Perspective is all that matters.

People have been classed all throughout history, those who consider themselves better than or worse because of many different factors.  Sex, race, finances and religion are classifications that are normally the measure that the uneducated or indoctrinated use. I am always very surprised when I am conversing with another wanderer in this widows world who still classes people. In my 27 months on this journey, it never ceases to amaze me that someone always needs to be more hurt than someone else to validate their grief. Death is the great equalizer.

First are the ones who, regardless of the circumstance, will always think what happened to them is worse than someone else. The ones who lost quickly tell ones who fought a long battle, "Well at least you got to say goodbye. I didn't even get that." The ones who strapped up everyday for war tell the ones who's world ended in the blink of an eye, "At least you didn't have to watch them die everyday, a piece at a time." In truth no way is better or easier than the other because the end result was the same. No one is more valid in their grief than anyone else. I have begun to actually stop answering the questions. If I want you to know what happened, I will tell you, but in my time and not on demand. There is no reason to press me for answers unless you simply have no manners. When I have to say the words "I am a widow" I try to say it without inflection or indication that I want to discuss it further. When the person presses further and says "What happened?" I simply reply, "He died." That should be enough of an answer for anyone. Somehow them prying into my life is seen as okay. It simply exhausts me. Why can we not simply say "I am so sorry for your loss. You have my deepest condolences." and leave it there? Why must one qualify their loss? Cancer, heart attacks, car accidents, HIV, suicides, old age, drug and alcohol addiction, or anything else that took your spouse is a vicious beast that ripped your life apart. Maybe you fought Godzilla and I had a nuclear explosion, nevertheless we are both on the same road. 

The second qualifier that drives me to distraction is the children. Let me explain something to you ladies and gentlemen, the fact that my son is 22 and your son is 2 makes me no less a single parent than you. My problems with the situation may be different than yours, but they are still issues addressed as a single mother. You have dance class and chicken pox. I have car insurance and job interviews. But, I still face these things alone. While you are upset that the deceased parent won't see all the home-runs, perfect pirouettes, straight A grade-cards and Christmas mornings, I am wrestling that my son's father will never see him get married, settled in a good job, hold his first grandchild, or teach him to hang a blind  in his first house. Simply because he doesn't live under my roof doesn't mean I don't worry that he is clean, well fed, safe and healthy. I know what you're doing alone, and I know it's hard, but don't look at someone else and say "At least the children are grown."  Don't say "Those children will never know that parent" and not think about the ones who remember the last seconds of their parents lives. Although the damage is different its still damage. Just because my issue is something with a different skill set, doesn't mean I don't cry myself to sleep at night, sick with worry of what tomorrow will bring. We are all single parents. Why must your parenting issues be worse than mine? The simple answer is because your perspective is inside your life and mine is from inside my life. If we stop looking to be more important or our loss more significant than the next ones, we just might be able to help one another and not be quite so alone.  Yes, I successfully raised a teenager. I've been where you are standing. I might know a little something to assist with your problem. You're closer to my son's age than I and your perspective on a situation might just shed new light for me as well. Others look at a surviving spouse without children and say "At least there are no children involved." which is a fallacy as well. They can look at you and say "You have part of your loved one living on in your child." Perspective is all that matters. 

Then there are the people who do well with support groups and the ones who can not abide them. I have heard "You need to find a good group to support you." I have also heard "Those groups are the worst thing because you cannot heal by tearing the wound open again and again." For myself, I simply don't get much out of the experience. I am somewhat self contained. Walking into a group of strangers with all those different agendas is simply not conducive to my sanity. I am a very private person. I don't rip myself open and bleed for just anyone. For many others they are real life savers. They glean insight and gain support in that arena. They flourish in that structure. I am always happy for someone who finds a place to lean. But because it doesn't work for me, doesn't mean there is something wrong with me. It simply means I don't do well with that program.

What works for you may not work for me. The one thing that holds true for all of us is that if we don't work our grief, it will work us. Lean into it and feel it all. There is no way around it. There is no way over it or under it. We must walk through it. Shoulder to shoulder. Some will hold hands and some will not. The major component is that when one does reach out, there is a hand to hold rather than a finger to point. There is an answer to be found to every question. There is also something to be said for "I don't know but lets find out together."

