teach him that he didn’t already know.

    That old wavering, persistent voice of insecurity threatened to tear me down. Who did I think I was, offering strangers tips and advice for how to effectively tell their own life stories? Would this man think my presentation was a joke? Would anyone else, for that matter?

    I pushed my fear and doubt aside and did my best to be confident in what I was presenting.

    And you know what? People listened. They asked questions. This man, who was so deep into his own family history, took notes as I talked. He even approached me afterward and asked if we could spend some one-on-one time together so he could get my input on some specific challenges he was facing regarding his project.

    Isn’t it funny how we can so easily doubt ourselves? How easily that familiar fear of failure creeps up on us.

    Online entrepreneur Pat Flynn addresses his own battle with confidence this way:

    “… When I was told by a successful colleague to write an eBook for my site, I thought of every excuse not do it:

    • ‘I don’t know how to make an eBook.’
    • ‘I don’t think it’s going to sell very well.’
    • ‘People will be upset because most of the material can be found for free on the blog already.’
    • ‘I’m not a good writer.’
    • ‘There are probably other books that are way better out there already.’

    This lack of self confidence delayed any sort of action on my eBook, and it was only after several other people begged me to write it, including a couple of my own readers who heard I had thought about it and said they were already waiting to pay for it when it was finished, did I finally take action and do it.”

    As a result, Flynn writes, he finished the book in a couple of months, and it sold very well. After $250,000 in sales, not one person had complained about the same content appearing on the Website. His writing improved as a result of producing the book, and perhaps there were others books out there that were better than his, but it didn’t matter.

    What mattered? He shoved excuses and insecurities aside, put his nose to the grindstone and went to work on something he ultimately believed in. Sure that voice of doubt probably lingered every step of the way, but he tamped it down.

    Fear of failure will always exist. Sneaky nudges of insecurity will always threaten to seep into your work, your attitude. But I think more often than not, the hardest person to convince that we and our work matter is not the complete stranger in the audience or the friend sitting across the table.

    The hardest person to convince that we and our work matter is ourselves.

    Let’s stop being our own worst critics and give ourselves some credit for the good that we do. A little extra dose of believing in yourself can go a long way.

    How do you respond to moments of insecurity?

    Category Creativity, Family History, Inspiration, Life, Life Stories, Self-doubt, Small Business History, Writing, Writing Life, Writing Process | Tags: ,,,,,,,,,, | No Comments