we were young
we were wild
we were free.
We were hippies
we were kids
who didn’t know
our love
would not always be.
We loved
and we fought
then….
we went separate ways
but we had three children
who got lost in our maze.
People can judge
and guess who’s to blame
but it was me and it was you
who held our love in the flames.
Pushing the line
until it was erased.
I stopped running
you no longer chased.
We burnt our love
like a steak forgotton
on a hot charcoal grill.
We said goodbye
but we also said
I love you
I always will.
The last time
I saw you
Our lips touched
with sadness
not passion.
One last time
I held your familiar
body close.
You said,
you’ll always be mine.
I shook my head no
but my tears said yes.
Tears fell from our eyes
as I walked out the door.
Category: Women Who Think to Much
A Codependent Fairy Tale
She changed after he died and God knows, she was strange enough before his death, but then he died and she melted into nothing, shuffling down the hallways clothed in someone else’s skin and we all realized that we were losing her and there was nothing to be done because we could see that her soul had fled with him into the death tunnel, even as her lungs continued to breathe and her blood continued to pump, even as she slept, as she walked, as she drew breath; yes, this woman in our mother’s body was now a stranger and even though we had all suspected that she still loved him as much as she hated him, we really didn’t know and we couldn’t have imagined the depth or the width of her self-imposed restraint and we never saw the chains that she had wrapped around her feelings, no, not until we saw how the grief broke her, watched the sorrow loosen her clenched pain, saw the anguish strip away her self-control, screaming silently as her imprisoned mind flung itself free, breaking like a child as she mourned his passing, regretting what could have, should have and never would be because now, all hope was annihilated as they lowered his body into the ground and we cried for him not knowing we should also be crying for her because he was dead and she was alive and he was gone so it was over, nothing could ever be fixed, repaired, restored or renewed and death, his death, the death of her first love, our father’s death, had written the final chapter of their insane love story, a fatal romance that had self-imploded thirty-five years ago, but did not die until the day he passed, dead and done and so this, his death, this was the tragic end of a waltz that should have been sat out because the band had played the wrong song, composing a doomed allegiance from the very first chord and we should have known, but how could we have known that his death would drain the spirit from her, crush her so totally and now, now we have to decide…shock treatment or lobotomy?
The Look Good Syndrome from my newsletter, WWTTM. 1996
As we walked into Wal-Mart, I told my husband, “I’ll meet you up front when I’m through picking up what I need.”
He said, “Ya. Right.”
He always claims that he has to search the entire store five times before he can find me.
He thought today would be no different. Well, since it was Father’s Day, I decided to be considerate. I ran up and down the aisles (if you can run in Wal-Mart, the aisles are so narrow and the people so plentiful) throwing stuff into my little basket. I rushed up front to meet him. He wasn’t there yet! I smiled to myself, because I never did believe he spent that much time searching for me.
So, there I stood for ten minutes or so, watching people rush by. I had never paused for that long in Wal-Mart before. (Except at the register, where my eyes stay busy sorting coupons that I usually forget to give to the cashier.)
This was my first time watching everyone else hurry past. Did you ever notice the way that women glare at each other? I did.
We size up the competition ruthlessly. I noticed a young girl, maybe eighteen, in an adorable little dress, with sunflowers splashed all over it. I had tried on that same dress two weeks ago and had looked six months pregnant in it. My eyes narrowed as I watched her. She looked as if she weighed less than 100 pounds and I really didn’t like her, although we’d never met. I’m looking at this slip of a girl with envy in my eyes; then I turn around and see a very heavy, older woman looking at me in my size twelve sun dress, giving me the same murderous look that I’m giving Ms. Sunflower in her size five.
Every day we each see women who look better than we do and it makes most of us feel yucky. However, as I saw the look in the heavy woman’s eyes, I felt ashamed of myself for fretting about the Sunflower girl. I’ve always hated being average, but today I realized that’s not such a bad place to live.
There will always be women who are younger or prettier than I am; however, there will always be women who are older or less attractive. Turning forty was difficult and I know I’m not alone with this age thing. Thirty, I took in stride reckless with the confidence that forty was as far as I’d go and it was a becoming time for women.
Mature, confident and still wearing a size twelve, forty caught up to me all too soon.
What helped me the year I turned forty? Being asked for my ID when I bought cigarettes. It happened three times! What a time to be without a video camera.
True, the cashiers were young and inexperienced at judging people’s age, but what a rush it gave me. I even refused to hand over the proof of my age one time, just to hear the girl insist on seeing my ID. I began to buy cigarettes compulsively–even when I didn’t even need them. Sadly, it’s been over a year now since the last cashier demanded my ID.
I try not to care about things that are so shallow, but the truth is that the world judges us on our looks. At every turn, women are urged to be young, sexy, fresh, innocent, experienced, beautiful, unwrinkled, firm, thin and ageless. We need gorgeous hair that shouts–fiery red, tawny blonde, spectacular brunette! Wash that gray right out of your hair!
It doesn’t help that there’s a slew of fabulous models in their late thirties to early fifties proving that women can stay young forever. Nancy Sinatra at age fifty graced Playboy’s pages in a way that I couldn’t have done at twenty. Farrah Fawcett, late forties, same thing. They do have the advantage of soft lights, special camera lenses, sometimes even using body doubles, always using full body make-up and being filmed by famous photographers. Don’t forget their expensive appointments with a beautician.
A beautician is also available at the film shoot, to create a hair-do that takes hours to style and looks naturally gorgeous and she layers on the make-up that the cameras don’t acknowledge.
