Creativity Therapy

One of the main reasons I began writing my Grape books was because there were stories I wanted my daughters to know and I didn't know if I would be around to tell them.

Many of you know how the morning after I was diagnosed with PSC I began writing My Grape Escape and didn't finish until I self-published it about nine months later. A simple Google search (FYI: NEVER a good idea with health stuff) will tell you that PSC kills off its victims in a myriad of inventive and heartless ways. Early on, a specialist in Vancouver said to me, "You have to accept that you have a life-threatening disease. You could die of sepsis tomorrow, or be diagnosed with liver or bile duct cancer next week. That is your reality now."

Blunt, to be sure, yet effective.

No doctor, however, could ever tell me exactly how one goes about "accepting" such a reality. Probably because such an existential question of reconciling life and death strikes at the heart of the mystery of our human journey - a mystery that people have been grappling with ever since they made handprints of their own hands on the wall of a cave in Chauvet, France 32,000 years ago.

I wrote feverishly, telling the stories of how I decided to leave behind an Oxford degree and prestigious career legal career path to throw myself into the unknown, how I struggled with panic attacks and anxiety, how it slowly dawned on me that life didn't need to be perfect to be wonderful, how it was wiser to collect les petits bonheurs than to harbour unrealistic expectations of life, how sometimes it was impossible to make yourself happy and to make others happy too...

These were things my three girls needed to know. I had no desire for them to read my books immediately - once they were published my stories would be there when they needed them. That is the magic of art, and writing, and books. They give us a sliver of immortality in a finite world.

However, an unexpected thing happened on the path of telling my stories. It was only when I was about half way through my latest book, My Grape Year, that I realized how creating - in my case writing - was the best course of therapy I had ever embarked upon.

Immediately after I was diagnosed with PSC I called in the cavalry. I set up appointments with acupuncturists, spiritual healers, RMTs, therapists, as well as bought a juicer and eliminated sugar, grains, dairy products, and caffeine from my diet. My whole life became about curing myself from this bizarre, rare, and unpredictable disease.

It didn't work. Not only did eliminating every pleasurable form of sustenance and living off juiced kale started to make death seem like a not entirely unappealing option, but my days were so full of appointments that my battle to stay alive left me no time to actually live.

I am generally a big fan of therapy, but in this case once we had talked for a few sessions about my health situation, the therapist (and there were a few) and me would inevitably end up staring at each other with nothing more to say. The whole PSC situation was certainly not the worst thing in the world, but sucketh, it did. It was one of those types of burdens that cannot be eliminated. It had to be carried, and nobody could tell me how. I had to figure it out for myself.

So blindly, compulsively, I kept writing. I wrote my Grape books out of order. At first this made no sense to me, but one day it finally dawned on me that, on the contrary, it made perfect sense.

My Grape Escape is all about faith, huge life changes, and trying to build a whole-hearted, authentic life even when things are far from perfect. I wrote it during that first year post diagnosis when my life had been turned on its head and I needed to find a new way of living with and in the face of my PSC.

My Grape Village is about the challenges of adapting to a new life with a family - finding community, balancing your needs with those of the people you love the most, finding happiness via les petit bonheur du jour despite the challenges life throws at one's head, and the humbling realization that life never stops providing us lessons, especially at those very moments when we believe we know it all.

My Grape Year was written at a time when my PSC had started to become extremely symptomatic, forcing me to embark on uncharted territory. I was terrified and needed to find courage. I found it in my bold 17 year old self - that girl with her head full of romance and dreams who left Canada and flew almost half way around the world to seek out love and a different way of living. I cannot tell you how many times I woke up during my writing of My Grape Year, either in the hospital or home, paralyzed by visceral terror. My body was slowly, irrevocably getting sicker, I was learning how the transplant system in Canada was both political and ineffective, especially for us PSCers, and my disease was stripping away every part of me that made me me. It was only going back to the manuscript of My Grape Year that made me remember that I was strong and that I was bold and that I had done scary things before and that doing those scary things had transformed my life.

I wept over my keyboard countless times. I laughed over it too. Initially when people asked me why I was writing my Grape Books out of order I would just laugh and say that my mind wasn't linear. This is completely true, but now I look back on the order and it makes perfect sense. The story I wrote always dealt with issues that I needed to work through the most at that time.

Right now I am finishing up edits on My Grape Wedding and I am realizing that this books deals with a time of crisis in my life too, when my panic attacks were probably at their debilitating. Paradoxically, it also deals with one of the most joyful times in my life - the summer when Franck and I got married in Burgundy, France. This rite of passage not only marked a new beginning, but a time when I was surrounded and lifted up by the love and support of friends and family from all over the world.

Could it be a metaphor for my approaching transplant? I certainly hope so.

On Panic Attacks and Creativity...

I had a humdinger of a panic attack last Wednesday. Many readers ask me after reading My Grape Escape and My Grape Village whether I still get them. Short and honest answer - yes, as last Wednesday proves, I certainly do.

I no longer waste precious time and energy trying to eliminate panic attacks from my life. I have been having them, after all, at random intervals since my mid-teens. They come. They go. They are always epically unpleasant and unwelcome.

I no longer believe they happen for a reason. I have come to the conclusion that searching for triggers or reasons for my panic attacks is a colossal waste of time.

On Wednesday, I was just sitting on the couch talking to a friend on the phone when my heart started beating faster than usual. The anxious part of my brain seized on this and started going, "Why is your heart beating faster? Something must be wrong! Redalertredalertredalert!!!"

Within three minutes my hands were shaking and my mind was spinning in that hellish anxiety vortex, making note of every uncomfortable physical sensation, amplifying it by approximately a million, and creating a logical case for my imminent demise (or worse yet, being trapped in a situation I can't control aka Just Kill Me Now).

Even though I consider myself a writer, I find myself at a loss for words when I try to describe the intensity and sheer terror of a panic attack to anyone who has not experienced one before. Conversely, when I talk about panic attacks with people who have experienced them, words are not necessary. I can just tell by looking in their eyes that they get it.

