Never Come Lightly To The Blank Page
Without Prejudice
Never come lightly to the blank page, so says Steven King. So as he's the top writer in the world bar none I take his advice. Steven has a fabulous book called "On Writing" and its my bible. Or it will be as soon as Dymocks get off their butts and get it in for me.
I first read it when I was taking care of my Sister and brother in laws sumptuous home at Ormeau Hills near the Gold Coast, Queensland. I was trying to write fiction while they were gone and every day sat at at the computer, outside, so I could see the rolling hills and the tiniest scrap of the Pacific Ocean as I wrote.
And I did it for 3 weeks straight or so, remembering Agatha Christies habit of taking herself off to a hotel for 3 weeks and writing and writing. It's a solitary thing writing and not for the faint hearted. You have to do as Steven says and never come lightly to the blank page as it will come across in your writing.
I am no good at fiction, or not yet anyway and I wrote a story and it was shit. Or I thought it was and after I sent it to a publisher, was devastated when it came back fail. Mindst you Steven King had filled a six inch nail above his desk of rejection slips.
His is a certain genre which is horror and I hate horror. But when I read Carrie, a story he loathed but his wife liked I was amazed.
I loved Carrie, the loner with the nutty Mother, hmmm reminds me of me just a tad. And how she went through change and then back again. So even I though I had wanted to write and write and write my stuff was shit and I knew it. I just put it all to one side on a pink plastic USB and left it alone for a long time, ,,,,,,writing.
Then last year I was lucky enough to get a fresh start. I was ratty and tired and pissed off, it was a bad year 2011, lots of learning curves. I had let Yvette go off to QLD and I minded the boys for her and she had a good break and came back refreshed. So my brother George rang me and said I was coming to QLD and I refused, flatly refused. Being the martyr I was.
George ignored me and dragged me on to a plane me crying all the way. The staff and George and Tracey were so kind to me and I couldn't explain what was wrong. I have never liked flying and that day for some reason I felt terrified. Usually I can overcome my fears but that day I was just a mess.
I had said to George I will take a break if you all leave me alone and let me lie in the sun in your backyard and read good books and enjoy the sun. Being my Family of course that was not good enough. I had to be Janette and I wasn't feeling like Janette, Janette was gone to some place. She was as ever earnest and dutiful and non demanding with her kids.
So David, my younger brother a captain of Industry as George also is had been to Camp Eden the year before and wanted me to go. In fact just booked it and I was livid. I didn't want him spending his hard earned money on me. It seemed an obscene amount. $3,000 a week, normally and a lot of people are there for 3 weeks. But Dave being the sharp business man he is got me a deal for $1,100 and sharing with a girl instead of a single room.
I was at first furious, who wants to go spend time with a bunch of rich strangers and be forced into that experience when I am such a loner. But I thought, Dave and George want me to be better and I thought I will do this out of respect for them and their efforts. Dave fed me little expressos all day the day he was taking me down to Currumbin from Redcliffe. Dave is a wealthy and successful business man and lives in a 3 story Palace on the waterfront at Redcliffe.
Every day he looks at the sea opposite and remembers as a child looking up at houses like his and thinking, ..... one day.
We were beyond poor when we were kids and for him and Jackie and George to achieve the fabulous houses and cars and the lifestyle they have is beyond belief. We have all done well in our lives, spurred on by great parents, even though my Mum was mentally ill. We didn't know that as kids, of course. She was just Mum, and we called her the Tartar, as she was fierce about education and manners and being our best, so was Dad.
She went completely mad in the end our elegant Mother and killed herself at 53.
So Dave drives me in his girlfriends Merc to Camp Eden and as he drove off with a cheery wave, he said and I quote,
" By the way there is no TV and no Coffee" and laughed.
I stood there willing him to come back, no coffee was the worst, no TV was bad as I am half the time an insomniac. And as I am so anal and wanted to do this experience properly had brought no meds with me for headaches or anything, not even a sleeper to get me to sleep. Insomnia runs in our Family as does varying degrees of depression, which is hereditary. Jackie my oldest Sis happily married to a great man for 44 years and who has no external problems in life was diagnosed with it six months after I was at 46.