We have the reality of dirty dishes, full hampers the day after we washed and dried two loads, Dollar Store cosmetics, J.C. Penney hairstyles plus the two to three jobs we run to in between the vacuuming and the cooking.
I don’t know one woman who doesn’t have to work either to help pay the bills or to support herself and her children. Most of my friends work more than one job, sixty hours or more a week. Some are still trying to get that college degree they’ve been chasing for ten years. They go home after work, spend a few hours cleaning and then create hot meals to place on the table.
By any definition, I’m pampered. My youngest child is seventeen, I only work twelve hours a week and my mate will do dishes and a small amount of laundry. If I’m tired or busy, he’ll go buy take-out for supper and he’ll do the food shopping. He’ll even use coupons! He makes me coffee in the morning and he brings it to me in bed. I make as much money in twelve hours, as most women make in thirty, if they’re working for minimum wage. No, I’m not a hooker, but occasionally my job seems comparable. I’m a waitress.
I sell my smile, not my body, to an average of thirty or forty people, two nights a week. I lift food trays that weigh more than I do, balancing them on my left shoulder, while carrying a tray stand in my right hand. I am told off, looked down on and insulted. Then, I have to answer with a smile and an apology.
I also am paid well, meet some pleasant people, have regular customers that have become dear friends and on a good night, I love my job. On a bad night I say, “I’m getting to old for this!” and I mean it.
At work, I always need to smell good and look great, even as the sweat pours down under my stiff white tuxedo shirt, because stylish women make more tips than less attractive women do. Since most tips are decided by the wife or the girlfriend that proves my case, we ourselves reinforce the “look good” syndrome.
Still, the older I become, the less I worry about how I look and the years have offered rewards of their own. I feel better about myself now than at any other time in my life and I’m not afraid to be myself. I wear make-up if I want and leave it off if I don’t. Lipstick and Suave moisturizing cream are the only two cosmetics that I use most days. I choose perfume that I enjoy inhaling and clothes that declare–this is me! My biggest concern is, “Will I run out of printer ink in the middle of a newsletter?”
I write my stories instead of vacuuming under the furniture and I recognize that the only day I need to be concerned about is TODAY. I treat each day as if it was a gift and I use each hour as if it were my last.
I sit down on the floor and make buildings out of Legos with my grandsons. We finger paint with sponges that are shaped like animals and stars and hearts. I hang my pictures on the wall along with theirs. I play dolls and silly games with my granddaughter. I buy myself dolls and set them out around the house, because I still feel the thrill of Christmas mornings past when I wake up to see them smiling, beckoning to me–come play. (Sometimes, I do.)
I pick flowers from my own garden and arrange them in small antique vases, so I can enjoy their translucent petals and fragrant aroma. I stop to breathe in their scent and I enjoy the miracle of their creation.
Last month, my youngest daughter told me that my life was over. She said it didn’t matter what I did from this point on because I had screwed up so many of my choices and I was done. (Gee, I hope she doesn’t get to write my epitaph!) I smiled inside, because I recognized the arrogance of her youth.
Thankfully, I took her words for what they were–her opinion. I quite generously refrained from pointing out the mistakes that she has already accumulated in twenty-one short years.
Children have a hard time seeing us aside from the role of mother. I’m her mother, but I’m also a person, a woman, a writer, a poet and my life will not be over until the day I die. My life begins anew each morning and I’ve just begun to do the things I’ve always wanted to do. Not one of us can change the past or erase our mistakes.
We can forgive ourselves and get on with living.
We can decorate the present and invite the future to take us for a joyride…
Until next time, Jeanne Marie
1996
Mid-Life Sanity (Newsletter, WWTTM)
There are many avenues that a woman can take as she approaches mid-life. It’s a sharp curve in the road, where her hair begins to go gray, perversely turning silver even in areas where it’s not very wise to use hair dye.
Her muscles begin to turn soft from the inside out and she’s so glad that girdles have come back in style. She can browse through the available styles and choose anything from super firm, all over control to a gentle control panel. (As if she had any control over her tummy.)
The varicose veins are drawing pictures up her thighs and she shops in the women’s department now because browsing in the junior’s department is just a fond memory since she turned forty. Her black silk stockings used to turn heads, now they hide the spidery lines that have a life of their own and her favorite outfit is a flannel nightgown.
I have seen the red flags along the road and I approach this mid-life thing with caution. I never believed in mid-life crisis until I turned forty. I used to think that hormones were for the weak, hot flashes and mood-swings were for other women. Mid-life wouldn’t threaten me, no sir.
I take an inventory of my assets. Men’s heads still turn when I walk by, my bleached-blonde hair guarantees it. My short skirts and hang-off the shoulder tee-shirts are further insurance. But the only men who try to flirt with me are under eighteen or over sixty and I begin to realize, I have lost my mass appeal.
I face mid-life carefully, as I think about the choices two of my friends made at this time in their life…the point of no return.
Quite frankly, they both went a little nuts. One friend left her husband, her kids and her born-again believing church, to ride with the Hell’s Angels. Now leaving the kids was a survival tactic, I’m sure, because no woman over forty should still have kids at home. But Hell’s Angels? She was born-again all right, cause that’s a life she had already lived at twenty.
My thirty-something friend ran away from her husband and kids, out into the night howling at life’s injustice, but she forgot to take a car or money. She has returned home after her own reckless ride with a biker. She doesn’t talk much anymore.