Even though I hate them I have come to a place of acceptance that they stem from a glitch in the way my brain is wired. I think we ALL have glitches in how our brain is wired. Some people have the depression glitch, some people have the jealousy glitch, some people have the fear-of-intimacy glitch...as for my brain, I suspect my panic attack glitch is the same or closely related to the part of my brain that allows me to imagine and write.

I am no longer ashamed of my anxiety. Indeed I think the stigma around mental health is one of the most corrosive forces in existence. However, I certainly don't want to feed my anxiety by treating it like the most exotic, fascinating animal in my own personal zoo either. I think my creativity, love for Star Wars, and humour are all vastly more interesting than my anxiety. Still, panic attacks are part of my emotional hard-wiring and chances are I will most likely have to co-exist with them for the rest of my life.

Something interesting, though, has been happening in the midst of my panic attacks since I began taking my writing and creativity seriously. In the middle of my Wednesday anxiety roller coaster ride, in the midst of my shaking hands and my pounding heart and my spinning head full of thoughts of certain and imminent doom, another little voice popped up. I like to think of this particular voice as the voice of my creative self.

"Remember Tillly?" it whispered to me (Tilly is the protagonist in my paranormal romance - she doesn't suffer from anxiety disorder but she does experience plenty of well-warranted fear). "You have to remember how you are feeling right now. How exactly is your heart pounding? What muscles are contracting in your chest so it feels like you cannot take a full breath? What is making you so viscerally uncomfortable right now? You have to make note and remember so that you can depict Tilly's fear more effectively."

One of the things that I am trying to learn through my mediation practice is to create some distance between myself and my thoughts and physical sensations that are always, even though they never feel like it at the time, transitory. Meditation encourages us to be curious about our thoughts and feelings without judging them.

Creativity does the same thing. By looking at my panic attack-y feelings and thoughts as a potential writer hoping to harvest them for future use, I create some much-needed space between myself and the deeply uncomfortable sensations my crocodile brain is creating for me.

The sensations are still wretched, but having curiosity about them brings a glimmer of transcendence. And then, when I actually use the material, which I always do sooner or later, the circle is complete. I have used my own misery to do a better job of writing and to hopefully make others who have felt profound visceral fear (and who hasn't?) feel less alone.

In other words, for people who have managed to carve out a creative outlet for themselves, even the really, really bad stuff is useful. Through our creativity we make even the unwanted and the uninvited serve a purpose. As I have said before, IT'S ALL MATERIAL.

I am not a subscriber to the belief that bad things happen for a reason, but I DO believe that we can choose to give even the yuckiest things meaning. This ability, in fact, is one of the things that makes us uniquely human.

Creativity won't make my panic attacks disappear for good (godammit), but it does make them slightly easier to cope with, and remains one of the most best ways for me to render useful something that is inherently useless.

Faith and Paris

I've been struggling a lot with the notion of faith (again) this month.

The attacks in Paris happened right in the middle of a two-week long treatment for me at the local hospital. This involved going every morning to get pumped full of IV antibiotics to try to beat back the infection that has taken up permanent residence in my sick liver and bile ducts.

Every time my liver infection rears its head the physical effects are wretched, but worse still is the mental anguish of not knowing what is going on inside my body and what will happen next. Crippling uncertainty and fear become my constant companions.

Having faith that everything will be OK is one of the hardest things in the world for me, as it turns out. How do I put my faith in a power (call it God, Buddha, Allah, Fate, or the Great Manitou) that has let many of my friends with PSC die despite the fact they had unrelentingly positive outlooks and everything that I don't seem capable of maintaining throughout this journey?

In the midst of my struggles with that conundrum, the attacks in Paris happened. As the news began filtering in I spent several hours feverishly checking in with friends and family to make sure they were safe. I discovered with horror all these innocent people who had thought they were going out to a concert, or for a drink with friends, or for a casual meal, only to be gunned down or blown up in the most cowardly and brutal manner.

How was I supposed to have faith that I would be taken care of by the same power that neglected to protect the victims in Paris and of other attacks over the globe?

Paris has felt like my backyard for all of my adult life. It is a place where I feel safe and nurtured. At the end of August, Franck, myself, and the Bevy were careening around the city in the wee hours of a sultry summer night with our friend Joelle, leaping out of the car to enjoy ice cream cones and an impromptu musical performance by some street musicians on a bridge over the Seine. It was one of those glorious moments when my whole soul throbbed with the joy of being alive. I seem to experience such joie de vivre frequently in Paris.

The day after the Paris attacks Camille said to me, "Mom, is Paris going to be changed forever now? Will it never be the same?"

"No way," I said. "Paris has been through much worse. Paris is resilient. Paris will always be Paris."

I realized after I answered that I had complete faith that this was true.

The day after the attacks my friend Joelle posted on Facebook that she had gone out to a bistro and sat on the terrace for not one, but two drinks. Thousands of other Parisians did the same in the impromptu #jesuisenterrasse movement.

Parisians did not cower in their apartments. They went out and fought terror with joy and wine and fresh croissants.

The Parisian approach gave me a new insight into my struggles. Often, since I got sick, I feel as though the disease is not only destroying my body, but that it is dismantling bit by bit all the things that make me...me.

But now I will remind myself to be like Paris. When things get scary and sad I will fight back by moving ferociously towards LIFE. For me, this means spending time with my family and friends, writing, reading, eating delicious food, beachcombing, creating new things...all the things that remind me that, despite my PSC, there are still so many pleasures to be savoured - so many petits bonheurs du jour as Franck's Aunt Renee always says.

If I could get on a plane right now to join the Paris #jesuisenterrasse movement in person, I would. However, budget and liver are not cooperating so I thought I'd do the next best thing - I could help others travel to France via my Grape Books. Reading is one of my favourite (not to mention most budget-friendly) methods of travel, after all.

I have never discounted my books before because I know better than anyone the work, sweat, and effort that go into creating them for my readers. I don't believe that creatives should get in the habit of undervaluing their efforts. For Paris, though, I have made an exception.

I chose to discount My Grape Year because it recounts how I fell in love with not only France, but Paris. I want everyone to be able to remind themselves of how the French have made an art of enjoying life's small, countless pleasures (which is why, I believe so many of us feel that France is one of our spiritual homes).