I couldn't believe it at the time. People would understand why I had it but not Jackie, I said to her then
"Poor bitch"
But we take our little tablet every day that was not availbale when my Mum was so ill 40 years ago. Jackie and I and all the family have seen what out of control madness is and we feared even getting the first step. Jackie and I decided we were doing our families no favours by not taking our little tablet. We call them our anti crazy pills.
Jackie can sleep upright in a chair or a car, I so envy her this as I have to literally knock myself out to get to sleep. I hate it, it's a pain. But had Aunts and Mum the same so just accept it and do a lot of work at night and nap the next afternoon, just as Steven King does I read.
Anyway the Camp Eden experience I tried to follow to the letter. I wanted to get the best out of it and it was life changing and truly amazing,
But at first came the headache of withdrawl, coming within 3 hours of no coffee. I wanted to throttle dave at that stge, feeding me all those little expressos on his new toy, his $2,500 coffee machine. Brothers do things like this to their Sisters, bastardos. And the first night I didn't sleep a wink, not a wink and the girl I was sharing with went to sleep at 8.30. Healthy thing and there was me tossing, turning, punching the 9000 thread count pillow and sobbing.
All I could think of was I have to go home. I am going to ring Dave, (No mobile reception in the Currumbin valley where we were.) and I was going to get him to come and pick me up. I was not staying with these strangers that slept and were all normal and I was not. The roomie went off to QiJong at 5.30 am all healthy and rosy while I glowered in the bed and wanted to throw a rock at her head as she departed.
I slept off a bit of the headache and a lovely lady, Sue found some Aspro Clear for me and suddenly by the lunch time on my first full day I felt better. The surrounding were gorgeous, acres of rain forest, lush and green, snakes tiny and green slithered up branches and there was a pet owl, so wise, so dignified and calm. I worked out for once and climbed back up the hill to the dining room for my first meal.
I waa heaving, breathless by the time I was at the top and having given up smoking 6 months before somehow had convince my self I was fit. Not.
And I had convinced myself at 84 kilos I was not fat for my 5' 3" (in heels ) frame. Where do these delusion come from ???? Denial thats where. So I met all the strangers, liked some, not so much others and realised after a while my little problems didn't mean a hill of beans to these people. They were major messed up. Really messed up with huge problems, every single one.
I was a lightweight as far as they were concerned, I had kids, grandkids, family a lovely stress free life, wealthy sibs that had sent me there. They had to take out loans and pull money out of Super to be there. I was just a guest as far as they were concerned
I was shocked at their attitude but then I thought, I'm not facing Cancer fr the 2nd time as the lovely latin Man was. Nor was I lesbian, bi 70 year old woman who was sad as she had never had kids and there was a time in her life when she could have. She showed me her bank account, $770,000. And she had just moved in with her female partner and didn't think it was going to work out. Then where was she going to go ????
There were 2 men whose wives had sent them as they were work aholics and had no time for Family. Those guys on the edge of divorces. One lady a lovely lady who had borrowed to go there and was on a terrible wage as a Dental Nurse and had literally no money, no house of her own, no kids, she was 55.
She carried around her filtered water in a wine glass which said a lot.
The most shocking to me was a young suburban Mum of 3 young boys. She wore fiercly serious gym gear showing off every line of her lean fit body. She didn't just stand, she vibrated with health and vigour and did all the workouts religously.
I was shocked to the core when she told me she had tried to commit suicide two nights before and booked herself into Eden the next day. Turned out she was addicted to speed, cocaine, MJ, anything and everything. I kept thinking of her boys and judged her accordingly, disgusted. How could a mother let herself get that bad ?
I did the program and the counselling session with life coaches who were laid back and insughtful. I faced my demons, heights. Terrified of heights and conquered them, not without a struggle. I was the only one at the gym exercise that suspended us from the roof, who couldn't let go of one rope. Even the 70 year old with the bung knee did better than me.
But you are not there to be judged. And I relaxed. No phones, no emails, no outside world, just you and narure. being me of course, major rebel, I ended up having the experience outside the experience. Palled up with a 28 year old man that was wealthy and had been treated to a violent home invasion just weeks before.