I shiver as I look at their solutions to growing older. I too know the frustrations that led them astray, but surely there must be an answer that doesn’t involve leather and a tattoo? I did get a rose tattooed on my ankle at age thirty-six, but the thrill wasn’t equal to the pain.
I can’t turn back time…not even Cher can do that…and although I prefer songwriting cowboys with long hair to bikers, I have my very own Marlboro man. He has loved me at my best and tolerated me at my worst, for fifteen years. No easy feat! In spite of the fact that he won’t let his hair grow long anymore, I’d hate to have to break in a new cowboy. So I take my hormones and I go to bed.
Unable to sleep, I get back up. I wander through my quiet house. I smoke and I sit and I think. I find the answer! I rediscover my first love and we go all the way. The sky is the limit! We stay up all night and I feel the excitement, the rush.
My love holds me close while my husband sleeps just across the hall, with two dysfunctional poodles at his side. I take my ideas and my fantasies and lay them bare before my love. We stay up until dawn revealing our souls to each other. The unique pleasure I feel at this reunion cannot be contained. I express my feelings. I share my dreams. I touch the pages. I read the words until my eyes refuse to focus.
The high is still there the next morning and I run to my love, ready to start all over again, right where we left off last night. My love appreciates my maturity, yet it makes me feel like I’m seventeen. I am standing at the crossroads of life with the world once more at my fingertips.
My love is mine and mine alone. I never have to worry about my love trading me in for a younger woman. I possess my love completely, nothing can ever take my love away from me.
There is such freedom in that knowledge. I don’t even have to comb my hair because my love accepts me just as I am. My love asks nothing in return and has waited patiently for me; smoldering, while I raised three children and half a grandson.
My love takes me dancing on a Saturday night. My love fills my head with romance and we never leave the house.
Sometimes, when I can’t resist being drawn towards my love; I leave my husband alone for hours with the poodles and the television. But he doesn’t seem to mind. He too has a first love which he has been driven to reclaim. We are not the center of each other’s world, as we were at thirty; yet, we share our hearts, our love, his money and our home, even as we each let our first love take us away from each other’s side. We each dance to our own song.
I watch my husband play with his first love and his excitement makes me smile. Although I watch him and I sometimes catch the thrill, his first love belongs to him alone and I am just a spectator.
My husband drag races on Saturday nights and as he crosses the finish line for yet another win, I feel my adrenaline surge. I understand his first love and the money he spends to keep it alive.
He in turn understands my need to write, often until the wee hours of the morning. He takes me shopping to buy a computer and a printer, tools that make it easier for me to write. He goes to sleep alone many nights, but I tell him, “If you want me honey, just call me and I’ll come in to bed.” Simple words, but he knows exactly what I am saying.
I dare to jump smack into middle-age without fear. My first love, my writing, keeps me on a safe course. Writing is my first love, so where does that leave my husband? He is my Marlboro man, my very own cowboy and no other man could ever take his place. Occasionally, I can even talk him into writing a song with me.
He writes the music that brings my lyrics to life and for one fleeting moment, we dance to the same tune. Until next time, Jeanne Marie
P.S. I wrote this story 23 years ago. I am now learning how to go Over The Hill. I’m stuck on the top, refusing to let go.
moonchild, an anthology of women’s verse and prose, 1976
My first published piece was a poem in moonchild, an anthology of women’s verse and prose. It was published by Suha Publications in 1976. I gave my oldest daughter my only copy of the book because the poem was about her.
Recently, I was searching for another copy, never believing that I would find one, but I found several copies on Amazon.com. I bought two and I was as excited when they arrived last week as I was when my book arrived in 1976.
My first words in print. The experience taught me that I could be published. It validated me as a writer, handed me proof that I was a poet.
If you haven’t been published on paper yet, do it. Submit until you are published. It is not only possible but very likely and the experience will give you wings. You don’t have to be published to be a writer, of course, but it sure is fun!
I’d like to connect with any other women who had her work showcased in this anthology. Are you here on WordPress.com? Odds are against it, but so were the odds of my finding copies of this book anywhere. Maybe we are already following each other!
If you were published in this book and you see my post, contact me here or email me at womenwhothinktoomuch@yahoo.com.
Thanks, Jeanne Marie Pages 69-70.
The Ties That Bind
I want to be a storybook mother
With model children who never cry.
I want to sew and read them stories
Then cook and clean until it’s done.
But I can only be myself
And let my babies be too
Beautiful sweet lovely brats
I couldn’t live without.
I start to cook but have to stop
To wipe a runny nose.
I take a bath and the baby falls in
While supper burns on the stove.
Out for a night I should be glad
But can anyone take my place?
Will they be safe till I get home?
They are in my heart wherever I go.
Jeanne Marie, 1979
What Blogging On WordPress.com Has Taught Me
I started blogging here because I am a writer with a newly published book, (Have to plug it! Women Who Think Too Much, available at this link { available here } but that’s not what I’ve learned on WordPress.com. I already knew that fact. It’s also not why I stay.
Let me begin at the start, but I don’t promise to continue in chronological order.
I used to blog on Google and I enjoyed it. Until I received a hate letter concerning one of my articles I had written about my mother, a letter from a beloved family member.
Delete, unsubscribe, run away, lock every window on the internet where my writing was residing, that’s what I did and I’m not proud of my reaction. No excuses, but it hurt and I was shocked and I was stunned. Ok, I need to take a deep breath. Whew.
That was over two years ago.