So from November 23-30th the Kindle version of My Grape Year will be available on Amazon.com for $0.99 cents instead of the usual $3.99.

Choosing life, again and again and again, is a defiant type of faith. It has allowed Paris to weather hardships over the centuries that would have toppled lesser cities.

In good times and in bad times we should all strive to be like Paris. When things get tough, we can find ourselves again by going #enterrasse.

My Grape Year Has Arrived on Kindle!

 

My Grape Year is available, as of this morning, on Amazon's Kindle. Just click here to check it out. There is nothing quite so satisfying as hitting the "publish" button on a new book and this one particularly so. Here are my top five reasons:

1. It is so far the most downright romantic book I have ever written (all about the year Franck and I met).

2.  I realized how lucky I was to conduct my first real love affair before the age of emails, texts, and cell phones.

3. I got to revisit the first time I tasted snails.

4. I managed to write this book during a year of serious health shitstorms, including hospitalizations and a full week-long work-up at the Toronto Transplant Clinic to see if I was ready for a liver transplant yet (verdict: not yet - still too healthy).

5. My eighteen year old self taught me all over again that the universe has a plan for all of us and that we all have to fight for our own personal fairy tale.

So, for the meagre sum of $3.99 you can purchase and enjoy My Grape Year for yourself. The paperback will be available on Amazon as well and at local bookstores in approximately 2-3 weeks. I'll be sure to announce that on here.

I wrote My Grape Year with my awesome tribe of readers in my mind and close to my heart. You have supported me, made me laugh, and made me think during the writing and editing of this book. More than anything, I cannot wait to hear what you think.

Last Minute Leap-of-Faith (and Leap To France!)

 

I won't entirely believe it until the airplane actually takes off to Paris with me inside.

We made a spontaneous, last minute, leap of faith decision and bought tickets last Sunday to leave for a month at our house - La Maison des Chaumes in Burgundy, France this Sunday.

It has been such a weird year with my health (you need a transplant! No! Wait! You're still far too healthy for a transplant! But you do need to go to the hospital again!) that I feel scared writing those words, as though I'll jinx myself and I'll land myself on an IV drip rather than on an airplane in three days time.

Still...my PSC specialist in Calgary encouraged me to travel now. He said, "Sure, you can get sick and end up in the hospital, but that can happen just as easily while you are sitting at home in Victoria as in France." It would suck to be sick in France, but at least I would have the satisfaction of knowing that my kids are visiting with their cousins and grandparents and friends and having a lovely time in Burgundy. Besides, I spent a week in the hospital in Beaune after having Clementine and as far as hospitals go it is a pretty sweet place to be - three course meals, coffee and petits gateaux that come by on a trolley every afternoon...I was waited on hand and foot and actually read Ken Follett's "Pillars of the Earth" from cover to cover in the six days following my C-section.

Living with a life-threatening illness has taught me many things over the past three years but the lesson that I keep circling back to again and again is that I have to live for the NOW. Also, shit happens in life. Sooner or later, pretty much everyone will encounter their own personal shit storm. All anyone ever has is The Present (yes, with capitals) - ill or not. We must throw fear to the winds and tackle that sucker. It is, as far as I can tell, the only sane way to live life.

So I thought to myself, "Eff it. Let's at least try." Then I pressed the "purchase tickets" button on the Air Transat website. Ready.Fire.Aim. That's my motto.

So for the next month I will be eating cheese, baguettes, pastries, looking longingly at the wonderful wines I can't drink, taking a gazillion photos, soaking up every moment with my beloved French family and friends, scoping the markets and the vide-greniers for antiques...I may also have a little sejour in Beaune's Club Med (aka the hospital) but that is OK.

This may delay the publication of My Grape Year by a few weeks. Right now it is in the hands of my copy editor. Once I make those final changes there is really little else to do. I am taking my laptop with me but my goal for this vacation is play, not work, so I'll just see how it goes. It will be published soon though - very soon...I am so excited to hear what you think and I am determined to craft the best possible story for all my fantastique readers.

In the meantime, of course, this gives you a little extra time to gain some additional entries for my "Race Me to La Fin" contest. I am receiving several emailed entires per day and rest assured they are all going into my 'contest' folder and are being counted. In particular, I am only four reviews away from hitting 200 reviews for My Grape Escape so if you could write one to receive yet another contest entry I would love you forever - promis!

I will be posting photos and snippets of our Burgundian adventures on my author Facebook page, my Instagram account, and my Twitter Feed (where yesterday two of my writer idols - Cheryl Strand and Elizabeth Gilbert 'favorited' one of my tweets...verklempt).

In life and in travel my new mindset is not to strive for a perfect vacation or a perfect month, but rather to be on the lookout for perfect moments. This is just another version of Franck's Aunt Renee's petit bonheur du jour approach to life that I describe in My Grape Escape and which resonates with so many readers.

I will gather up and cherish these perfect moments like the shards of beach glass I collect. They are the closest thing I have found to capturing eternity in my hands.

No Pearls Without Grit

There is a book I believe every human being should be gifted on the day of their birth. It is Viktor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning."

One of my favourite quotes from the extraordinary story of how Viktor Frankl kept his spirit intact in the unfathomable horror of a Nazi concentration camp has been a beacon for me during these past three years of living with my PSC diagnosis:

"Everything can be taken from a man or woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way." 

If you have read any of my past blog posts you will know that throughout these past three years I have been terrified, bitter, furious, jealous, and confused in turn as I try to co-exist with my PSC. I have also been grateful, humbled, touched, and inspired. Such is the paradox of living with a rare disease, or in fact living with any of the myriad of challenges life constantly lobs at our heads.

Do you know what a pearl begins with? A pearl begins with a humble piece of grit - an annoying irritant that the oyster coats with layer upon lustrous layer of nacre in an effort to protect itself from the unwanted invader.

PSC is the grit that invaded my life completely out of the blue three years ago. What I choose to do with it - the meaning I create from my adversity - are my pearls.