His Mum paid for him to go to Camp Eden to get his bottle back. He was whacky, defensive and bounced back and forth off walls as he tried to fight his attackers who were no longer there. We at least were both insomniacs and he invited me back to his villa for a sneaky drag on a cigarette, ah the bliss! Just a puff of tobacco and I was happy.
He was a mjor rebel and pain to the others there with his attention seeking ways but I liked him he was at least funny and amusing. The rest were so fake it was awful. But I persevered and did the exercises, did the Qijong every morning at 5.30 as the sun was coming up over the trees. And felt the beauty of the place and the serenity.
And I went back to Redcliffe a few kilos lighter and a change in the way I viewed things. Camp Eden asks you to write 3 goals and I wrote them dutifully and didn't believe I could even reach one in 12 months. They were,
1. Write a book.
2. Be lean brown and healthy weight.
3. Have a healthy relationship with a man. Not necessarily to live with but be loyal to each other and spend fun times together.
When I went to back to Dave's house he asked me to write a newsletter for him to inspire his "Troops", (The Franchisees that work for him), he wanted to incorporate a saying that his much loved friend Roy, had always said. Roy was Dave's best friend when young and had died tragically early at 50.
So I did it in about half an hour and Dave said,
"You're a freaking genius, go home and write, just write"
"Write what" I saked, as the fiction nightmare was still fresh in my brain.
"Write stories about your ex husband, "
who was a character, all my family called him Crazy B**.
I went home, and nothing changed for a bout a month. Real life got in the way, a sudden death of a girl aged 39 with 3 kids, the old Gernman Sheperd died at the same time and by the time I came out of that fog, it was a month later and I had done nothing about my goals.
Dave contacted me and in fear of his wrath I started to write, stories. And I thought if I can write one story, just one, then I can write more and maybe turn it into a book.
Then the stories became more serious and I realised there was a whole lot of shit I had to get out of the way to get back to Happy again. Part of my fear of going back to writing was that I knew I would have to reconcile my past. I would have to deal with as to why I subjected myself and my girls to a violent husband and Father.
And I would have to write out my grief and frustration, rage, hurt, guilt, memories about losing a child. Lauren aged 12, the baby. I had avoided it like the plague, thinking it would take too much out of me and the other girls needed me.
So I wrote out the real stories, recalling the details and facts with no bother. It was all there and all I had to do was tap into it.
So I wrote family stories and all my rage, love, frustration and hope for a good future went out there on to the World Wide Web and suddenly I had people reading them. I knew my family would read them and my girls, although Yvette refuses to. And after a while a small trickle turned into a stream and then a river, Lots of people. All over the world. The Us, Britain, Europe, South America, Russia So that gave me confidence.
I wrote solidly for about a month.
I was ecstatic to get even one hundred readers. And it was hard. I cried, I raged, I would stop for a while and start again. Dave and George sat down one morning and read my stories and cried. I wrote of Jamie my beautiful laughing brother who was killed when I was just 5. I wrote of our childhoods and beautiful memories and hard times and poor times and fun as well. I pored my heart and soul into it and I thought one day as I stood up,
"I feel lighter"
I felt lighter than I had in years. Physically and emotionally.
I asked the girls to all be good friends this Christams, no fights and we had a wonderful loving Family Christmas. I was more patient with Yvette's boys and saw the beauty in them and how lucky I was to see them every day.My brother George saying to me I was so rich. And when I argued with him, he said'
Janette, you have 15 beautiful grand kids. You see them every day and my only grandson lives in the UK. And George loves kids. Loves them with a passion, all kids. So I shut up. And decided he was right and I was wrong.
He's still my Brother though as is Dave and they know I will give them what for if they misbehave. Ha ha .
So I was lighter and I knew it. Summer came and still I wrote, foot propped on a water cooler, fan near my face.2@ of my girls began to get counselling and the youngest faced down her Father at long last. The other 2 girls had let him go years before as he had them.
The way they looked at it was he wasn't interested in them , so why bother trying to reconcile with him and just totally ignored him. He is like that and he always will be. He's a man that can hold a grudge for life and will. He has said lately he doesn't want this girls to know where he is buried and they yawn.
He used to want to leave all his money ???? to his Dog, but the dog died. Whack Job.