Cold Rolled and Comfortable

This time of year I get a little quiet. I’m taking stock of my life. Where I have been and where I want to go. The plans I made a year ago in relation to the progress I’ve made throughout the year. Some things I have passed with flying colors, others were mediocre and a few were complete failures. Birthdays used to be a time of celebration for me. Now it’s a bit different. I used to mark time in the years I have been on earth. Now I mark time by how long I have been here in the widow’s world. I am sure it will change at some point but I tend to be a realist and live where I am at the moment.

Since my birthday is in July, it was never anything big with my friends. My family celebrated it every year. Because I grew up in such a rural area, I never had friends there from school and we didn’t live in a neighborhood. In fact I actually never had a party until my 42nd birthday. It was five months after his death and my son threw the party for me. His is 2 weeks before mine and I actually think we celebrated together to keep from going insane. His friends and mine meshed together in one night. They stayed until dawn and it was okay. The darkness did not swallow me that night as it did many others and still does from time to time.

Last year I ran. I went to the coast and pretty much hid for the week. This year I’m going to face it flat footed. That is simply my personality. I don’t really have a fight or flight reflex. I have a “well it really can’t kill me” reflex. I’ve always been that way. Monsters in the basement? Let me go down there in the dark. A friend of mine told me today they are going to a family reunion with someone they aren’t related to because “they uncomfortable driving that far alone.” I simply don’t understand that mentality. I live in uncomfortable. If it makes me uncomfortable, I will do it or die. I’m not necessarily as much fearless as foolish I think.

My late husband was a manufacturing engineer who worked with metal. I learned a lot about the processes that were involved in his work. Then I look at my moniker of the real deal steel magnolia. All steel is made through fire. Forged in the flame the impurities burn off. Yes, I have walked through some fire. Granny always said “It takes an awful hot fire to make steel.” What she neglected to tell me is that steel is a raw material and it has to be made into something to be valuable.

That is the process that I am living through at the moment. It would be easier if it were a hot process. It would be comfortable. I understand fire. I have often said I vacation in hell. The best, most pure, strongest steel is cold rolled. Hellish pressure. At 50 degrees versus over 1000 degrees. It takes time. It hurts. I don’t understand the cold. I don’t remember life outside the fire.

I am learning to live in the cold. Outside the heated stares of people. Outside the flames of whispers and rumor. The fire I can do in my sleep. The cold is much harder for me. Cold is a cup of coffee on the steps with my morning cigarette with no one watching. Being forgotten in the world I used to inhabit. Cold is not speaking verbally to anyone for an entire weekend at times. Looking up at 11 pm from a book and realizing I haven’t eaten all day because I didn’t remember.

In some form or another I have always lived for other people. Worked hard to make someone proud. Lived in the sunlight of someone’s love and approval. I could have run right out and found another someone to live for I suppose. I would have still been steel but the hot rolled product. The cold rolled process is harder but it is best. The finished process carries less imperfections and impurities. In this method I am learning to live for me. To get my own approval. I am quite the perfectionist, so for myself I will be the best me and made out of the best materials available in heaven and hell. I have been through both and I desire to return to neither. The magnolia will be finished in cold rolled steel.

The Weight of Guilt and Grief

Sometimes I feel like Ross Perot's running mate Jim Stockdale when he was in the vice presidential debate. "Who am I and what am I doing here?" I get asked a lot "Where have you been and what are you doing?" The easy answer is "Oh I am around, just sort of quiet these days." The truth is a tad more complicated. I am working hard to progress out of my dark place and to find the light. I laugh and smile a lot more these days. I am trying to learn to embrace my new self. Yet at times I feel guilty. Guilty that I want to move on. Guilty that I want to be happy. Guilty that someone might think that I have forgotten. I am guilty of many things, but these are not among them.

I have reentered the dating world. Sometimes successfully and sometimes not so much. I've opened my heart. It was so much  easier to be cold and unfeeling because everything hurt. I still have some cleaning up to do as I am still dealing with some cobwebs and some peeling paint from the remodel after the storm. Trust me FEMA ain't got an insurance policy for a demolished heart. So I packed it away in its many pieces and have slowly began to reassemble that part of me. Now I have to be watchful and not allow it to be injured as the newly rebuilt heart settles into position. I have to be willing to lose someone in order for me to even get a glimpse at what the future could hold with them. How much I am willing to be hurt depends on how much I value the person I suppose. I am into self preservation these days. If that is a crime then I am guilty.