I cannot help but bring my all-too-real human emotions and reactions to my PSC experience (and, no, I'm not going to call it a 'journey' or a 'gift' because everyone who has an illness gets to the point where they want to sucker-punch the next person who utters those platitudes).

People say I am brave, but I'm so not. I wake up pretty much every morning terrified that PSC will rob me of the privilege of seeing my daughters grow up, meeting my grandchildren, traveling the world, and writing all those words I have in my head and my heart. There are so many things about my PSC that I cannot control. Instead of accepting this with wisdom and serenity you will usually find me off in a corner somewhere freaking the eff out.

However, I realized that I can still have all these unpleasant, disorienting emotions roaring through me (and mine roar LOUD) and still make a choice about my attitude. I have failed utterly at making myself more zen and accepting, but I can still choose to use my PSC as a catalyst for positive change.

Some days this is as simple as making time to have a good chat with one of my daughters or just giving them an extra long hug. One day I lent a fellow parent change for a parking meter at the field hockey pitch where my youngest was playing. He tried to pay me back at the end of the practice and I was like, "Are you kidding? Pay it forward." It is all about being more generous, being kinder, and being more compassionate to the people around us.

PSC was also the catalyst for finally committing myself to writing - one of my true, life-long passions. I began writing the morning after my PSC diagnosis and didn't stop until I published my first book ten months later. Last year I finished my second book and I plan to publish my third next month. I have taught writing, creativity, and self-publishing workshops and connected with an incredible community of fellow writers and creatives. It is hard work, but I love every minute.

My priorities became extremely simple as soon as I found out I had PSC - my three daughters, my husband, my family and friends, and my passions. Doctors made it clear to me, often in a brutally blunt manner (as it happens, I have Much To Say about certain members of the medical community needing to take humanity lessons but that is another blog post for another day...) that my PSC could kill me. There is also the possibility that I could get a transplant and do well. The huge gray swath of uncertainty between these two eventualities is where I have been residing for the past three years. This is a place where there is no time for pretending to be anything but my true, authentic self.

All these things are pearls that would never have formed without PSC being the grit at the core of it all.

From the beginning I have been public about my PSC diagnosis and as a result my eyes were opened to the fact that most people around me were also struggling with adversity - sometimes illness (mental or physical), sometimes grief, sometimes abuse, sometimes life that just hasn't turned out the way they envisioned.

Adversity, I realized, isn't something that should (or can) be avoided in life. Adversity IS life.

It is what we do with our adversity that defines who we are and how we live. We can be scared, terrified even, yet still choose to create positive change. The fear doesn't go away, but it also becomes fuel for making good stuff happen. Instead of wasting energy trying to eliminate adversity (impossible - you can trust me on this - I have spent my whole life trying) concentrate instead on actions which allow you to transcend it.

I have always wanted to write, so I began to write and, more importantly, finish and share what I started. I also wanted to raise money for PSC research which as anyone in the PSC community knows is desperately needed. Before I even published my first book I decided that I would donate 10% of the after-tax royalties of everything I wrote to the wonderful PSC Partners organization for PSC research. Yesterday I sent in a donation of $2000 - not my first royalty donation and certainly not my last. If I can play even an infinitesimal part in finding future PSC treatments and maybe one day a cure then voila! Another positive change. Another pearl.

When PSC Partners introduced their patient registry last year I immediately understood what a crucial tool this was to speed up the research for PSC. I began to advocate (some would say 'nag relentlessly') on the PSC Partners forums for everyone with PSC, or every caregiver for a person with PSC, alive or deceased, to take the 15 minutes it takes to sign up. The registry has an amazing potential to accelerate and expand research currently being done for PSC. I believe in the registry with all my heart and see this as one of my main missions.

I also advocate for organ donation wherever and whenever I can. I harass people to sign up to be organ donors, to consider live donation, and lastly, for governments to consider adopting policies such as presumed consent and hospital-based organ donation teams that have proved so effective in countries like Spain and the Scandinavian countries that organ waiting lists have become practically obsolete.

A high school friend who lives in the States messaged me out of the blue to say that she donated a kidney to a fellow parent at her children's school in part because of my social media postings. To think that because of something I posted or wrote that a father is now living free of dialysis and can look forward to a healthy, active future with his children...a gigantic pearl.

We can't choose to live without adversity but we can choose to use our battles as ignitors and accelerators for making the world a better place for everyone.

Without grit, there are no pearls.

Things You Like

One of my latest Saori weavings on the chair and pillow I found at Value Village. He he he. 

***

Here are two lists for your afternoon edification:

Things I Should Like: running marathons, cooking healthy meals for my children, using my time efficiently, drinking green smoothies, reading highbrow literary fiction, playing board games, getting my accounting in order, vacuuming my house, watering and weeding garden, meeting new people, ironing...

Things I Actually Like: wasting time, eating chocolate, drinking coffee, beachcombing, writing, Star Wars geekery, crystals, saori weaving, painting, napping, reading Regency Romance, consignment shopping at Value Village and similar stores, talking to my children...

These are by no means complete lists and, let's face it, pretty much every adult life is full of obligations where one is  forced to pull on one's big girl / boy panties and simply do what is necessary. I have to undergo a lot of unpleasant medical exams, sit through many an unwanted doctor's appointment, knuckle down and complete the endless paperwork that comes with being on disability, edit my books when I feel like painting, pay attention to Franck when he explains the new Excel spreadsheet he set up for my writing revenue and expenses (bless), et cetera et cetera.

However, we all have at least SOME spare time. My life has changed radically since I stopped filling it with activities plucked from the first list and instead filled it with things from the second, Things I Actually Like.

I am preparing my part in the Moonrise Creative "Unlocking Your Creativity" workshop this Saturday which I am SUPER EXCITED about (just sayin'. Oh! There's another thing I love! Workshops!). I will be leading a bunch of free writing exercises to help unearth our creative selves and free them from the blockages that hold so many of us back. One of the favourite prompts that I have come up with is: "Here is a list of things that make me happy."