The weight just fell off and when I went to see the family dcotor he hugged me. I was 64 kilos and now 59. The incredible shrinking woman. He told me what had happened.
1. Camp Eden, ""Brain washing, but a GOOD form of brain washing"
2. My writing out of the past was therapy, the best kind of therapy"
I have now realised I have gone back to the girl I was before I met him. The happy healthy athletic girl I always was. Full of hopes and dreams for a great future. Who was prepared to do the work to get their again. Rumours flew about my weight loss. I was taking Jai's Ritalin, (try getting them off him ). I was stealing food from people's houses as I had none at home, the rumours went nuts.
I had to do the work. When I first came home I ground nuts and walked every day, nothing came off. But once I started writing it all came off. And it was all to do with the food. My younger sister has always been enormously overweight, the typical fat child. She has had gastric banding and looks fabulous. She can barely eat much so I knew it had to be about food.
I knew no one comes out of a concentration camp looking anything but skeletal and those poor souls were not exercising. So I did it in reverse to all the "fat" shows, I stopped eating except for tiny amounts. I ate fruit till lunchtime, which flies in the face of breakfast being the most important meal of the day.
But my hours are upside down as it is with being insomniac sometimes. So I found if I was busy and occupied I could start to feel hungry about 2 pm, so something I love but mainly protein. Tomatoes, fresh vegies, such as cucumber on dry bikkies, enjoy every mouthful and then stop.
More fruit as snacks, nornmal dinner, small on a small plate, nothing after that. It was easy and worked for me and still does. It comes easy now and is my daily routine. I still love my coffee and am not giving that up. And occasionally I have a bit of tobacco in a pipe.
So I have given up cigarettes, excess food, junk food and alcohol in the last 12 months. I've given up bad boys (my old favourite ), I've given up being a victim and have raised my standards to become the person I am now.
Leaner, stronger, braver. I turn 60 this year and I intend to be the best Mother, Grandmother, great grandmother (baby due in 4 weeks, ) Friend, lover, sister, Aunt, Cousin. And not tbe sacred to reach out and help others wuth my time, my intelligence and my compassion. I feel twent years younger than I am. Wiser, looser, happier, richer in all things,
Love Janette
Never come lightly to the blank page, so says Steven King. So as he's the top writer in the world bar none I take his advice. Steven has a fabulous book called "On Writing" and its my bible. Or it will be as soon as Dymocks get off their butts and get it in for me.
I first read it when I was taking care of my Sister and brother in laws sumptuous home at Ormeau Hills near the Gold Coast, Queensland. I was trying to write fiction while they were gone and every day sat at at the computer, outside, so I could see the rolling hills and the tiniest scrap of the Pacific Ocean as I wrote.
And I did it for 3 weeks straight or so, remembering Agatha Christies habit of taking herself off to a hotel for 3 weeks and writing and writing. It's a solitary thing writing and not for the faint hearted. You have to do as Steven says and never come lightly to the blank page as it will come across in your writing.
I am no good at fiction, or not yet anyway and I wrote a story and it was shit. Or I thought it was and after I sent it to a publisher, was devastated when it came back fail. Mindst you Steven King had filled a six inch nail above his desk of rejection slips.
His is a certain genre which is horror and I hate horror. But when I read Carrie, a story he loathed but his wife liked I was amazed.
I loved Carrie, the loner with the nutty Mother, hmmm reminds me of me just a tad. And how she went through change and then back again. So even I though I had wanted to write and write and write my stuff was shit and I knew it. I just put it all to one side on a pink plastic USB and left it alone for a long time, ,,,,,,writing.
Then last year I was lucky enough to get a fresh start. I was ratty and tired and pissed off, it was a bad year 2011, lots of learning curves. I had let Yvette go off to QLD and I minded the boys for her and she had a good break and came back refreshed. So my brother George rang me and said I was coming to QLD and I refused, flatly refused. Being the martyr I was.
George ignored me and dragged me on to a plane me crying all the way. The staff and George and Tracey were so kind to me and I couldn't explain what was wrong. I have never liked flying and that day for some reason I felt terrified. Usually I can overcome my fears but that day I was just a mess.