I have put men on the friend list for many reasons. I am learning to be selfish. It's not that I cannot share, its that I simply don't want to share. I take up some room in a man's life and he needs to be able to accommodate me. I am unwilling to sit in the backseat of some one's life because of other obligations that were there before me. Needy children, neurotic parents, psychotic exes, unreasonable paranoia over passed illnesses or just plain baggage made up of crazy are not things that I am willing to step back for in my love life. I don't blame the fellas for having lives before me, but when those things bleed into my relationship with him, that's when I will pick up my keys and walk away. I have been told that I date like a man. So be it. I date like a woman who will not settle. I have raised my son and am ready to have a man to myself. If that is a crime, then I am guilty.

I am ready to shed my formal widow's title. I am tired of being either villanized or canonised because of my loss. I am tired of people judging me or my life because of the loss of my husband. I have grown tired of explaining color to the blind. I have my own identity and I want a life that is mine. People will always judge me. I understand that completely. However, I said long ago I would not wave my flag forever. I think it would be most unfair to a new man in my life to lament and forever be identified as a widow. I want to be the new me. A little older, a little wiser and a whole lot more myself. Although I spent well over 20 years in that one relationship, it will not define me. I cannot, nor should I be expected, to grieve myself to death. If that is a crime, then I am most certainly guilty.

I will always write about my journey through grief for I will always be on that road. The losses in my life have been many but none of the wounds to my soul were mortal. I will not always lament what could or in my mind should have been. I want to progress through this and grow.  I have spoken to many widows who feel the same and yet are afraid to voice it to their peers because they fear they will be judged. They want to be happy mothers and girlfriends and yes even happy wives. It doesn't make them or me any less than the ones who will judge, nor their grief more valid. It simply means we are working our grief rather than being a slave to the pain. Our children, family and friends need us. They need to feed from our strength and watch us bloom again. Even if you and yours aren't ready, me and mine are. So, if that is a crime, once more, I am guilty.

Lastly, the weight of grief is relative. The weight you give mine is relative to the weight I will give yours. My loss is no more profound than yours. Your loss is no more profound than his.  I get really tired of seeing people climb up on the rooftop of their lives and shout to hear the sound of their own voice. You're yelling to hear yourself above the noise in your own head. To me that is a symptom having no idea who the hell you are and not a result of losing a spouse. You built your life around someone or something, I did the same thing. But never doubt that before I knew I was a widow, I knew who I was as a person. I was lost in the mix for a minute, but I can stand flatfooted and say I know who I am. You have suffered a grievous loss. You are on a rough road. We hear you. The fact that you have small children, you have grown children, that you have no children, that you are a female, that you are male, that you are young or old, has no weight in this conversation. We are all in this hellish club that we didn't want to join and if listening to you yell is the price of being your friend, let me off this bus now. Because I am healing and if that is a crime, yes ma'am I am guilty as charged.


If you want to talk to me about your journey, grief, or recovery, I am here. If you need to vent, laugh, cry, question, measure or try to understand something, I am here. But if you come to me with issues that show that your grief out weighs mine because of the circumstances of your life, I will have no time for you. I want to move forward, learn, live, laugh and yes love. If that is a crime, I am guilty.

The Sacred and The Profane

As I am hurled closer and closer to the two year anniversary of his death, I am learning things about myself. Things that are neither good nor bad but different than what they were before that day dawned. What I thought of the world and what I think of the world. One can not survive not one, but two, catastrophic life events and not be forever changed. The aftershocks continue long afterward and spill into every corner of ones life.

The first event was the suicide of my brother. It is a subject that I seldom broach but one that I suppose I should cover at some point. My brother and I were only siblings and the best of friends. In fact, our last Christmas, we actually bought each other identical clocks. We started a correspondence years before his passing with the understanding that when a letter was finished it was to be mailed with misspellings and all of the mistakes. An unedited conversation that went on for a long time. Those letters are sacred to me. When he left this world, I was as broken as I thought I would ever be in this life. I was cold inside and angry with God. Then God and I had a knock down, drag out, fist fight concerning the taking of him from me. A light bulb came on in my head. I came to the conclusion that I should be thankful for the 35 years I had with him rather than to count the 35 or so I will spend without him.

The changes around me were not as severe but they were a foreshadowing of things to come. I distanced myself from my family. I found their response to his death profane. It was hushed and silent as though it had never happened. As though he had never existed. Yet here I stood screaming in my heart. His belongings that were not in my possession were simply sold in yard sales or given to charities. Shirts were made into cleaning cloths with which he was wiped from the face of the earth it seemed. When he wrote his last letter, he burned every card and letter from me. Those ashes scattered across my hometown but the secrets of my heart were taken to the grave with him. 