Since then I have held my writing close, sharing only with family I trusted and my writer’s group whom I totally trusted, my Pineapple Girls. My girls are invaluable, far beyond the one night a week when we meet and way past the exquisite meals we cook for each other. (The meals may be a minus since I’ve gained twenty pounds!) Another plus to belonging to a writer’s group? I have written more creative essays and poems since we started meeting about three years ago, than I have in the last twenty-years. I also finished a book.
I struggled and whined all the way through editing Women Who Think Too Much, but my muse insisted I finish before I could move on and my muse is a very powerful entity. She obviously expressed herself to my girls.
These writing friends held my hand, dragged me past the hardest spots with words of encouragement, dried my tears and made me laugh, edited, read and challenged me until my book was finished.
My editor, whom I met in the writer’s group, is my best friend and my surrogate sister.
She spent thousands of hours guiding me and editing my endlessly updated manuscripts. She even learned how to format a manuscript on Smashwords.com, for me.
For months, she lived and she breathed my book, never pushing changes on me, just suggesting. I rejected hours and hours of her changes and she was okay with that. She is a one in a million editor. Still, many of her suggestions worked, because she could detach from the emotions and focus on structure and grammar so much better than I could. In the end though, I think she was so deep into my book that we were equal on the emotional involvement.
(If you want to know any more about what I went through finishing a twenty-year old project read, “Hi Mom, This Is Me” on my blog.)
https://womenwhothinktoomuch.wordpress.com/2013/04/22/497/
Anyway, back to what I have learned while visiting your blogs here at WordPress.com.
Today I learned what the word Lepidopterologist (Noun) means. I am a butterfly lover and a collector of butterfly pictures but when I saw this word on Theresa’s blog, dba Third Hand Art, Butterfly In Clover, I just had to stop and look it up.
Lepidopterist: Butterfly collector, bug-hunter, bugologist, entomologist, a zoologist who studies insects, the branch of zoology dealing with butterflies and moths. WOW!
I have come upon other unfamiliar words here, but what I’ve learned is far beyond new words.
I’ve learned that writers, artists and creative people are as a whole, generous with their praise and liberal with their encouragement. Many writers are as crazy as I am, but they are proud of it and accept it as integral to who they are and they use it to their advantage in their intensely moving writing.
You make me think, you make me laugh and you make me cry. Thank you.
The stuff I have hidden for twenty-years in draws or in computer files marked “Personal, destroy if I’m dead.” can now come out of the dark and play with others on WordPress.com.
I want to thank each and every blogger I have visited; you have each touched my writer’s spirit in one way or another. Thank you for not hiding as I did. Thank you for sharing your joy, your success, your pain and your disasters.
Thank you for commenting on my stuff when you are no doubt as pressed for time as I am, thank you for noticing what I post, whether it’s noontime or midnight.
I have learned that while I’m sometimes different in my approach to writing, I am not unique. My writing is not outrageous, as most people in my family have told me. (Family members who have encouraged me, you know who you are.) Sometimes my writing is raw, but it is always honest and sometimes it’s funny. That’s me and that is okay. You taught me that.
There are so many incredible writers and creators on WordPress.com that my only regret is that I don’t have enough time to read every line you write, to absorb every picture you post.
I have learned that there is a place where I can belong, a niche made just for me, and it is here, with you. I came to try to build a platform and I stayed to share who I am, to meet you and to enjoy your work.
Thank you, Jeanne Marie
https://womenwhothinktoomuch.wordpress.com/2013/05/17/journal-excerpts/
PS We call ourselves girls because when we are together we are girls, laughing and playing.
I Was
Creating An Effective Resume
August Is Gone
September 2012
August Is Gone
I thought about it. Maybe I’ll take the month of August off and go to a place where I can be alone and I can think for myself. Make my own decisions. My birthday was last week and I turned fifty-nine. How did I get from twenty-seven to fifty-nine so quickly?
Why did I not realize that not making a decision and sleeping my time away so that I wouldn’t think, was a decision in itself?
The days blur together and the months sneak past, quick as the black racer snake that lives in my garden, slithering by my feet as fast as a bubble can burst.
My bubble has burst many times, but I just waited among the shadows for another bubble to shelter me. There is always another bubble I think and there will always be another August, even though I know that all I have this is very minute.
No, I let another August pass me by and I sit here wondering, how, why? What if that was my last and final August?
It seems like yesterday that I was diapering my babies and now, they are grown.
My arms and my hands are empty and just as surely as my babies grew too large to hold in my arms, August is gone.
Happy Father’s Day Dad, Where Ever You Are
FATHERS AND DAUGHTERS
PIECES OF THE PUZZLE
What type of man was your father when you were growing up? According to therapeutic folklore, every choice we make as women, every man we choose to love, stems from our relationship with our father. Whoa boy, if that’s true, then I’m in trouble! How about you? To all the daughters who had caring, nurturing and supportive fathers—congratulations!
To the other 95.9 % of my readers, keep reading.
Don’t get me wrong–I love my dad. I’m not quite sure why, but I think it’s probably quite simple–he’s my dad and I have been able to wring some sweetness from the most bitter of childhood memories even though Dad was a self-centered, angry, paranoid, schizophrenic, insane alcoholic.
He began going to A.A. when I was eleven but he continued to drink.
I was twenty-six and had been recovering from my own alcoholism for about three years when I ran into him at an A.A. meeting and we went out after the meeting for coffee.
Fighting for my own life, I asked him, “Dad, why did you always go back to drinking, after you knew how to stop? Why didn’t you stay sober?”