On Saturday, I am going to preface this writing prompt by clarifying that this should not be a list of "things that should make me happy" or "things that other people think should make me happy" or "things I wish made me happy" but actually "THINGS THAT MAKE ME HAPPY." There is a vast and crucial difference.

The list should by definition be quirky, bizarre, humble, grandiose, illogical, and unique...you know...kind of like you.

I have no idea why Star Wars geekery makes me happy, but it has from the time I saw Star Wars IV at the Cineplex Odeon when I was six years old. I have no idea why I love shopping at consignment stores ("treasure hunting" as I think of it) but I have ever since I started a part time job and began earning my own pocket money when I was a teenager. I no inkling why I was designed to be a writer, but besides being born with the "what if" gene I remember writing a short story when I was seven about my Scottish great-grandfather Fletcher and my cat Pandora dying and feeling transcendent when I finished it, and even better when my teacher wrote that she cried when she corrected it.

I always tell my girls this, "Pay close attention to what makes you feel happy and make a mental note. Then, find ways to incorporate more of that into your lives."

But then, take board games...I simply cannot make myself care if I win or lose, and frankly would rather shoot myself in the head than embark on a game of Monopoly. I just want to sit around and talk to people.

Ironing makes me want to punch somebody and the only time our iron is ever taken out of the cupboard is for craft projects. As a result it reeks of melted plastic (Clem's melty bead phase) and probably is no longer fit for clothes anyway.

No one has solved the celestial mystery of why we love what we love, but being honest about what makes us happy and incorporating as much of it as possible into our lives can be transformative. A life created for the irreplaceable you is so much richer than a life created for someone you are not, but think you should be. It is so much happier. 

I can't wait to learn on Saturday about the things that makes the workshop participants truly happy. How about you? What things do you actually like?

And, to quote one of my favorite lines from The Princess Bride, "This is for posterity sake, so please be honest."

The Best of The Worst of Me

It's been a rough few weeks. After getting out of the hospital in March and finishing ten days of IV antibiotics for my liver infection I enjoyed five weeks of feeling like A Million Bucks. Well, not other people's version of a million bucks, but a significant improvement on the Varying Shades of Shite that had become my norm. Dammit, I'd take it!

I finished editing My Grape Year, arranged the photo shoot in France for its cover, planned a Creativity workshop for the end of May I am super stoked about, even wondered if I may be able to make it back to Burgundy in July. Then, about six weeks after my IV treatment, I started to slide slowly but inexorably downhill. Nausea, increased pain and discomfort in my liver area, fatigue, weakness, and random fevers. It basically feels like a combo of the stomach flu and the actual flu that waxes and wanes throughout my waking hours. There are no longer good days and bad days, but rather good hours and bad hours, or often, good minutes and bad minutes.

The whites of my eyes are no longer white but rather pale yellow and I'm sure the results of my last batch of bloodwork are going to be pretty horrific. I'm still waiting on the doctors to get back to me with A Plan but I know that sooner or later I am heading towards another all expenses paid stay at Club Med. On top of all that, I'm also nearing my yearly colonoscopy / gastroscopy and my 6 month MRI - always stressful as they look for all variety of nastiness that could disqualify me from a potential liver transplant.

So...yeah. Basically a shit sandwich.

I wake up every morning with a lead weight not only in my liver, but in my soul. A lot of that is physical pain and discomfort, but even worse, I think, is the mental anguish, particularly the intense, crushing anxiety.

I have been thinking a lot about my lifelong struggles with anxiety and the lifelong struggles that so many of my fellow writers have with anxiety. Just for the record, not all writers are headcases - a minority are remarkably sane - but frankly, most of my favorite ones have a bit of the headcase in them.

I see some people deal with serious illness and am amazed at how they just power through and DO.NOT.WORRY.. They do not try to project the future, they do not second guess, they do not doubt...they just decide on an outcome and never mentally sway from that path. How I wish I could be like that.

Instead, I was born with the "what if?" gene. What if they run out of antibiotics that work on my liver infection? What if they find cancer? What if one of my varices ruptures? What if I am approved for transplant but my potential donors can't get vacation time off to be assessed? What if I get a fever when I am supposed to be getting the colonoscopy? What if I die? What if I live? What if, what if, what if, what if, WHAT IF?

Not only is my brain obsessively asking 'what if' all the time like a needle on a skipping record, but it also concocts and projects fully fleshed-out scenes of the various 'what if' scenarios - good and bad. Me being told by the doctor that my PSC has morphed into cancer, me waking up from transplant feeling like I've been reborn, me being counselled by the hospice people as I prepare to die, me on the stage at a TED talk after a successful transplant talking about how creativity saved me...it's all there in turns - the terrifying and the galvanizing, the wretched and the glorious.

Lately, I long to muzzle this overactive 'what if' drive on my brain, but no amount of meditation, gratitude journaling, sessions with spiritual healers, or reflexology seems to be doing the trick. The truth is nothing in my life (and I have tried pretty much everything) has ever changed that aspect of my mind. The 'what if' is as much an innate part of me as my brown hair or my love of the ocean or my fear of knives.

But that 'what if' has a flip side. Without the 'what if' I wouldn't remember my past in terms of scenes and stories and be able to write about it vividly in my memoirs. Without the 'what if' I wouldn't be able to concoct a paranormal romance between a winemaker and a mermaid, as I am doing right now for my first work of fiction. Without the 'what if' no writer would be able to write but because of the 'what if' so many of us writers live with anxiety.

My 'what if' gene is the perfect example of a human paradox; the worst part of me is also the best part of me.

Without 'what if' I would not be waking up every morning with that lead weight of anxiety in my soul, but without my 'what if' I would not have writing in my life as one of my strongest lifelines in these stormy seas.

My reflexologist gave me an interesting idea last week. She said, "how about you try writing down little scenes of your life after a successful transplant?"

I have done that in a little (turquoise) journal - a little snippet per day. I'm surprised at how it is the little things that capture my imagination - not the TED talks as much as being able to volunteer to take Clem's class to the beach, without worrying I may have to bail due to a fever or nausea or a hospitalization, gardening with Franck without needing to rest on the couch, not having to tell my girls I need to head to the hospital again...a normal life - god how I will treasure it if I am lucky enough to get it back.