The second catastrophic event is the one everyone knows about. But I am learning in grief. What is sacred to me are things that no one else would see. The sacred is who we were. What we did. The son we produced. The profane is the loss of him. The loss of his family to me and my son. The loss the future I had planned. As much as I have ever grieved Richard, I grieve my hopes and dreams. I grieve the pictures in my minds eye that will never see the exposure of real life. I grieve my belief in forever. It is profane to me that I cannot yet look at people and not think “Do you not even remember that he ever existed?”

The tears that I have shed since the first event have now bled into the tears from the second. I would love to say that the torrent has slowed but it has simply retreated into the darkness. I refuse to grieve in public. The people around me before have simply faded into the background noise that I now ignore. In trying to reenter this strange planet, widows walk a strange road. We never know what to say to make the other inhabitants feel comfortable. When I am asked “Are you single?” I should be able to answer “I am a widow” without the obligatory “It’s okay” to make them more at ease. When in a group conversation, I should be able to share my sacred memories with a light in my eyes rather than casting them to the floor as though I have said something profane to silence the entire room. The sacred is that I can remember now. The profane is that I am not allowed to forget. 

Today I wandered to a place of peace in a little grove of trees. I sat down on the bench and looked at the beautiful black granite and read his name through my tears for a while. Then a magic thing happened, I saw myself reflected there. The headstone did exactly what I wanted when I designed it. I wanted our son, his family and friends to look past the words of his death and to see themselves. We must remember that as profane it is how much of us as he took with him, that there is much of him left in us that is sacred.

Hurricanes, Rosecolored Glasses and the Vapors

When a catastrophic life event happens, it is a landmark on the map of ones life. Sadly, most of the people from your life before this event are not going to make it into the life you lead afterward. As I am coming out of this hellish season of my life, I am shedding most of the people who knew me before the storm began. Some left immediately and others left when it got a bit too cold or the flood waters got a tad too deep. Not all relationships are strong enough to bend when hurricane force winds blow though ones life. Granny always told me, “People come into your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime.“ During these 18 months I have seen all three come to fruition. I am only now learning some things about me and the people I keep around me, as well as who I was before and who I am now. The panicked silence of my grief is lifting and I can actually hear what people who genuinely care about me have to say. My logical thinking has returned and I can examine things in an objective manner that is unclouded by things that were said and done in the fog of grief.

One of my friends, whom is also a widow, and I have talked extensively about our late husbands. When we speak of our lives before and after, the information we glean from one another can be an absolute revelation. The most important thing that I have learned from our conversations is that we must remove our rose colored glasses and look at whom we actually lost. Both of us are southern girls and were raised to “never speak ill of the dead.” Yes, I said the word. Not passed on, not gone home, not even lost, but dead. For all of the polite words used for what happened to them and the lives we knew, both are in fact, dead. They were human beings, and as such, as flawed as any one that remains here on Earth. Our relationships were living, breathing things that died the day one of us took our last breaths. We cannot truly grieve until we put these canonized ghosts that haunt our pasts to rest and look at them, as well as our lives, in the cold light of day. The details are lost in the thousands of words that make up the conversations with a good friend that change the way one sees the world. But the ultimate truth that remains is one of the truest statements I have ever made in my life. The heart cannot grieve a lie. The truth is, we loved them then for who they were. The lie is that we love them now for who we wish they had been. Unless and until we come to grips with the realities of the relationship, there is no way to heal. When the cracks in the lie begin to show, it rips us open anew.

Another dear friend and I have talked extensively about other things. He is the father of grown children and sees things through eyes I do not yet possess. He gently walked me through one of the hardest things I will ever do as a parent. Learning that I have to transition from my sons Mommy into his Mother. In my panic that my place with my son was shrinking, I was making myself obsolete in his life. Mommy binds up the wounds, cuts and scrapes that life deals our children. She forces her will upon her children because she simply knows what is best. Decisions a child doesn’t understand are met with the simple answer “because I said so” and the problem ends right there. What I couldn’t see is that my son is an adult and I was trying to remain his Mommy to make everything better. When I made the transition into letting him make his own decisions, right or wrong, I became his Mother. By letting him go I have drawn him closer to me. I am his confidant. I learned to say “How can I help?” rather than “This is what we will do.”  In doing this I became unafraid to say “I don’t know.” The difference is that now I stand behind him rather than in front of him. While I have made my transition, he has made sound decisions and great strides to secure his future. When the pressure of one of us disappointing the other was removed, we could proceed into an adult relationship. I am not responsible for his life and it is his to live.