I had said to George I will take a break if you all leave me alone and let me lie in the sun in your backyard and read good books and enjoy the sun. Being my Family of course that was not good enough. I had to be Janette and I wasn't feeling like Janette, Janette was gone to some place. She was as ever earnest and dutiful and non demanding with her kids.
So David, my younger brother a captain of Industry as George also is had been to Camp Eden the year before and wanted me to go. In fact just booked it and I was livid. I didn't want him spending his hard earned money on me. It seemed an obscene amount. $3,000 a week, normally and a lot of people are there for 3 weeks. But Dave being the sharp business man he is got me a deal for $1,100 and sharing with a girl instead of a single room.
I was at first furious, who wants to go spend time with a bunch of rich strangers and be forced into that experience when I am such a loner. But I thought, Dave and George want me to be better and I thought I will do this out of respect for them and their efforts. Dave fed me little expressos all day the day he was taking me down to Currumbin from Redcliffe. Dave is a wealthy and successful business man and lives in a 3 story Palace on the waterfront at Redcliffe.
Every day he looks at the sea opposite and remembers as a child looking up at houses like his and thinking, ..... one day.
We were beyond poor when we were kids and for him and Jackie and George to achieve the fabulous houses and cars and the lifestyle they have is beyond belief. We have all done well in our lives, spurred on by great parents, even though my Mum was mentally ill. We didn't know that as kids, of course. She was just Mum, and we called her the Tartar, as she was fierce about education and manners and being our best, so was Dad.
She went completely mad in the end our elegant Mother and killed herself at 53.
So Dave drives me in his girlfriends Merc to Camp Eden and as he drove off with a cheery wave, he said and I quote,
" By the way there is no TV and no Coffee" and laughed.
I stood there willing him to come back, no coffee was the worst, no TV was bad as I am half the time an insomniac. And as I am so anal and wanted to do this experience properly had brought no meds with me for headaches or anything, not even a sleeper to get me to sleep. Insomnia runs in our Family as does varying degrees of depression, which is hereditary. Jackie my oldest Sis happily married to a great man for 44 years and who has no external problems in life was diagnosed with it six months after I was at 46.
I couldn't believe it at the time. People would understand why I had it but not Jackie, I said to her then
"Poor bitch"
But we take our little tablet every day that was not availbale when my Mum was so ill 40 years ago. Jackie and I and all the family have seen what out of control madness is and we feared even getting the first step. Jackie and I decided we were doing our families no favours by not taking our little tablet. We call them our anti crazy pills.
Jackie can sleep upright in a chair or a car, I so envy her this as I have to literally knock myself out to get to sleep. I hate it, it's a pain. But had Aunts and Mum the same so just accept it and do a lot of work at night and nap the next afternoon, just as Steven King does I read.
Anyway the Camp Eden experience I tried to follow to the letter. I wanted to get the best out of it and it was life changing and truly amazing,
But at first came the headache of withdrawl, coming within 3 hours of no coffee. I wanted to throttle dave at that stge, feeding me all those little expressos on his new toy, his $2,500 coffee machine. Brothers do things like this to their Sisters, bastardos. And the first night I didn't sleep a wink, not a wink and the girl I was sharing with went to sleep at 8.30. Healthy thing and there was me tossing, turning, punching the 9000 thread count pillow and sobbing.
All I could think of was I have to go home. I am going to ring Dave, (No mobile reception in the Currumbin valley where we were.) and I was going to get him to come and pick me up. I was not staying with these strangers that slept and were all normal and I was not. The roomie went off to QiJong at 5.30 am all healthy and rosy while I glowered in the bed and wanted to throw a rock at her head as she departed.
I slept off a bit of the headache and a lovely lady, Sue found some Aspro Clear for me and suddenly by the lunch time on my first full day I felt better. The surrounding were gorgeous, acres of rain forest, lush and green, snakes tiny and green slithered up branches and there was a pet owl, so wise, so dignified and calm. I worked out for once and climbed back up the hill to the dining room for my first meal.
I waa heaving, breathless by the time I was at the top and having given up smoking 6 months before somehow had convince my self I was fit. Not.
And I had convinced myself at 84 kilos I was not fat for my 5' 3" (in heels ) frame. Where do these delusion come from ???? Denial thats where. So I met all the strangers, liked some, not so much others and realised after a while my little problems didn't mean a hill of beans to these people. They were major messed up. Really messed up with huge problems, every single one.
