Just to establish my credentials up front, I come from nowhere, friends. My most intense learning experiences... and some of my most incredible failures, occurred when I lived off the grid in the rough hills of Western Wisconsin, no utilities, survivalist, sustaining myself with resources at hand.
So you may have guessed that I write books for strong women who have literally come through the fire. My books are about life’s lessons, persevering and learning them the hard way. They are about survival, implementing change and making it work.
I raised my three children in the wild places, the deep woods and the rocky hills. We built fires to warm our house and cook our food, lighted our place with solar and kerosene lamps. We raised a garden for produce, hunted deer and turkeys for meat.
Of course I hadn’t these skills when I landed in the hills! I had to pick them up as I went along. That’s where the word ‘failure’ comes in! For instance, most of us expect a certain amount of household warmth in cool or cold weather. I was living in a climate with very long winters. I would say nine months of the year are cool or downright frigid in Western Wisconsin.
Learning which kinds of DRY wood kept hot fires and really warmed the house, even with the acquisition of a top-notch heating stove, was simply essential.
And yes, I’ll admit to a miserable season struggling with a just a trickle of household heat generated by wet and smokey fuel. Try bathing in cold water at 30 degrees F!
SOMEONE had better figure out a plan, right? The catalyst to change is so strong in situations like freezing temperatures that no one sits around very long wondering ‘what to do.’
Do you ever sit around wondering what to do? Or do you maybe KNOW what to do, but just don’t do it? You’re not alone. My book, Core Hollow, puts me right in the bulls eye of indecision and its severe consequences.
Here’s an excerpt:
As I stand here in the wet, sloppy snow, in the low light of the late winter sun, I can rehash to you once more the jaded story of love plus un-forgiveness, that old tale you’ve all heard too many times to care. A story featuring the faithless, rocky hills we presumed to live on, a quarreling of willful wind and wolves, the duplicity of dead- cold winters, the hard-to-get scramble of wood and water and food. Put your finger on a Wisconsin map, choose that hard-hearted space between bleak wind-scoured farmhouses and stony, unrelenting toil, and you have landed.
Ed Gein lived around here, if that’s any consolation.
And while we’re at it, let’s call it a place of wild, winsome heart’s connection and abrupt, harsh, haunting beauty….. a passion of purple blossom and sweetness under a downy blanket of sky blue……………a fickle, feckless love lost forever……
Indecision is a kind of paralysis, you know. It paralyzes a mouse in the eyes of a cat, a deer in the headlights of a car.
And what are the consequences of indecision?
Mine were severe, and almost fatal. You will need to read the book to understand that.
Core Hollow, by Anne Lafferty, can be found on Amazon, along with it’s sequel Hawkins Creek.
But in the meantime, how do you handle indecision? Do you simply wish and hope that things will change?
Or do you make a PLAN to the best of your ability, a plan that could change your health status, reap financial rewards………..or even assist you to escape with your life?!
Your plan, and your will. Those are the two life-changing assets that you possess. Go for it!
What an awesome book! I can relate so much to a lot of things in your Book! It truely inspired me!