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I have spent most of this past week with my laptop busy on manuscripts at our local laundromat cafe. Not a very exciting week – but hopefully a productive one. (Not that any of my weeks are exciting!) I am running out of daylight in more ways than one as I work to get into the waiting cue as many manuscripts as I can for my daughter to edit during the week after Christmas she will be taking off from her demanding job to help get these at least published in ebook format.
“The Demise of Mildred” has very probably expired into oblivion as thinking and work moves forward on my severely abusive Borderline Personality Disorder mother’s writings. At present I have decided that because my mother had a psychotic break that in effect gave her an ‘upper’ mind which created and lived in an upper world, and a second ‘lower’ world, that I need to publish first her entire collection of writings just the way she wrote them.
This collection of her writings I am working with was written by her ‘upper’ mind about her ‘upper’ ‘all good’ world. The world of hell she created and kept me in as her ‘lower’ world replacement for herself in this hell would be impossible to describe the way I wanted to. If I insert the truth about Mildred within her own story – her ‘upper’ story will become as incoherent to readers as it really SHOULD be – given the severity of her mental illness.
So I am now working through volume 5 of what I am at least temporarily calling the series, “Mildred’s Alaskan Saga in Her Own Words” – which will read as a soap opera! There will be 6 or 7 books for this series. And when I am done giving Mildred her own books – I can go to work on the truth of what she kept invisible freely under my own series which I may title, “Unmasking Mildred.”
So, I came to peace recently with the fact that because Mildred did have two minds, there needs to be two series about her two minds.
I am going to be very curious to see if readers can find Mildred’s mental illness in her own story of her life. I can, of course, but then I lived inside her madness.
So, I am just checking in here — I want to have all 6 or 7 manuscripts done by next Wednesday. I will then need to scan and prepare photographs to send to my son to prepare for publication. Now for a little down time – and back at this book business again tomorrow! I am missing the old days when writing blog posts was all I needed to do when the writing bug bit me. Things have gotten a whole lot more complicated than that — at least for the time being. Oh, well!
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Stop the Storm 
Hi alchemynow,
It’s midnight-ish over here now and I have given up on an early night’s rest! I’ve been thinking of you
A lot – wondering if you must be going through those stages all writers go through. Language is kind of
Not helpful in describing it. Tired.. Overwhelmed sometimes, exited, wishing it was all over! Lots of possibilities!
You are extraordinarily brave and hard working. I’m glad you’re children share your talents in writing and
Creativity. This is a real family project.
I remember (when finishing my masters) wanting to glue myself to my computer chair and have someone bring me meals I could eat through
A straw! After it was over I slept and slept!
Thinking of you all the time!
Hi dear Gingercat – so wonderful to hear from you!!! I am nearing the end of my mother’s writings as I am now in volume #7 — and I am not at all sure how I feel. Her letters peter out toward the end of this story as she left it behind in her words. I know there were many more boxes of her papers that were left in lockers in Alaska – those I did not have any opportunity of ‘rescuing’ as I did these that were left in her Arizona locker (the ones I am working with).
I mostly comfort myself in this project with an acceptance that everything I needed to do my job well and rightly lies within exactly the material I have.
I am imagining that tomorrow I will have this manuscript done – her letters. I know I will need to write a ‘conclusion’ — so what I am beginning to feel now is a part of that.
“Don’t speak ill of the dead.” “Live and let live.” All seems strange to me right now — but even though I am this close — I am not THERE yet – there at the end of her last written word as it survived – although I am very close.
After her last letter, there is one written to her by my father – and then, the last letter I believe, was written to Mildred by her mother.
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So, I will know more as I move ahead. The end is coming of this part of this project.
What will I do next – for myself — for the TRUTH?
It means a great deal to me to hear from you tonight, Gingercat. While this part of the work has been a lot of WORK, certainly — once this is done something else will happen for me
because it CAN! Not knowing what that will be – well, I cannot let it trouble me.
I am sending warm love and thoughts back to you, dear!!!! always, Linda – alchemynow
Well Linda
This is an incredible thing you are doing. It is such a personal one and
Words are not adequate to describe it (you don’t do too badly I must say :))
– and the subject matter beats anything
Most people will ever write in their life time.
Whatever comes forward will take you forward somehow – I think it always has
And will. There are many people who seem to be facing something – and I have
Hopes for our society and its awareness of many things. So upward and onward,
Stay still for a time then upward and onward!
You are doing vital work.
Xxx
So enjoy hearing from you from across the globe!! I have been up since 1:30 am – ended up writing a commentary for volume 3 of this series of my mother’s letters
last paragraph:
“Evidently nobody EVER saw what Mildred did to me, even when I went to school and out in public with my body covered in all colors of bruises. Nobody ever stopped to look me in my sad blue eyes to ask me, “Linda! Are you OK?” In 18 long years nobody ever stopped my mother or interfered to help me in any way. And lest readers be falsely lulled into believing that what Mildred did to me was exceptionally strange and perhaps even ‘evil’, let me state my case: ANY time an infant or a child is assaulted by an adult in ANY way (most certainly including verbal abuse), and this abuse is not immediately noticed and STOPPED, the same kind of magic that Mildred used is in play. When it comes to abuse of infants and children there is no such beast as an innocent bystander.”
Of course a person has to read the book to know what this ‘magic’ Mildred used was all about!! 🙂
Your encouragement carries me far in a day of this work, dear friend!! Thank you for being YOU and for sharing your smiles with me! with love! me