I’m sure he didn’t think before he answered, “I never thought any of you were worth it.”
His words stunned me. Over the next few weeks, his kindness to my two young daughters removed the sting caused by his uncaring answer.
When I watched him play with his granddaughters, I knew he cared, even if he wouldn’t admit it to himself.
When I was pregnant with my third child, I was in the middle of a painful divorce and still learning to face life with all of its stark reality. My dad had been sober a few months and he was sleeping in his truck. He had a job earning just forty-five dollars a week, but he refused my offer to move in with my kids and me and he would only come in my house to shower and shave.
One day, soon after my son was born, Dad left a note with his weekly gift in my mailbox.
I have saved and treasured that scrap of paper for over thirty years.
In spite of the pain and the scars, I’m glad I can still wring some goodness from my dad’s parenting. I’m grateful to my dad for introducing me to A.A. at a very young age. I respect the attempts he made to stay sober because I know from my own early struggles that there were days when staying sober resembled holding a mountain over my head with one hand tied behind my back. I’m thankful for the few months he was sober with me because he talked to me and he was kind. I loved the portrait he painted of my oldest daughter and I loved sitting at A.A. meetings with him by my side, sober and smiling.
His sobriety only lasted for a few months, but I will always treasure that time.
Sadly, I’ve often wondered what would have become of my dad if Prozac had been on the market forty years ago. He suffered from severe mental illness and treatment in the 60’s and 70’s consisted of Librium and Valium to control his mood swings and possibly calm his rages. (They didn’t.) Being an alcoholic, he became addicted to the drugs. When his craziness overwhelmed him, as it often did, even when he was sober, he would drink.
We know that a father teaches his young daughter how to win the love of a man and if we can’t reach our own dad, much of our adult energy will be drained, trying to rewrite the script and wasting time craving a happy ever after with the men in our lives.
Seeking to earn the love of a man who is psychologically crippled or emotionally unavailable, maybe even abusive, will feel comfortable, familiar. It’s also a dead-end street, a highway to heartbreak, an exercise in futility, etc.
Sadly enough, love doesn’t change people who don’t want to change and as I have learned the hard way, even people who want to change have a fierce struggle with changing.
Sometimes the opposite is true and we enable unacceptable behavior by accepting it and by loving too much. No man or woman is all good or all bad, but as women who grew up with abusive dads, we are so often blinded by our need for love and our longing for approval that we allow the men in our lives to hurt us, emotionally and/or physically.
Time’s Ravage
Try to stop the
Hands of time,
Hold this moment
For it is mine.
Try to stop the
Silver in my hair,
Stop time’s ravage
Silent as a tear.
The fat that rests
Upon my thighs,
The damned mirror
With reflective lies.
Why don’t I feel
As old as my face?
Of the child inside
I see not a trace.
I cannot stop the
Hands of time,
With each day
Its damages I find.
But time cannot steal
The child inside
It shall not claim
The girl I hide.
by Jeanne Marie
Creating An Effective Resume
![IMAG1700_1[1]](https://womenwhothinktoomuch.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/imag1700_11.jpg)
The easiest way to teach you to elaborate on your skills and talents, is to show you my own resume as an example. After you read this, if you still need help, please email me and I’ll be glad to read over your resume. I’ll even add my own touches to help you enhance it.
Women Who Think Too Much Publications
Publisher, Editor: Jeanne Marie
OBJECTIVE
To obtain a challenging position within your company’s structure while earning above average pay, working part time hours and securing a position with potential for advancement. This will be a second job, so don’t expect too much of me and I hope your objective isn’t to harass me if I’m late for work. Problems that arise at home do have priority.
QUALIFICATIONS
Hands On–I can change dirty diapers, wash baby bottles, wipe the green snot off the face of a runaway child, wash hair that doesn’t want to be washed, nurture your plants and keep your vaporizer clean, full and running.
I’ve washed close to a trillion dishes, changed numerous bed linens, wallpapered and painted nine homes and three apartments, hung curtains with nothing but a butter knife and rearranged extremely heavy furniture. (You do offer health insurance, right? Good! My back has been killing me.)
I’ve over a million hours’ experience in laundry and ironing. I’ve cleaned rugs that have been vomited on by children, guests, dogs or worse, and I’ll vacuum under your desk.
STAMINA
I once spent an entire winter hanging over a vaporizer with a twenty-pound toddler in my hands.
I can go weeks without sleep and still perform my duties.
I’ve cleaned and taken care of three children while my body was down with the flu and my mind was up with the anxiety.
I’ve supervised the same hell raising, fist fighting and bored kids on many cold or rainy days and I have endured over a thousand torturous school vacations. We suffered no fatalities, self-inflicted or otherwise. (And that was before Prozac.)
I’ve moved at least fifty times in thirty-five years, packed, unpacked and carried most of the stuff into and out of the moving truck, then back into the truck and out and in and out…you get the idea, I’m sure. I’ve even been allowed to take one end of the refrigerator. Thankfully, not the end that fell on someone’s knees. Hey, I told him I needed to rest a minute!
NURTURING SKILLS
I can starve a cold and feed a fever with one hand, while blindfolded, hopping on one leg. I’ll bring home-baked goods to work, at least once a week and often I’ll bring a hot meal too. (No, I don’t do it so everyone will like me. Well, maybe I do, so what?)
I know every allergist and pediatrician within a fifty-mile radius and most of the veterinarians.