I was speaking with yet another friend and the topic turned to people who try to drag us into the drama that surrounds them. Our views on these people are very similar. Everyone has an issue every now and then, but if the nexus for your life is always in disarray, then the common denominator is you. If you are constantly looking for validation by causing conflict around you, perhaps the question should be, “What is missing within you that causes you to look for that attention?” I have, for the most part, extricated myself from the drama queens  who were around me. I simply stopped answering their cries of wolf. I have made a conscious decision to be happy. I try to look at each day as a shiny new thing that will bring me to something good. The people I am keeping around me these days are positive and want good things for me. The last friend noticed a marked difference in my countenance. In his words, I am lighter and much easier in day to day conversation. He noted that I am a loving, supportive and gentle soul who loves the people around me right where they are in life. I accepted his compliment without a qualification from me.  That is not something I would normally do but I am learning.

When I first started writing I stated that I could not crack the code on this widow thing. I am getting there. The correct combination is coming to me and now I can see the path I must follow. What I have discovered is that if I spend less time looking at what is gone, I can accurately see what is here. In order to reach for the solid things I want in my future, I must release my grasp on the vapor that is my past. I was always fascinated by storms as a child. My cousins would run to Granny crying but she had to call me inside. I was always standing fearless in the rain trying to watch the show. It was then Granny told me to remember when it was the coldest and the darkest during a storm, others would run from the thunder and lightening. She told me to always remember the louder the sound the further the danger and that flash of light was to remind me that daylight was just on the other side. This long night is almost over. Daybreak is coming.

Sand, A Good Book and A New Perfume

So all week I have been in dread of this day. One of my best friends and I actually took off for the coast of the Carolina's to get me away from everything last Sunday afternoon. A lazy place that was made famous by the likes of Robert Mitchum and Robert DeNiro. Its called the Cape Fear area. A quiet and sleepy place on the coast. No plans and no hurry. When we got in the car we told no one when we would return.

I walked the beach and looked at the water. I felt small like one must beside something so big and powerful as the Atlantic. The sun was setting and the moon rising at the same time. Shells in the sand left by the tide and footprints that are taken. One must find peace in such a place. I did just that with a good book and a pack of smokes. No internet access or cable television. In the quiet of my head, I was alone with myself.

The next day we got up and moved through the town. Methodically looking at souvenirs and antiques. Nothing to do and no where to be. We went down and sat on the benches of the river between the ocean and the intercoastal waterway. I watched the birds and the people. A big pair of sunglasses, a black ball cap and some 50 SPF.  When we got back I crashed and slept for a fitful few hours and then up for the evening. Dinner at a nice but casual place. Laughter on the pier watching some unknown fireworks.

When we decided to come home on Wednesday, we took our time before leaving. Singing in the car.  A wonderful lunch and some driving around looking at things we want to return to see again. Some hot sauce for D’s collection. A fruitless search for t shirts and flip-flops. Nothing to stress. A happy road-trip home.

I walked into the apartment and thought that the heaviness would greet me at the door like a forgotten house-guest. That the stench of grief would be on my bed linens when I pillowed my head that night. When the sun rose I awoke with an unfamiliar expression. I found myself humming as I made my coffee and stepped out in the sun for a smoke. There was a new fragrance surrounding me though just a whiff. It was so unfamiliar to me that it took me until today to decipher its perfume.

You see, today is my birthday. My second as a widow. But I am healing. I am reaching. Last week I walked outside and noticed a Magnolia in bloom. I thought, well damn, that’s late. But a veil on my heart lifted in that moment. I am more than certain she thought she would never find it. She was roughly handled by the gardeners shears and suffered the loss of parts of herself. I know that she thought she would die from her wounds. But she is beautiful at this moment and the spotlight is on her because she is the only of her kind in bloom. She has found her spring. I, like that magnolia am late, but I am slowly coming out of my wounds and the cold winter of my grief. The unfamiliar perfume is that of the Magnolia and what it smells of is hope. 

A Magnolia by any other name

I have been largely silent for the last two months as far as the blog is concerned. I came out of a situation and was in what I thought by and large was a state of stasis. Sort of like suspended animation. What has transpired in those 7 weeks has been nothing that anyone could see, but on the inside, a lot has changed.

