Every Woman Has a Story(TM): Many Voices, Many Lessons, Many Lives

Every Woman Has a Story(TM): Many Voices, Many Lessons, Many Lives

by Daryl Ott Underhill
Every Woman Has a Story(TM): Many Voices, Many Lessons, Many Lives

Every Woman Has a Story(TM): Many Voices, Many Lessons, Many Lives

by Daryl Ott Underhill

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Overview

In the bestselling tradition of Girlfriends and Chicken Soup for the Soul, this original collection of heartfelt stories written by everyday women about their lives will strike a deep chord with readers everywhere.
When Daryl Ott Underhill sent out a general request for stories written by women about their lives, she had no idea the response would be so phenomenal. She heard from over 500 women of all ages and from all backgrounds. The authors wrote about a wide range of subjects, including friendship, love, turning 30, motherhood, losing parents, surviving the empty nest syndrome, and fulfilling dreams. Now readers can experience this remarkable collection of powerful and inspiring stories and share the heartbreak, joy, and wonder of what it means to be a woman in today's world.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780446554558
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Publication date: 12/14/2008
Sold by: Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format: eBook
File size: 399 KB

About the Author

Darryl Ott Underhill is president of her own marketing and consulting firm specializing in women's programs and product promotions. She lives in Phoenix, Arizona.

Read an Excerpt




Chapter One


The Circle of Decades


CAY RANDALL-MAY, PH.D.


* * *


Circles fascinate me. Our lives are full of them, from a baby's teething ring to the rims of granny's reading glasses. The circles that have changed me most were formed by people holding hands. The "circle of decades" at my friend Carol's croning ceremony will always be in my memory, like a safety ring tied to the side of a boat. In case of near drowning, I'll toss it out and use it to stay afloat until the storm subsides.

    It began as a gathering of women in the rosy amber twilight of a spring evening in Tucson. We were friends whose lives were about to intertwine in a strong braid of shared experience. Our leader asked us to sum up the memories of each decade of our lives. "What was it like to be in your twenties?" I was glad I wasn't the first to speak, because it took a moment for me to reconnect with that intense, fiery, burn-the-candle-at-three-ends woman/ child of the 1960s who I had been. Sensuous and fanatically serious, I was mesmerized with dreams of impossible achievement. Memories of graduate school in Berkeley crashed like breakers on my heart as I could almost hear the distant refrain of "We shall overcome ..." It was certainly interesting to have been in my twenties in that era, but I could also remember the skimp of the miniskirt and the size-five jeans that I slithered into like a snake shedding its skin in reverse. I felt relief when those of us no longer in our twenties were asked to take a step forward, tightening the circle.

    "Now, share what it was like to be in your thirties," our leader prompted. My eyes closed. Sounds of birth cries, the primal embrace of a totally trusting swaddled infant, the smell of baby powder and diapers overwhelmed me. I had discovered the most difficult and rewarding job of all, motherhood, at the age of thirty. My thirties were a time of changed priorities, deflated party balloons, struggle with budgets, and plain hard work. Would I willingly return to that time of snowsuits and runny noses, putting the Christmas tree in the playpen to keep it from the toddlers? I don't think so, but I didn't want to step forward, either.

    Because the next step was the forties, and those who had experienced this decade sighed with me. How could ten short years have held such highs and lows? I wished the twilight were a little deeper so no one could see the tears creeping down my cheeks, but other faces were also glistening. My story of ending a nineteen-year marriage and remarrying a man more attuned to my heart was not unique. Many others had found the forties to be a decade of major endings and beginnings. My hard-won career as a biologist, desperately precious to me at one time, had changed into a more spiritual and philosophical path. This decade, which began in gut-stabbing sorrow, ended in joy.

    Another inward step, this time not so tentative, brought us to the fifties. Eyes began to sparkle again and I heard the giggles of those relieved to have once more survived their forties. We who were privileged to stand in the fifties decade shared newly explored interests, old talents polished like jewels, and we were finding our true path and power. As each woman shared her joyful enthusiasm for inner growth, I began to wonder what the next step would bring. What would women in their sixties share? Could that decade possibly be as good as the fifties, or was it the downward side of the mountain, as I had always been led to expect. I held back as the circle squeezed closer.

    One by one, the members of the inner circle shared stories of personal freedom, new loves, the joys of grandchildren, travel and adventures, punctuated with smiles and glowing glances. All this enthusiasm caught my attention like a snow cone on a June afternoon. There was something worth knowing here. The women in this circle of decades were becoming more profoundly happy as they matured. A sliver of doubt wedged in my mind that maybe it was just something about the sixties decade that was so rewarding. Surely, the seventies would be different. My doubts didn't last long.