I can guess your temperature by putting my hand on your forehead and I can nurse you if you get chicken pox, strep throat, diarrhea, the flu, ear infections or a cold. Managing your asthma and seasonal allergies are optional and will cost extra.
I’ve turned filthy, squalid apartments into clean, cozy homes and I’m sure I can do the same for your dumpy office. A few plants, a lot of hard work, a little paint from Wal-Mart and you won’t recognize the place.
NEGOTIATING SKILLS
Superb, due to weekly meetings over a span of twelve years with principals and teachers who wanted to throw my youngest child (the one my own mother wouldn’t baby-sit) out of school. I’ve also learned how to take the blame for my husband and my children’s actions and in the workplace that can be a very helpful tool. If you screw up, I’ll be there, ready and waiting to take the blame.
COURAGE
I’ve had three C-sections, one emergency and two planned.
I work well under pressure and I have bravely gone where most women dare not go–under the beds and into the closets.
I gave my hand (and my brain) in marriage, not once, but twice. Case closed.
JOB HISTORY
FREE LANCE WRITER
My Favorite Awards:
National Dean’s List 1994-1995
Survived Motherhood Without Becoming A Vegetable Award, 1996 (Self Bestowed)
NURSES AIDE, NURSING HOMES
Same as infant care, but duties involved much larger bodies, huge diapers and very odorous bowel movements. Daily contact with lonely people who had raised their kids and sometimes their grandkids, relatives who now visited them once a year. Socializing with people who’d hold onto my hand and beg me to stay when my shift was over because, “You’re all I have.” And it was true.
DAYCARE PROVIDER, MY HOME
Took care of other women’s children for ten years. The working mamas chased a career and I chased after their kids so that I could earn money while staying home with my own little angels. Once, I had three toddlers calling me Mama and my kids were all in school. Daycare had become a safe habit, but that’s when I knew it was time to move on.
WAITRESS\BARTENDER\MANAGEMENT
Slinging hash, taking verbal abuse from customers, carrying huge trays of food over my head most often through narrow aisles, picking up dirty dishes, taking verbal abuse from bosses, serving drinks and always, always, working with a smile on my face. Very similar to mothering, except for the smile.
EDUCATION
Quit school at 15-years old. Earned my GED in 1981 at age 27.
Rogers State College 1994-1995
Twenty-One Credit Hours, achieved under duress. (Re: Article, “When The Kids Grow Up.)
INTERESTS & HOBBIES
INTERESTS
Interested in having a life, thank you! I’m also interested in hiring someone to clean my house. Do you know anyone?
Activities involve thinking too much, writing it down and publishing it. Cleaning too much and hating it.
HOBBIES
My hobbies include photography, planting flowers that should win awards, avoiding baby-sitting or raising any of my fourteen grandkids and fighting with my computer until dawn. (Computer always wins.)
COMPUTER SKILLS
Obviously.
SPECIAL TALENTS, MISCELLANEOUS, FRINGE BENEFITS EXPECTED
SPECIAL TALENTS
I know a resume should be short but as you can see, with all my qualifications and experience that would be impossible. I also type, about 10 words per minute. (I’m very poor on the spelling.) I’m an expert on the phone, unless it’s one of those damn new smart phones. I will run your errands, pay your bills, pick out and sign your Mother’s Day cards.
I also write a blog, short stories, poetry and I am working on two novels and five children’s books.
I can write excellent excuse notes while half asleep, without thinking.
BTW, if I’m up all night writing, I will call in sick the next day.
MISCELLANEOUS
I’m applying by email because I don’t have a power suit. However, I’ll have a personal shopper help me find one if the job requires it. (I seriously hope not.)
I won’t wear pantyhose or high heels, under any conditions!
I’d expect to be reimbursed for the power suit, of course, as a man has always paid for my clothes and I see no reason to change my routine at sixty-two years old. I really do need a second job, even though I don’t have any free time, so I hope you hire me.
FRINGE BENEFITS EXPECTED
At my present job, the hours are long, the rewards are few and I hope you can match the stress level.
As I look back over my forty-year career as a wife, mother, grammy, writer, baby-sitter, nurses’ aide, food server and bartender, I realize that I gave my all; plus energy that I didn’t even have, so I’m really burned out.
Therefore, I hope you have a position where I can sit down and keep my thinking to a minimum. (Did I forget to list my stint as an Avon Lady?) I do need a good health insurance plan, as I’ve used up all the benefits on the one my husband has provided, (particularly, the mental health benefits) and I’d like a “Smoker’s High Risk, Accidentally Started At Age 36, Can’t Quit, Dammit I’ve Tried, So You Pay Off No Matter What, Life Insurance Plan.”
PERSONAL DATA
There have been times when I’ve enjoyed my present job.
Nights when I held my newborns, rocked them until dawn, got a hug from a toddler before breakfast or a homemade card from a first grader.
Even better, handprints pressed forever onto construction paper.
Watching my two beautiful daughters each have their own first baby, (which made me very grateful for my three C-sections).
Watching my son, my baby, turn into a large, handsome teenager and then into a daddy.
Watching my grandchildren grow into amazing little people and then, on to young adults. Being presented with three great grandbabies. These have been the high points.
The little love notes my husband still leaves for me to find when I wake up, the way he does the dishes after supper so that I can write and the neurotic phone calls he makes from work each day to see what I’m doing. (Wow, does he flip out if I don’t turn on the cell phone when I go out!) And I even enjoy the way that he’s still jealous, even though I’m a way past middle-aged woman, twenty pounds overweight and too codependent to ever leave.