I was a lightweight as far as they were concerned, I had kids, grandkids, family a lovely stress free life, wealthy sibs that had sent me there. They had to take out loans and pull money out of Super to be there. I was just a guest as far as they were concerned
I was shocked at their attitude but then I thought, I'm not facing Cancer fr the 2nd time as the lovely latin Man was. Nor was I lesbian, bi 70 year old woman who was sad as she had never had kids and there was a time in her life when she could have. She showed me her bank account, $770,000. And she had just moved in with her female partner and didn't think it was going to work out. Then where was she going to go ????
There were 2 men whose wives had sent them as they were work aholics and had no time for Family. Those guys on the edge of divorces. One lady a lovely lady who had borrowed to go there and was on a terrible wage as a Dental Nurse and had literally no money, no house of her own, no kids, she was 55.
She carried around her filtered water in a wine glass which said a lot.
The most shocking to me was a young suburban Mum of 3 young boys. She wore fiercly serious gym gear showing off every line of her lean fit body. She didn't just stand, she vibrated with health and vigour and did all the workouts religously.
I was shocked to the core when she told me she had tried to commit suicide two nights before and booked herself into Eden the next day. Turned out she was addicted to speed, cocaine, MJ, anything and everything. I kept thinking of her boys and judged her accordingly, disgusted. How could a mother let herself get that bad ?
I did the program and the counselling session with life coaches who were laid back and insughtful. I faced my demons, heights. Terrified of heights and conquered them, not without a struggle. I was the only one at the gym exercise that suspended us from the roof, who couldn't let go of one rope. Even the 70 year old with the bung knee did better than me.
But you are not there to be judged. And I relaxed. No phones, no emails, no outside world, just you and narure. being me of course, major rebel, I ended up having the experience outside the experience. Palled up with a 28 year old man that was wealthy and had been treated to a violent home invasion just weeks before.
His Mum paid for him to go to Camp Eden to get his bottle back. He was whacky, defensive and bounced back and forth off walls as he tried to fight his attackers who were no longer there. We at least were both insomniacs and he invited me back to his villa for a sneaky drag on a cigarette, ah the bliss! Just a puff of tobacco and I was happy.
He was a mjor rebel and pain to the others there with his attention seeking ways but I liked him he was at least funny and amusing. The rest were so fake it was awful. But I persevered and did the exercises, did the Qijong every morning at 5.30 as the sun was coming up over the trees. And felt the beauty of the place and the serenity.
And I went back to Redcliffe a few kilos lighter and a change in the way I viewed things. Camp Eden asks you to write 3 goals and I wrote them dutifully and didn't believe I could even reach one in 12 months. They were,
1. Write a book.
2. Be lean brown and healthy weight.
3. Have a healthy relationship with a man. Not necessarily to live with but be loyal to each other and spend fun times together.
When I went to back to Dave's house he asked me to write a newsletter for him to inspire his "Troops", (The Franchisees that work for him), he wanted to incorporate a saying that his much loved friend Roy, had always said. Roy was Dave's best friend when young and had died tragically early at 50.
So I did it in about half an hour and Dave said,
"You're a freaking genius, go home and write, just write"
"Write what" I saked, as the fiction nightmare was still fresh in my brain.
"Write stories about your ex husband, "
who was a character, all my family called him Crazy B**.
I went home, and nothing changed for a bout a month. Real life got in the way, a sudden death of a girl aged 39 with 3 kids, the old Gernman Sheperd died at the same time and by the time I came out of that fog, it was a month later and I had done nothing about my goals.
Dave contacted me and in fear of his wrath I started to write, stories. And I thought if I can write one story, just one, then I can write more and maybe turn it into a book.
Then the stories became more serious and I realised there was a whole lot of shit I had to get out of the way to get back to Happy again. Part of my fear of going back to writing was that I knew I would have to reconcile my past. I would have to deal with as to why I subjected myself and my girls to a violent husband and Father.
And I would have to write out my grief and frustration, rage, hurt, guilt, memories about losing a child. Lauren aged 12, the baby. I had avoided it like the plague, thinking it would take too much out of me and the other girls needed me.