I am tired of fighting against my essential self. My anxiety, for better or for worse, will probably always be a part of who I am. I am going to invite my 'what-ifitis' on this journey with me, instead of making it stow away in the life-raft. I'll let you know how it goes.

Indie Interview with Moi

My lovely author friend Karen Dyer (writes as KC Dyer - check out her awesome YA fiction) just interviewed me for her "Indie Tuesday" blog segment. Watch for the upcoming self-pubbed release of her novel "Finding Fraser". I have had a sneak peek and it is ADDICTIVE - a must for anyone who loves humour, romance, and Outlander. Read below for my musings on self-publishing, rules for writing, and my visceral resistance to linear thinking! Here's the direct link if you'd like it.

INDIE TUESDAY -- WRITER LAURA BRADBURY

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2015 AT 4:19PM

Hola! This week we have an Indie celebrity in our midst, in the form of Laura Bradbury.

Laura's forte is the self-published memoir -- and what a story she has to tell! It is filled with romance, intrigue, anxiety, high comedy and a whole lotta wine. Laura's 'Grape' stories are must-reads, and the reading community is getting the message. She's continually posting huge sales, as more people discover her warm, whimsical story-telling style.

Laura's also extremely generous with her hard-won knowledge and has really been helping me in my efforts to get FINDING FRASER out into the world. Let's hear a bit about her experiences, shall we? She's got a lot to share, so I suggest you get a cup of tea -- or a glass of wine! -- and enjoy!

KC: Are you an outliner or a seat-of-the-pantser when it comes to writing your books?

Laura: I am definitely more of a panster. I believe planning a book is easier with memoir than with fiction. Each of my “Grape” books covers approximately one year of our lives when we were buying and renovating a specific property in France so there is a very clear cut beginning and end point each time. Initially, I make a rough Excel spreadsheet  of bare-boned scene ideas. Then I write a quick and dirty ESRD (Epically Sh!tty Rough Draft) based on these scenes. The more I write the more my memory is jogged so I add a lot of scenes en route. Then I do a BIG edit where I break the ESRD into chapters and add in new ones I realize are missing (usually about one third of the total scenes). I am lucky that I have a crazy-good long term memory. I can’t remember what I ate for breakfast this morning, but the taste of blackcurrant in that glass of wine I drank fifteen years ago? I TOTALLY remember every detail. My next project after My Grape Year (the third book in my “ Grape” series) is a paranormal romance trilogy involving mermaids and fishermen. I suspect I will have to dramatically tweak my writing processs and do a more detailed outline for fiction writing. However, the way I learn things is simply by doing them (verus reading about them or having someone teach them to me) and figuring out what works for me through trial and error. I know outlining will be something I will have to force myself to do though, as I am highly resistant to organization!

KC: How did you choose your titles? 

Laura: The Grape Series all have “Grape" in the title I.e. My Grape Year, My Grape Escape, My Grape Village. The Grape is the emblem of all of our vacation rentals in Burgundy (which we call Grape Rentals www.graperentals.com). It is natural, authentic, honest, tied to the earth, and something humble that has the potential to be transformed into something sublime (wine). I liked the play on words with Grape / Great and also having “ My Grape…" repeated in my titles is a hommage to the wonderful “Little House” series that was my first exposure to memoir and one of the first series I fell for as a child. I love this quote which struck me so forcibly when my mother first read my sister and I the “The Little House in The Big Woods” when I was around seven:

When the fiddle had stopped singing Laura called out softly, “What are days of auld lang syne, Pa?”

“They are the days of a long time ago, Laura,” Pa said. “Go to sleep, now.”

But Laura lay awake a little while, listening to Pa’s fiddle softly playing and to the lonely sound of the wind in the Big Woods. She looked at Pa sitting on the bench by the hearth, the fire-light gleaming on his brown hair and beard and glistening on the honey-brown fiddle. She looked at Ma, gently rocking and knitting.

She thought to herself, “This is now.”

She was glad that the cosy house, and Pa and Ma and the fire-light and the music, were now. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago.  

This to me sums up the magic quality of memoir – when my mother read us that book I was Laura Ingalls. Books allow you to live so many additional lives.

KC: Do you have a favourite genre to read -- or write -- in? What draws you in that direction?

Laura: My “comfort” genre is probably Regency Romance at the moment. I love Georgette Heyer and Jo Beverly in particular. I avoid reading memoir when I am writing memoir as I always worry about absorbing someone else’s voice. As an English Literature undergrad I went through years of being incredibly snobby about my reading –  I would only deign to read highbrow literary fiction that was shortlisted for the Booker, Orange, or the Giller. However, by my fourth year of my BA I actually stopped reading altogether. I just couldn’t handle one more obliquely drawn character that I couldn’t invest in emotionally (no matter how beautiful the language) or one more story about the holocaust or incest. Highbrow literature at that period was overwhelmingly depressing. I didn’t start reading again until my sister Suzanne insisted I read Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series. I was so hooked that I am embarrassed to say I actually read Outlander and Dragonfly In Amber at stoplights on the way to taking my kids to preschool (NOT ADVISED). I still believe Diana’s books should come with some sort of FDA addiction warning like on cigarette packages. Thanks to Outlander, it finally hit me that what made me fall in love with books and reading in the first place was the craft of storytelling. I wanted to be transported to another place and often another time. I wanted to be invested in the lives of the characters. I wanted escape. I wanted emotion. I wanted imagination.

KC: This book is part of a series -- where do you plan to go next?

Laura: The “Grape” series will have six books in total (in order, the bold ones have already been published): My Grape Year, My Grape Paris, My Grape Escape, My Grape Village, My Grape Town, and My Grape Baby, plus a few of what I think of as “Memoir-ettes” (novella length memoirs): My Grape Wedding, My Grape Cellar (not akin to Twenty Shades of Grey, but rather about the 13th century wine cellar we renovated under the streets of Beaune), etc.. As you can see I do not write them in order. Whichever story is yelling at me the loudest is the one that gets written next.  See above re: my visceral resistance to linear thinking.