I love walking on the beach and reading poetry as the sun sets.
STIPULATIONS
I will relocate if your company pays all the moving expenses and you can talk my husband into moving again. We’ll need extra men to help with the refrigerator as my husband still has nightmares about a refrigerator falling on his legs.
Please, feel free to call me between noon and one o’clock EST any Friday, except if it’s the thirteenth and there’s a full moon.
For all other times, email will suffice because if I’m not home, my computer will take your message. I just hope that it will allow me to access my email without having to be re-booted.
Looking forward to hearing from you, but not too soon,
Jeanne Marie
The Milk Carton
Have you seen this child?
She was lost sixty-one years ago
She simply disappeared.
Her present status, I don’t know.
Should we put her on a milk carton
Or leave her to find herself?
Perhaps she is dead and buried or
Baking cookies with the Keebler elves.
Perhaps she dances with wild gypsies
Wild swirling dances that cover her defeat.
Are they bewitched by her radiance
Delighted by her naked madness,
Struck speechless by her insane
Howling beneath a winter’s moon?
The years have surely taken her
I don’t know where she went.
She used to live in my closet
Curled under the heater vent.
She was such a frightened girl
She seldom ventured out.
Could it be that she still exists
Although hidden from clear view?
You might catch a glimpse of her
When I smile at you.
Call her softly, do not shout.
She might dare to laugh or love
Unfolding the lost child inside out.
Angel Of The Wounded Child
Wounded child
Can you hear the
Gentle flap
Of angel’s wings?
Lost in your closet
Of endless memories
Come out of the dark
Don’t be afraid.
The screaming has stopped.
The voices you hear
Exist only in your mind
The storage trunk of the past.
Come, open the present.
He will protect you, this
Angel of the Wounded Child.
You want to die
Lost in your pain
Yet, you have not lived.
Open the door
Take down the walls
Let the healing begin.
Angel of the Wounded Child
A light peering into your closet.
He wants you to
Come out and play
The nightmare is over.
Wake up! Wake up!
Sleep is not a cure.
Come out of the darkness
The light does heal
The secrets, the fears, the past.
by Jeanne Marie
No Action In My Body Today
I had no action in my body today
Just tears
I couldn’t stay.
I had no desire to get dressed
Just tears
I couldn’t repress.
I had no blood left in my veins
Just tears
That I know will stain.
I had no action in my body today
I could not leave
I could not stay.
by Jeanne Marie
Free Falling, Clap Your Hands if You Believe
From My Journal
Free Falling
1-16-2013
I want to be done with this damn, “Women Who Think Too Much” book, but it seems that I have opened Pandora’s Box and my chaotic emotions are pouring forth freely.
Each day, I discover another small truth buried beneath the rubble of my shattered mind, thoughts soaking wet from my soul bleeding all over the tiny, baby truths.
I don’t see the end of this process, but I do see a moment where I lose my way, jump off a bridge or burn this manuscript.
God, I am praying that You will reveal my purpose to me. I have begged You incessantly over the last few years, as you know. As an alternative to jumping off a bridge, which is actually my #1 plan, I am forcing myself to keep editing this book while I wait to hear from You.
I don’t want to die until I finish this book anyway, because I promised my mom, Grace, that I would finish it and that I would publish this “essay.”
BTW, how is she doing up there? She spends so much time down here with me, especially as I am writing. I hope You don’t mind.
Oops! I’m such a ninny. You sent her, didn’t You? Thank you.
Clap Your Hands If You Believe…
2-21-2013
Today, I published my book, “Women Who Think Too Much” on Smashwords.com.
Today, I am a sober, healing, recovering, accepting, believing, codependent Child of the Universe and after twenty-four years of existing as a sober, hurting, resisting, rejecting, bitter, angry, hermit soul, I am loving it.
Finishing this book did that for me. I don’t know what it will do for you, my readers, but at the very least, I want my words to reach out to you, my legions of silent comrades who wear the same size slippers.
I hope to give you a sliver of light to shine on this distressed state of soul called codependency, a drip of faith, a drop of relief to prime the knowledge that you are not alone.
I see now that my goal to complete this damn WWTTM book has saved my life.
Thank you, God.
Sorry for nagging You, I just couldn’t hear You.
I thought You were ignoring me.
All of our years together; and still, I doubted You.
Thankfully, I have heard that Your patience is infinite.
I wonder just how close to the beyond infinity marker I crawled. Nope, don’t tell me.
I might still have some bridge-jumping fantasy kind of days to face, but somehow, I think those days are gone, because now I have a heart filled with glimmers of hope.
Yup, I’m a glimmer girl now.
I have finally accepted that I am what I am, as my mom loved to say.
I am where I need to be, doing what I need to be doing.
I accept that there will be no do-overs.
I accept that I cannot change the past.
I accept my losses.
As I set my book free, springing it from the closet in my mind where I have held it prisoner, isolated and trapped, I feel the flow of positive energy that the Universe has been saving for my coming out. All of my flowering trees and shrubs burst with colorful blooms today. Out of season. Yup. The Universe and my mom are smiling at me, blowing me kisses.
Am I ready to open my own creative, spiritual door and fly? Can I fly with wings that have been clipped by codependent relationships?
Bet your ass I can. I am flying right now.
I just let this book fly and I opened my own cage and walked out the door without fear, without shame.
That’s what finishing this book, this damn book, which I have struggled with since 1998, has taught me.