    Our leader proudly stepped forward, the only representative of the seventies, to become the heart of our circle. We raised her in our hearts like team members parading a triumphant star athlete. Her vigorous, wise-woman leadership spoke decibels louder than any words she could say. What I experienced that afternoon in the "circle of decades" helped me edit my life's script so that I look forward to the challenges and transitions ahead.


The ancient ceremony of croning was conducted when a woman stopped menstruating. It was an initiation into a "wise women's club," enabling the women to hold positions of power. Cay's story was based on a croning ceremony she attended. "It was a unique opportunity for us to review our lives. This moment of honest sharing gave me the priceless gift of a new vision, a hopeful pattern for aging." Cay is a professional intuitive consultant, she lectures on various topics related to creativity and intuitive development, and she teaches a course entitled "Intuitive Heart Discovery Process."


Letters to Friends


JANE STEBBINS


* * *


I mailed 323 letters to friends last year.

    And 437, the year before that.

    I received four replies, not including the increasingly illegible notes from my grandfather and the token letter from my congressman.

    I'd been putting this off, this spring cleaning, for about three years. And that day was the perfect day to do it: Outside, the clouds were pregnant with rain, inside, a fire cracked and popped in the woodstove.

    With each name in my address book that was to be erased would go a history, a few more memories of the good times shared and the chances of ever getting the friendship back. I didn't want to let go of any of them, regardless how tenuous the hold.

    I took a deep breath, flipped my pencil over, and cracked open the worn pages of the leather-bound book. A piece of paper fell to the floor, one of many with which the book was stuffed. It bore an address I wasn't sure at the time would reach permanent status in my book.

    The name was familiar, as was the face; they all were. This one, from a high school chum with whom I was reunited at an impromptu party when I went home for Grandma's funeral, was crumpled up and tossed aside.

    Melissa Anderson, with whom I'd shared numerous cups of coffee in college as we struggled through ornithology, was my next victim. A great writer while in college, her high-stress career on Wall Street long ago knocked me off her list of priorities.

    Deb Bowie would be third. The scrawny woman with stringy hair and a shrill Massachusetts accent had pulled me out of more problems than I could count. Where she was anymore, I didn't know. I knew that at thirty-three, she had become a grandmother, having adopted her grandson as her own.

    Gary and Rosemary. Cocaine, divorce, jail. Erased.

    Hedwig Diehl. My other Grandma. She'd died last April; it was all I could do to erase her name from the top "Name/Address/City" line where her name had sat, in a child's block letters, for twenty-four years.

    Juan Florence. Another high school buddy, ravaged by alcohol after the deaths of his parents.

    The Filmores. His name got erased—death requires that. He was the minister who married us, atop a 10,350-foot mountain. He was eighty-three years old when we asked if he'd conduct the ceremony; that he would have to take a screeching ski lift to the summit didn't faze this man. "I'll be that much closer to heaven," he said.

    Kristen Holland. The hardest one to erase, and one I shall never forget. I was engaged to her older brother for years before we finally called it quits. But I kept in touch with Kristen, even after she announced her homosexuality. She was disowned by her family, including the man I had once loved. I can still see her short white-blond hair whipping from side to side as she bounced all over the dance floor of our favorite bar. That woman never missed a moment of life.

    The rain began to fall outside and the wind picked up.

    The I's, J's, and K's were left unscathed, but L was where it all fell apart.

    Janet Loren. The name brought a smile to my face. We'd met on a Grateful Dead tour and traveled from California to Maine, Washington to Florida, dancing the dance that never ended to the music that never stopped. She's probably on a Phish tour, now that Jerry's gone, I thought. Sholyo Im Fi Zhami, Janet. Sholyo.

    Albert Lowe. We went back to the fifth grade, when he sat across from me in Mr. Ash's class. He was the first boy—and Chinese (my mother would have died)—I felt I really loved. Eleven-year-old unrequited puppy love. The last time I saw him, we were drinking froufrou drinks and betting on the ponies.

    Ann Long. She wouldn't remember me anymore, since she was struck by a car and suffered enough brain damage to keep her in a coma for months. She'd never be the same, but I'd kept her name in my book for all these years. Just in case. People come out of comas, I told myself.

    Among those who survived the carnage of my eraser was Caroline Winters, my first best friend, who moved to Ireland when I was ten, and she twelve. I wrote her today, one of thirty-seven letters written while the rain pounded down outside. One last chance, for both of us.

