You Listened

How many times had you crept into their rooms at night and pressed your face against them to hear the soft hiss of baby breathing, to feel that warm, sweet milky breath in your ear, always needing that reassurance that yes, mama, those babies in your care are strong and sure and thriving. It only had to happen once, that pivotal moment when you had to choose: either tell yourself you're being ridiculous or trust your intuition.
You sensed the monster, the fire that slipped into his room, and before that, the carbon monoxide, with its vile tentacles spreading out from his lungs to veins to blood, and yours too. You listened. That voice. Check the baby. Check the baby. You pressed your cheek against his, heard that baby breathing, the steady rhythm. You listened. You laid down beside him. And because you chose to trust yourself, he still breathes today.

#tinystories

I'm Hitting The Road- and Might Be In Your Town!

Counting my blessings today for the wonderful readers and book clubs who have been supporting Fire Season since its launch in April. It's been a fun whirlwind- from events in Arizona and L.A. to radio events, a Huffington Post Live interview and a great night speaking at the American Red Cross Gala about fire safety ...whew!

Changing Hands Bookstore, Phoenix AZ

Barnes and Noble, The Grove, Los Angeles

This Sunday I'll be at BookStar in Studio City from 2 to 3pm, thanks to my good friend, the awesome bookmistress Lindy Michaels. I'll do a reading from Fire Season, then I'm open for Q and A, to talk about memoir, writing the scary truth, to alternatives in publishing...Meet me there and let's talk books!

After that I'm packing up my car, and heading up the beautiful Pacific Coast toward San Francisco. Troy and Evan are coming with me because they love San Francisco, and we have a #BucketList wish to ride our bikes across the Golden Gate Bridge.

Here are the latest book tour dates :
June 28, Studio City, CA Book Star
July 1, San Francisco, CA: Book Passage, She Writes Tour
July 14, Northern New Jersey: Reigniting Your Creative Spirit: Workshop
July 16, Dingman's Ferry, PA
July 18, Woodstock, NY: The Golden Notebook, reading and Q and A with Hollye Dexter and Amy Ferris
September 9, Canada: Book Club
October 15, Emeryville, CA: Barnes and Noble
October 17-18 Berkeley, Magic of Memoir Conference



New events are being added all the time. I've got a tentative date in Vegas in September...stay tuned. I'd love to come to your town to visit with your book club, do a workshop or a bookstore reading- invite me!  See my website for all details: http://www.hollyedexter.net/events

 

Hollye and Troy and The Seven Plagues

It’s Good Friday today, although I seriously doubt Jesus would have called it that. Talk about a bad day. With Passover and Easter upon us, I thought I’d share my own tale of the seven plagues. Or is it ten? I don’t know. I just know that recently Troy and I seemed to have experienced a few of them.

DEATH: Evan said the other day, “Ever since Anita died, everything has gone horribly wrong in our lives. It’s like she took all the happy with her.” He’s right. I was so shaken by Anita’s death, I got sick on the day she died, really sick. Lost my voice for a week, got bronchitis and couldn’t shake it for over a month. And that was just the kickoff to a string of other disasters. Like bugs…

BUGS: Recently Troy woke up covered head to toe in what looked like bug bites. His arms and legs swelled up and were hot to the touch. He went to urgent care, they gave him some meds but didn’t really know what was wrong with him. Last week, Evan woke up the same way and we knew we had a problem. We hired a company that brought a trained dog out to sniff for bed bugs. We didn’t have bed bugs, but in moving and turning over all our furniture we found out we had carpet beetles. I had no idea, as I had never seen one (still haven’t - they are smaller than a grain of rice and hide in your carpet and furniture). They don’t bite, but it turns out some people are highly allergic to them. So that began days of moving furniture and having all carpets and furniture steam cleaned and washing every thing in the house and bagging up all the pillows, etc. Ugh.

FLOOD – Two days after the bugs, the house still torn apart, I come home from yoga and Evan says, “Mom, don’t be upset. The whole house flooded.” Upset? Why would I be upset? Second floor bathroom flooded into first floor bathroom flooded into Troy’s recording studio and our basement. Spent DAYS dealing with that. Days of sweat and filth and throwing away photos and ruined Christmas decorations and trying to dry out an entire trunk full of my soaked journals. Cleaning carpets. AGAIN.

We realized that in the 15 years we’ve owned this house we have had six floods. Two caused by nature, three caused by toilets, and one by a burst pipe in the ceiling. We have purchased three new toilets, including one high-pressure flush toilet that was supposed to ensure that we never had another toilet flood, but THAT toilet spontaneously exploded, porcelain shards flying everywhere, and then flooded the bathroom. Yes, we had an exploding toilet (and are now part of a class action lawsuit against the manufacturer).