I was speaking to my friend, whom we shall call The Madhatter. She sees things thru different eyes than I as she sees the picture from the outside while I am living within the frame. Strangely enough the conversation hinged on some towels for my bathroom. I had been in a mad search for a shower curtain I could see in my head but could not lay my hands upon.  Under such circumstances, I am never satisfied until I find what I am looking for and have it in my possession. The Madhatter is familiar with my obsession with such things and takes it as a part of my personality. On this day, I had found my shower curtain and was moving forward onto the other pieces of my vision. Bathrooms say a lot about people to me as it is a sanctuary much like a bedroom. It is where we care for the most intimate details of our person and as such should speak the loudest in my opinion. Nevertheless, the conversation turned to towels and I mentioned that I would like to find someone to do a nice monogram for me. We progressed thru our conversation and I never thought about it again until I was looking for these towels. I needed a deep crimson red,  a rich chocolate brown and a handsome burnished gold. A gold letter upon the red and brown with red upon the gold. They must be thick and thirsty as well as elegant looking hanging on the rack. It was at that point that an odd question reared its head that I have been examining since. What letter would I use?

All of my life I have been called something besides my name. My father is the youngest of 11 and my mother the youngest of 9. As their youngest child I am known as “Sissy” which has been shortened to “Sis” as I have aged. The entirety of both sides of the family call me by that name. My beloved brother was older than I so when I entered high school I was known as “John’s little sister.” Then I met and married Richard and became “Mrs. Richard.”  He called me “babe” and later “Hunibuni.” My son was born and I became “Drew’s Mom.”  In Richard’s illness I answered to “The patient’s wife” and as his father is a pastor with his deaconship the name became either “The Pastor’s daughter-in-law” or “The Deacon’s wife.” Lastly I became “Richard’s widow.”  I have been cut and trimmed, broken and beaten, as well as crammed and slammed into someone else’s box all of my damned life. So now, as I take my tentative steps into a foreign world, what am I to call myself? Now that I haven’t a box what shall I do?

One would think this an easy question since I write my name everyday.  In high school, I was one of those girls who wrote my boyfriends name with mine and daydreamed of who I was to be when I grew up. Because of the culture I came out of my identity was tied to whom I married. I would be “Mrs. MyHusbandsName.” If you have daughters, this is a dangerous proposition. Because, if she is widowed early or divorced, her identity is something she will struggle with her entire life. I’ve always had issue standing up and introducing myself to people. Now, I have balls the size that roll behind Indiana Jones in the movies, but my own name doesn’t ring true in my mouth. Probably because I have never put any stock in that it meant anything. I have answered to anything anyone cared to call me because that’s just the way it was for me. But, what do I prefer to be called?

While I wrestled this conversation in my head, I decided to call The Madhatter back and finished what we had started. I needed to hash this mess out. She sees me as strong when all I can smell is weakness on my skin. She is my vision when I am blind to the world around me.  She made a very simple declaration that cleared my confusion. I have walked a long road to be who that I am today. The fates and this hateful world has bent, pressured and tested me. Many things have been taken from me but the one thing that remains is my name. Not what everyone calls me, in most instances she calls me “The Belle” as it invokes my strength in her eyes. But the name I sign. I will never relinquish Richard’s last name because it also belongs to my son. I wear it with honor because it was given to me in love. I have worn his longer than I wore my father’s surname, although I was hyphenated long before it was fashionable. But as my form recovers from the shape of the boxes I have been made to fit into all my life, so must my spirit. I must recover and reclaim what is mine. 

It has been said that I am a self made woman. My family is not sophisticated in their life nor in their manners. My sainted Grandmother taught me to be a lady in the way I thought and in the old way of how I carry myself. But I looked at the females in the cities I traveled to and here in Charlotte to determine how I would appear. I studied their mannerisms and customs. I shed my Appalachian appearance and manners years ago. I traded them for a classic look and an elegant countenance. I stripped off my closed mind and my judgmental mindset. I created a strong female who owns her mind and self-worth. Someone who can love you where you are and never ask you to change who you are fundamentally. I made a 180 degree turn from the small minded and dependant people who arise out of that culture. We live in a world of choices and mine is to be who I am today rather than whom someone else said I should grow up to be.

I ordered my towels today and the letter I chose is an “S.” So let me stand up in front of you all and introduce myself.  My name is Sandra and I am the Real Deal Steel Magnolia. I am very pleased to meet me.