So I wrote out the real stories, recalling the details and facts with no bother. It was all there and all I had to do was tap into it.
So I wrote family stories and all my rage, love, frustration and hope for a good future went out there on to the World Wide Web and suddenly I had people reading them. I knew my family would read them and my girls, although Yvette refuses to. And after a while a small trickle turned into a stream and then a river, Lots of people. All over the world. The Us, Britain, Europe, South America, Russia So that gave me confidence.
I wrote solidly for about a month.
I was ecstatic to get even one hundred readers. And it was hard. I cried, I raged, I would stop for a while and start again. Dave and George sat down one morning and read my stories and cried. I wrote of Jamie my beautiful laughing brother who was killed when I was just 5. I wrote of our childhoods and beautiful memories and hard times and poor times and fun as well. I pored my heart and soul into it and I thought one day as I stood up,
"I feel lighter"
I felt lighter than I had in years. Physically and emotionally.
I asked the girls to all be good friends this Christams, no fights and we had a wonderful loving Family Christmas. I was more patient with Yvette's boys and saw the beauty in them and how lucky I was to see them every day.My brother George saying to me I was so rich. And when I argued with him, he said'
Janette, you have 15 beautiful grand kids. You see them every day and my only grandson lives in the UK. And George loves kids. Loves them with a passion, all kids. So I shut up. And decided he was right and I was wrong.
He's still my Brother though as is Dave and they know I will give them what for if they misbehave. Ha ha .
So I was lighter and I knew it. Summer came and still I wrote, foot propped on a water cooler, fan near my face.2@ of my girls began to get counselling and the youngest faced down her Father at long last. The other 2 girls had let him go years before as he had them.
The way they looked at it was he wasn't interested in them , so why bother trying to reconcile with him and just totally ignored him. He is like that and he always will be. He's a man that can hold a grudge for life and will. He has said lately he doesn't want this girls to know where he is buried and they yawn.
He used to want to leave all his money ???? to his Dog, but the dog died. Whack Job.
The weight just fell off and when I went to see the family dcotor he hugged me. I was 64 kilos and now 59. The incredible shrinking woman. He told me what had happened.
1. Camp Eden, ""Brain washing, but a GOOD form of brain washing"
2. My writing out of the past was therapy, the best kind of therapy"
I have now realised I have gone back to the girl I was before I met him. The happy healthy athletic girl I always was. Full of hopes and dreams for a great future. Who was prepared to do the work to get their again. Rumours flew about my weight loss. I was taking Jai's Ritalin, (try getting them off him ). I was stealing food from people's houses as I had none at home, the rumours went nuts.
I had to do the work. When I first came home I ground nuts and walked every day, nothing came off. But once I started writing it all came off. And it was all to do with the food. My younger sister has always been enormously overweight, the typical fat child. She has had gastric banding and looks fabulous. She can barely eat much so I knew it had to be about food.
I knew no one comes out of a concentration camp looking anything but skeletal and those poor souls were not exercising. So I did it in reverse to all the "fat" shows, I stopped eating except for tiny amounts. I ate fruit till lunchtime, which flies in the face of breakfast being the most important meal of the day.
But my hours are upside down as it is with being insomniac sometimes. So I found if I was busy and occupied I could start to feel hungry about 2 pm, so something I love but mainly protein. Tomatoes, fresh vegies, such as cucumber on dry bikkies, enjoy every mouthful and then stop.
More fruit as snacks, nornmal dinner, small on a small plate, nothing after that. It was easy and worked for me and still does. It comes easy now and is my daily routine. I still love my coffee and am not giving that up. And occasionally I have a bit of tobacco in a pipe.
So I have given up cigarettes, excess food, junk food and alcohol in the last 12 months. I've given up bad boys (my old favourite ), I've given up being a victim and have raised my standards to become the person I am now.
Leaner, stronger, braver. I turn 60 this year and I intend to be the best Mother, Grandmother, great grandmother (baby due in 4 weeks, ) Friend, lover, sister, Aunt, Cousin. And not tbe sacred to reach out and help others wuth my time, my intelligence and my compassion. I feel twent years younger than I am. Wiser, looser, happier, richer in all things,
Love Janette