BLOOD: Two days after the flood, Troy was on the phone dealing with the IRS (who, on the day Evan was covered in hives, sent us certified letters telling us they decided we owe them more money for 2012) when Troy tripped over something and cut his leg wide open on a piece of broken glass. Blood everywhere. We were in the ER for four hours, three of those waiting to be seen, and one of them stitching his leg back together. 16 stitches. And while we were in the ER, the building inspector emailed us, wanting to know what we plan to do about our building code violations on our deck. SERIOUSLY?

Hail covering California beaches- cause that's "normal."

HAIL: Yep, we had that this month too. Hello, global warming. No one got hurt though.

And here’s a plague we hope we’re done with:

FIRE: Yep. We had that one big time. We thought we’d “burned through that karma.” Since then, we’ve been evacuated from this house twice during fire season, wildfires burning to the edge of our property. Twice. So I wrote this book Fire Season, which will start shipping in a matter of days, and I am praying this exorcises that chapter of our life. And I’m a nervous wreck.

...AND THE REST: I don’t really know what the rest of the plagues are but we’ve decided we’re giving them up for Lent.

So what is the moral of the story here? Are we unlucky? Cursed? Plagued?

I think it’s this. When awful things happen to us, we can choose to shut down and become bitter, or we can rise up again (like Jesus, or Obi Wan Kenobi, whichever works for you). Every one of us has lessons to learn, a cross to bear (sorry, Jesus) so to speak. Faith, courage, compassion…those are muscles that must be worked, or else we become, I don’t know… spiritually flabby. Those painful lessons are what grow our courage, empathy and compassion. Working as a gun violence prevention advocate, I have met and become good friends with many wonderful people who are survivors of gun violence or have lost children to gun violence. They have greater compassion and strength than anyone I know. In the midst of unimaginable loss, they rose up, and became stronger and kinder and more resilient than they ever knew they could. They give hope and encouragement to people like me who are dealing with silly little things like floods and bugs. They give me strength.

In turn, I share with you our crazy little tale of plagues, and I share in my book how we lost everything, including hope, and how there is always a way to turn ruin into redemption, and I think that’s the point of this thing called life.

Recently Evan asked me about that. “What’s the point of life, Mom?”  I told him it was to learn and grow. Distressed, he said, “That’s the WHOLE POINT of life?! That sucks!”

Yeah, I told him, sometimes it sucks, and sometimes it’s a grind and sometimes its so gorgeous it could break your heart wide open. But we’re lucky to have it. All of it.

Today I’m focusing on gratitude and looking forward to Easter Sunday, when I will gather with my family and be happy, count my blessings, my thoughts far away from any plagues.

Wishing you all a happy Easter, Passover, spring …and on Star Wars day, May the  4^th be with you. 

Is it just me, or does anyone else think a solid chocolate "instrument of torture" is a little weird?

Things Just Got Real...

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG.
ADVANCE READER COPIES JUST ARRIVED.
Troy asked me, "How do you feel?"
Hmmm...How do I feel?
Excited.
Nervous.
Relieved.
And maybe just a little bit like puking.

Years of soul searching, hard work, ass-in-chair 24/7 writing days...and now it's finally about to be real. 

How do I feel?
Like I've grown up a lot. Realized the patterns of my own making, learned how to break free of some of them. I grew so much through writing my essay in Dancing at the Shame Prom, and in co-editing it, and in the process of collaboration with Amy Ferris. Giving birth to that book full of amazing stories from such powerful women was huge and life changing.

Now, I feel like I am about to embark on a scary new adventure. A rollercoaster ride. And I am not a fan of roller coasters. 

And I feel like I want so much for every one of you to write your stories, even if it scares you. Especially if it scares you.  

I want to hear your stories. 
I want to share with you my story. 
Because I believe we can all help each other to heal on this journey home. 


***Fire Season will be released on April 14th, but you can pre-order at Barnes and Noble, Indiebound or any major bookseller, and here on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Fire-Season-Journey-Ruin-Redemption/dp/1631529749

Fire Season - My Journey from Ruin to Redemption

As many of you know, in November of 1994, our house burned down. After my husband Troy and I jumped out second story windows with nothing but our pajamas and our kid, our lives began a downward spiral of loss that would continue for four years, leading us into a deep depression and the brink of divorce. We lost three homes in 2 years, lost our cars, lost our friends, I lost my national business, we were bankrupted and we almost lost each other. But we survived. In 1999 we bought our house, things got better and were actually pretty great until 2010.

And then, in 2010, it seemed the cycle was beginning again. We were sued over a little dog named Stitch that we adopted. A three-year court battle followed. We had to get a restraining order against a violent neighbor with a criminal record for assault with a gun, who threatened my husband’s life. My husband’s boss, and great friend, Greg, dropped dead of a heart attack. Our dog Brandy died. Our septic system failed and flooded the yard, leading to a 10,000 repair job and an invasion of flies, not unlike the Amityville Horror (except they had better plumbing). We were busted flat broke from home repairs and court costs. And then, our daughter-in-law took our one-year-old grandson to Japan for a visit... and didn’t return. We thought we’d never see them again. We were overcome with grief.