My paranormal romance trilogy is definitely a trilogy and the first book is about 85% written, although it needs a serious overhaul. I will probably finish the first book in this series once I finish My Grape Year, although it will really depend on which story is shouting the loudest at me then! I have to say I am intimidated to turn from memoir to fiction, as I know it will be a steep learning curve. That terrifies me and thrills me in equal measure.

KC: Why Indie publishing instead of the traditional route?

Laura: I actually wrote a blog about exactly this topic and here is the list of reasons why self-publishing was the right choice for me:

1. I am incurably impatient
2. I like being my own boss and want to choose my collaborators
3. I had several ideas re: how to launch / market my first book
4. I actually enjoy marketing / social media
5. I had a web presence already built up thanks to graperentals.com
6. Aspects of my books (i.e. my struggles with panic attacks / anxiety) didn’t “fit” with mainstream publishing. Several agents were interested in taking on My Grape Escape but they all wanted me to remove any mention of my mental health struggles. I felt my story would be inauthentic without this honesty, and I also felt removing them would be a betrayal of myself and anyone out there who also lives with any mental health issue. I wanted to show how it is not necessary to eliminate or “cure” life’s many challenges in order to live a rich, incredible existence.
7. I wasn’t prolific when I began, but definitely writing more and faster was a goal. I felt I had far more than one book in me - self–publishing doesn’t work as well for people who only want to publish one or two books – although like everything, there are exceptions.
8. I am happiest when working on projects from beginning to end. I’m definitely a “project person”
9. I have ongoing health issues (a rare auto-immune disease of the liver and bile ducts known as PSC which means I will need a liver transplant sooner rather than later) that meant I did not want / need stress of having to meet other people’s deadlines and expectations.
10. I have an allergy to authority in any form
11. I wanted to donate 10% of all my after-tax writing-related earnings to PSC Partners for researching PSC.

KC: What's your favourite part of the publishing process? Why?

Laura: Writing a book is a hell of a slog. Still, there is something epic in the feat of writing a book that appeals to me - a bit like climbing Everest or rowing across the Pacific. Most days I write because I force myself, but there are moments when my imagination takes flight or I come up with an evocative turn of phrase or the perfect tempo of dialogue and I feel as though I have been plugged into a force way bigger and more awe–inspiring than myself. I call this "communing with The Great Mysterious". These moments are generally fleeting, and I can also experience them when by the ocean, eating a particularly scrumptious cheese, spending time with my family, meditating, or doing other creative work – painting, making beach glass mobiles, etc. but I get them fairly regularly when writing and they always leave me with a sensation of grace and oneness with the universe.  Who doesn’t need more of that?

Also when the box of paperbacks arrive for of latest book…holy moses is that ever satisfying! Worth every ounce of blood, sweat, and tears!

KC: Do you have a preferred format for your books? E-book vs paperback?

Laura: It is ironic that probably around 90% of my writing revenue comes from Ebooks (mainly Kindle) but I actually cannot stand reading books on any sort of screen. I am a diehard lover of paperbacks. For me, the tactile experience of reading  an actual book - paperback or hardcover - is like a sacred ritual. Besides, I already spend a lot of time in front of the screen writing and doing my social media stuff.  However, I have many girlfriends who are complete converts to ebooks and are permanently attached to their Ipad Kindle app or their Kindle. For them, the ebook thing actually has them reading way more.  It’s a personal preference and I keep my mind open. I love my Kindle readers.

KC: What's your favourite review one of your stories has received? [Share it, if you like!]

Laura: Here is a nice one that was posted just a few days ago on Amazon.com for My Grape Escape: "As an avid reader of mainly non fiction I was thrilled to find this author. As the book started I thought ho hum - yet another story about France, renovating the dilapidated house, etc...... However, after a few pages I was hooked. I agonized and laughed with the author till the end. Found her to be refreshingly open about her state of mind. Has a unique gift of describing situations and people. Immediately got the follow up book.”

I especially love the ones where people tell me how my honesty about my struggles with anxiety disorder made them feel less alone with their own struggles in life – mental or otherwise. These always strike a chord with me and make me so glad I decided to stay true to myself, keep my book honest, and self-publish.

KC: Can you name a favourite Indy author or two, and recommend a book?

Well, I am VERY excited about KC Dyer’s upcoming “Finding Fraser”! I cannot wait to get my hands on the paperback of that. Martin Crosbie does lovely memoirs and his blogs about self-publishing are always so generous and helpful. I also love pretty much everything Chuck Wendig writes and he is a stellar advocate for writers everywhere. There are so many talented, insightful Indie authors out there…

KC: And to finish, can you give your best advice to someone starting out?

Laura: I would say the #1 piece of advice would be – FINISH! I kept writing and rewriting the first book in my paranormal romance trilogy for about a decade but could never finish. Then came the day I was diagnosed at age 39 with PSC and all of a sudden I was living with a rare, serious, and possibly terminal illness. My life completely changed in that instant. I started writing My Grape Escape the next morning and vowed to finish. I learned more in finishing and publishing My Grape Escape than I did in ten years of almost finishing my other writing projects. Resist the siren’s call of other projects until you finish your current one. It is as difficult as Odysseus and the Sirens at times, but put cotton balls in your ears, a huge sign beside your keyboard…whatever it takes - FINISH. My word-warrior motto is Write. Finish. Share. Repeat.  Here is a printable of that if you need a reminder http://laurabradbury.com/2015/01/28/the-word-warrior-mantra/  .

Also, I try to give myself a word count goal every day whether writing or editing. Usually it is 2000 words. There are many days where I don’t hit it – days when I am hospitalized because of my PSC, days when my three kids have caught contagious diarrhea, days when it is sunny outside and I simply must go beachcombing…life happens, but having a goal is something to shoot for.

Holy crow. Didn't I tell you Laura was great? Forget a font -- she is a RESEVOIR of great information...and inspiration, too.

Thank you, Laura, for taking part and for sharing your story so candidly. If you'd like to jump on the Bradbury Grape Bandwagon -- and who doesn't? -- you can find her books HERE.