    I closed the book and tucked it away. It was a lot thinner for my efforts, a small pile of crumpled paper lay at my feet.

    The names fell away in eraser crumbs, but they will be replaced by others in time.

    But the memories, I hope, will linger on.


Jane is a newspaper editor and freelance magazine writer. She lives in Breckenridge, Colorado, with her husband, John, and seven-year-old daughter, Erin. When I asked her what prompted her story, she said, "I was writing letters and thinking how few people write back, and how sad it is that friendships fade away."


Webs


SUE ESPINOSA


* * *


I have several friends
we are all of an age
changing
pausing
rearranging
poised on a millennium edge
huddled together on a cosmic window ledge.


Among us—healers and crones
skeptic and dry bones
we live here and there
each to her own lair
divided by zones
held together by phones.
we fling out hope
like colored strands of rope
and catching the skeins
we eat jelly beans
while tying knots
and sharing thoughts.
It is thus that we weave
wondrous webs with leaves
tiny seeds and great deeds
with little dreads
and golden threads
with bits of magic
and some things tragic
and in the weaving
the giving and the receiving
we soothe our soul
connected and whole.


We are wives and mothers,
nurses, nuns, and daughters
mud-covered
star-studded
blood-rivered
from large to small
goddesses all.
But separate us
one from the other
we eat
we weep
and then we sleep
burying our strength so far under
it becomes as powerful as lightningless thunder.
We boom and trill
whine and shrill
casting about
consumed by doubt
churning
yearning
with wanton disregard
we discover the sacred
now scarred.
The power once given in trust
vanquishes and eludes us.
It smashes and destroys
denuding our joys
and lost in leaden slumber
our heavy bodies lumber
ugly, incomplete
our spirit deplete
we seek to find
some rent in time
a fairy, a saint
a new coat of paint
and then we recall
the web that relates us all.


And so we cast our dreams
in shimmering streams
undiluted
surefooted
woman-rooted
we reconnect
in every aspect.


Sue is an independent-event and marketing consultant, mother of four, grandmother of two. She feels she has had the good fortune to meet and become friends with several remarkable women. "They are a source of wisdom and nourishment for me, as I am for them." Most of her friends are not in the same geographical area, and they rely on the telephone, writing, and occasional visits to nourish the friendship. Her poem was inspired by speaking with friends who were wrestling with the same issues, and realizing that she wasn't alone.

Table of Contents

Introductionxv
Women and Friendship
The Circle of Decades3
Letters to Friends7
Webs11
Coming Home15
The Day After Parents' Night19
Year by Year
I'm Thirty--And That's Okay25
Little Fairies of Youth29
Deja Vu33
The Great Omelet Caper37
What Scares Me Most39
Men And Love
Making It43
There's Always Sunshine47
Dear You49
Fall into Spring51
Falling in Love--Again53
A Shining Light56
Lord Help the Sister60
Motherhood
The Sacred Portal67
Motherhoodless70
Unconditional Love74
Are You His Grandma or His Mom?78
Beyond the Looking Glass82
Stand Up, Mothers!86
Hard Lessons89
From One Generation To Another
The Meatloaf Mirror95
And Mommy Wouldn't Help98
Simple Truths101
Revelations105
Pondering109
The Talisman113
Tapestry of Self117
A Summer Walk121
Life's Lessons
The Visit127
Dark Side of Genius131
Focus on Me136
The Road Home140
A New Lease on Life146
Clouded by an Obsession149
A Time for Healing
A Fine Line155
Number Three158
Laughing Through the Tears162
Non Compos Mentis166
Fade to Gray170
The Emptying Nest
A Mother's Farewell175
Go West, Young Man179
Happiness Is When the Kids Are Grown183
Reflections on Becoming the Mother of a Wife186
My Second Chance for Happiness190
Forever Young194
Follow Your Dream
Backseat Syndrome201
On the Inside205
He Was Patient208
There Are No Shadows in the Dark212
Leap and the Net Will Appear216
It's Never Too Late, Is It?220
Taking Life Less Seriously224
Remembering With Love
A Birthday Wish231
Fragrance of Love233
Orange Blossoms in the Misty Morning237
My Mother--Myself240
The Faint Fluttering of Wings243
Independent Woman
Fighting Discrimination with Dignity249
Looking Back ... But Moving On253
Launched257
The Businesswoman261
The Woman on Flight Number 862265
The Power of Departure270
Simple Pleasures
Orange Happiness277
The Front Porch: Why Don't We Use It Anymore?280
Sun and Water284
Yellow Rain Hat288
Summer Magic291
The Whole Story293
Pauses296
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