During this time, I took an eight-week writing course with my friend Amy Friedman, where I wrote and shared, for the first time, the story of our fire. I was shaking so bad I couldn’t read the essay in the group, so Amy read it for me. After class, Amy and I went out for coffee and I confessed to her something I had been secretly fearing in my head. I told her, “My life is spinning wildly out of control, and I am terrified that I am in the beginning of a life pattern where I’m going to repeat another four years of hell.” And this is basically what she said. “You are still afraid of what happened to you, because you didn’t get the lesson in it. If you don’t write your way through this, you’re going to repeat the pattern. This fire story is not an essay. This is a book you need to write.” And only out of sheer terror and because I am slightly superstitious did I begin to write this book.

Four years later, Fire Season is about to be published with She Writes Press this spring (and you can pre-order it now for a discount on Amazon).

What I learned in writing my book was that I am stronger than I knew. That every time I let fear control my life, everything fell to shit. I saw, through my writing process, as I mapped out and wrote those years down, that it wasn’t until I chose love over fear that my life began to turn around. Through these past four years of intense challenges that began again in 2010, I learned to choose love over fear, and instead of losing everything, like we did in 1994, this time the outcome was very different.

After a year of praying and sending nothing but love to our daughter-in-law in Japan, many miracles lined up to bring our grandson home, and he now lives with his mother in L.A. After our three-year court battle, we still have our dog Stitch. The violent, criminal neighbors were evicted (the day after Christmas – best Christmas gift ever). We still have our home 15 years later and the new septic system works perfectly. This time, we didn’t lose everything. This time, yes, life knocked us on our asses – but we got back up faster. This time, when it seemed everything was falling apart, Troy and I turned toward each other in our grief and sadness (love), and not against each other (fear).

So, like Amy Friedman advised, I wrote my way through these four years, and now, after a summer from hell, I hope to God I’m coming out the other side. It’s not that I don’t have my challenges still. We’ve got a building inspector trying to wreak havoc with our house, and some trouble with termites…but I know better now than to let fear get the best of me.

Back in 1995, when I was spiraling down, I felt so alone, like there wasn’t a single person who got what I was going through. Books were what saved me. Books about hope, about endurance, about surviving. I wrote Fire Season because I don’t want anyone to feel alone like I did. I want to share my experience of finding hope on the other side of darkness.

I know that you, like me, have endured some difficult losses and challenges. I hope you’ll share your stories in the comments below…

The Shero's Journey: Women Risen from the Ashes

If you are familiar with author Joseph Campbell’s work around the “Hero’s Journey,” perhaps you’ve recognized the patterns in your own life. Campbell said that numerous myths from the ages share this fundamental pattern:

    “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.” – Joseph Campbell, from The Hero with a Thousand Faces

In our everyday lives, it looks more like this: You’re plodding along, following the societal norms. You set up a nice average life, make sure you have all the proper insurance policies and WHAM - life smacks you upside the head with either tragedy or slow quiet suffocation, and you are faced with a darkness that threatens to take you down. Campbell said the lives of Buddha, Moses, and Christ followed this basic pattern, as do many other stories from around the world. You can even find the mythic Hero’s Journey in Star Wars. (Remember when Luke faces his nemesis in the cave?) The Hero’s journey crosses countries, cultures and religions, but what’s missing from this narrative are women’s stories. Recently on Super Soul Sunday, Elizabeth Gilbert (author of Eat, Pray, Love) talked with Oprah about this very issue, saying how important it is that women rise up and tell their own stories.

Playwright, educator and speaker Lyena Strelkoff, always thinking ahead of the curve, had already been long at work on this issue. This year, Lyena had been gathering women’s stories she dubbed The Shero Summit, and has put them together in a free telesummit that anyone can join. Seven women tell their stories of transformation, finding medicine in the poison life has dealt them. I am proud and honored to be one of those seven women, and will be sharing the story from my new memoir Fire Season: My Journey from Ruin to Redemption.

The Shero Summit is a collection of real life stories, lived by women challenged by circumstance to lay down or rise. Funny, heartbreaking, inspiring, uplifting…. These shero stories shine powerful light into the journey of human transformation and, in so doing, light the way for you no matter what stage of the journey you’re on.

Because Lyena wanted this journey to be available to every woman (and man), it is a free telesummit.

I so hope you will join me, Lyena and the other brave women who have so courageously shared the good the bad and the ugly of their journeys. I know you will find pieces of yourself in each woman, and am sure you will walk away lifted and inspired.

7 women, risen from the ashes! Click here to register for your week of free video interviews: http://sherosummit.com/