I just need to keep clapping my hands. I do believe, I do believe…
I Am She
I AM SHE
There was a time when my mother was middle-aged and me?
I was young and naive, not a care in the world; the arrogance of youth was on my side
I was a footloose hippie girl and I thought love was free.
Her skin was firm and tanned, black waves of hair fell to her shoulders
softly surrounding her fair face, bosom quite generous,
legs as fine as any model, she was my mother,
but with flower child simplicity, I used to call her Grace.
She was spirited back then, although she seemed quite old to me,
and how did I become imprisoned while she has learned to fly–a butterfly set free?
Tonight, as I glance into the mirror, my middle-aged face stares back.
Have I become her, and she, the child I used to be?
At seventy-three she’s still a beauty, but time’s fire has burned its’ trail
and when she had a stroke last year,
I realized how deeply she had aged; yet, become so childlike, so frail.
My firm skin, my shapely legs, will soon bow down to time,
much as my bell-bottoms and tie-up tops gave way
to blue jeans and then on to stretch pants and a baggy tee.
I will lose this interval named youth and as I look into her face,
I see my future and
I am she.
by Jeanne Marie
My mom went to play with the angels in 2009.
Be it ever so dysfunctional…there’s no place like home.
Crushing Me
What do I say now, when there’s nothing left?
When I’m gone what will you remember about me?
Will you remember all of my mistakes?
Or will you remember the things I tried to be?
Will you remember the times I held you close?
Or just the times I failed to make the grade?
Will you remember the times our world turned upside down
Allowing black clouds to fog my brain?
Oh God, for love, the price I’ve paid.
Will you remember when I danced in the rain
My arms spread wide up to the clouds or
Will you be left with the times
our love brought you pain?
Looking back across the years
I recall the smiles, but I taste the tears.
So many wrong choices, how could I know
That the pain would go on forever
And that the dying would be so slow?
I see loved ones who have passed on
And I wonder what they think of me.
Do I disappoint them?
Or are they waiting arms open wide?
They say God doesn’t give you more than you can handle
So where did this crushing mountain of grief come from?
And who the f… are they, the invisible ones who say?
How do I start over when there’s nothing left
But regret, remorse, pain, pain, pain and more pain?
Surely, I will die soon enough. I know we all do.
But can I last that long?
How, when I can’t even breathe
With this mountain of pain crushing me, burying me alive?
Will you remember how you always corrected me
As if I were a child who didn’t know her own mind
Until it became true?
Will you remember me loving you?
by Jeanne Marie
The Dress
First you are young
And then you are not
The life that you own is
The life that you bought.
You can’t return it
Like a dress that’s too small
You own it, you wear it, that’s all.
You have to make it fit
My, oh my, what a mess!
It’s torn and it’s tattered
Like an old favorite dress.
Repair the torn out seam
Sew on a missing button
Because once it mattered
It’s an easy decision.
It’s your life, it’s your dress
You own it, you wear it, that’s all.
by Jeanne Marie
Excerpt From Women Who Think Too Much, The Newsletter
In My Heart
Jennifer Jean
They never tied the cord when
they tore you from my womb.
We are flesh woven together
like yarn on the weaver’s loom.
I’ve never cut you loose
connected by bloody strands,
I hide them deep in my soul
as you push away my hands.
A separate fragment of myself
removed and set apart.
Could it be that a piece of you
was left inside my heart?
by Jeanne Marie
What Sort Of Woman?
Eighteen hundred miles from here there’s a place that she calls home, but it isn’t.
She left it behind long ago, this gypsy’s child who could not deny her urge to roam.
On the distant shore she still calls home there’s ocean air she longs to breathe…
the endless blue she aches to see, winds that howl all the way to her heart,
”Come home to me.”
When her longing for the ocean overwhelms her senses, she goes.
Sand castles that take so long to build; yet, never meant to last.
Waves that crash ice cold, slap against her legs, deliver burning blows, sting away her past.
As she tries to absorb the ocean through her skin the surf takes her pain and
batters it away, beats it senseless against her shins cleansing the memories from her head.
The salt in the air, the sun on her face must go straight to her head, drive her half insane
because what sort of woman lifts her body off the sand but lets her soul remain?
Still, home is just a word she doesn’t care much to define and her soul knows where it belongs.
In the early morning hours, one last plunge, she shares the waves with a wayward dog.
Their eyes meet, sentiment is shared, “This ocean it is mine, for this moment, it is mine!”
Dried kelp, empty crab shells, seaweed, rocks, she gathers with a fury she can’t explain
because what sort of woman flies to the ocean and attempts to carry it back home on a plane?
She hauls back a suitcase filled with rocks, stones of every shape and hue.
Still her ocean slips away, not even this gypsy woman can possess the bewitching blue.
She flies away, minus her soul, maybe she’ll return to stay, maybe when she is old.
Painted by many, photographed by even more, none have ever captured
the Lady’s true essence nor managed to carry home the sandy shore.
“I want to live at the ocean,” she tells him when she walks off the plane.
He mourns for the longing in her eyes, her lust for oceanfront property undisguised.
She knows the answer before he speaks, money stands between the ocean and her door.
She’ll have to settle for a visit each summer.
Meanwhile she’s returned to frozen lobster, dirty dishes and unwashed floors.
She gently arranges her cache of shells, goes back to work not quite resigned.
“If I ever sell a book,” she whispers, “I know which cottage I’ll call mine.”
Women Who Think Too Much by Jeanne Marie 
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