Ready -- set -- GRAPE!

More soon...

~kc

Woo Cannot Fail, It Can Only Be Failed

Yesterday, the alternative health universe lost one of its stars, a charismatic Australian woman named Jess Ainscough, better known as the "Wellness Warrior". She died at the young age of thirty after seven years of trying to cure her very rare form of cancer by eschewing traditional cancer treatments and opting for alternative therapies, such as Gerson therapy which requires lovely things such as coffee enemas every four hours.

Jessica's death upset me. Dying at thirty before having kids, before marrying her honey, and before realizing so many dreams is a human tragedy. Also though, I am pissed off that she was both a victim and a perpetrator of a set of beliefs that pressures sick people to choose between traditional (western) medicine and alternative therapies (woo). Since being diagnosed with PSC I have felt this pressure in many subtle and not-so-subtle ways.

I will not lie, I love me some woo.

I have a meditation altar set up in my bedroom, complete with my healing crystals, a sellinite candle, and pieces of beach glass.

Franck said to me recently when he came upstairs to find me meditating in front of my lit candle (to purify cosmic energies), "all you're missing is an eagle feather."

"I know. I totally need one," I said.

I am a big fan of vision boards (on Pinterest) and live in the hope that the universe will manifest my wishes of a New York Times Bestseller, a TED speaking engagement, and a trip to Sanibel island with my mom to go beachcombing. I am a devoted patient of reflexology and a Reiki-type energy massage. I believe that acupuncture can be helpful in many situations, same for yoga and visualizations. I have even done a past life regression that took me back to not one, but three past lives. Fascinating stuff.

Most days I down a monster smoothie packed with kale, probiotics, hemp, and chia seeds. It tastes like stagnating pond scum, but I know it is good for me. Maybe my smoothie is more about nutrition than woo but the line between the two in the alternative health world is often very fine indeed.

Still, nothing annoys me more since being diagnosed with PSC than people (often people I barely know) suggesting that I go on a liver cleanse to heal myself or just think positively. The implication is, of course, that I could heal myself if I followed their suggestions and believed in it enough. If it didn't work, it would clearly be my fault because I didn't do it right.

I religiously did acupuncture and Chinese herbs for a year and a half after being diagnosed with PSC, with the full consent and knowledge of my hepatologist.

I became increasingly uncomfortable, though, with my Chinese Medicine Doctor. First of all, I could discern no positive effects of her treatment besides temporary relief of some symptoms like itching. My blood results were getting worse and I was clearly getting sicker. I was bothered that she kept blaming this on my traditional doctors, even though they were not treating me with anything at that time (the only available treatment for PSC is an eventual liver transplant which tends to be a one-shot deal).

When I started to move closer to transplant and decided to discontinue the herb portion of the C.T.M. treatment because it could eliminate me from transplant eligibility, she never let an appointment go by without telling me how she had cured other liver patients with herbs or how she regretted my decision to stop them. I was being pushed to choose between traditional medicine and alternative medicine and I resented it.

Despite my lifelong love of crystals and the occult I never, not for a moment, considered abandoning western medicine in favour of woo for my PSC. It would not be my reflexologist who would be performing life-saving transplant surgery, after all. I sought out the best care I could find, which means for me flying to Calgary on a regular basis to meet with a hepatologist who has the fourth largest PSC practice in the world and is a leader in the field, and being assessed by the world-renowned liver transplant clinic in Toronto.

I do not think my PSC is a "gift" from the universe or was sent to me for me to learn some cosmic lesson. I make a conscious choice to give my experience meaning (I'm a big fan of  Vicktor Frankl) but I see PSC for what it is - a nasty, cruel disease that strikes indiscriminately, just like cancer and ALS and heart defects and all the myriad ways a human body can break down.

Traditional medicine is by no means perfect. I have been subjected to skilled but inhumane doctors who really shouldn't be allowed to talk to patients or, in fact, other human beings. At all. Under any circumstances. Things are misdiagnosed or diagnosed too late, treatments can be brutal and sometimes fatal. Sometimes, even though both doctor and patient have tried their best, people die. When this happens I remind myself that we are all headed to The Terminal on this bus of life, it is only a question of how and when.

I have seen fellow PSCers die. They have thought positively and fought until the bitter end and done everything "right". Most often their deaths can only be blamed on one thing -  this cruel disease. Often life or death boils down to the one thing that few want to accept - sheer dumb luck.

I have also, though, seen many lives saved by Western medicine. People who go from deathly ill to thriving after a liver transplant, or who recover from bile duct or liver cancer with the correct protocol. There are a lot of these miracles in our community.

So while I love my woo, I refuse to buy into the belief that woo alone will heal me, or that western medicine is evil. People who damn western medicine and promote woo will say that it is precisely because I don't believe that woo will not heal me. This, to me, is the crux of my problem with woo.

Woo cannot fail you, you can only fail the woo.

If chemo and surgery don't work, nobody is going to blame you - they are just going to blame your disease for being so goddamn unforgiving. If you opt for woo to the exclusion of traditional medicine for a serious disease and you die anyway, like Jess Ainscough, many people whose theories she championed (like those Gershon folks) will probably say that somehow she didn't do things right, or thoroughly enough, or her beliefs were too flimsy. That is bullshit. Who needs more guilt in their life, especially when struggling with a serious illness?

We can do our best to positively influence our lifespan and our quality of life, but the truth is we cannot control death.

We can do our best - trying to eat well, doing things that make us feel fulfilled and happy, meditating, yoga-ing, praying to our crystals, consulting the best specialists we can find and undergoing recommended treatments. We can do all of this and still die. Hopefully though somewhere along the way it will sink in, as it has done for me (finally!), that improving the enjoyment of my day to day life is even more important than trying in vain to stage-manage its longevity.

We cannot know how our stories will end. We cannot control the uncontrollable. Anyone who tells you different is trying to sell you something. Sadly, Jess Ainscough was not only a victim of this nefarious sales pitch, but in time ended up inflicting it on countless others struggling with life-threatening disease.

Stay open. Stay skeptical. Remember this - a closed mind is a dangerous mind.