Five Things I’ve Learned About Self-Publishing

Posted on May 27, 2016 by georgialeemc

What 5 things have I learned from Self-publishing?

Now that’s a question that could have a short answer and it could have a long answer. So, let’s see where this takes us.

The very first thing I learned was that I was in for a huge, I mean really huge disappointment, because I was terribly naïve, short-sighted and ill-prepared for what lay ahead of me. They don’t call it “The Vanity Press” for no reason. The fact that I was just plain lucky to have happened upon one of the premiere self-publishing companies in the world, did not mean that I had a clue about what needed to happen after I sent them my manuscript.

I have always been a dreamer. The one issue that came up repeatedly in the parent-teacher conferences of my youth was that I was a day-dreamer. The reality of school held no interest for me. Apparently, a certain dose of that has endured. I had visions of the first people to read my book spreading the word far and wide about what an amazing read Dear Mom and Dad, was.

Here was where I should have remembered a lesson I learned long ago. If something you do is good, if you do something worthy of notice, people will tell others, but only a few close acquaintances. On the other hand, if you screw up, make a fool of yourself, do something shameful the same people who were so careful to spread good news; those same people will tell everybody they come in contact with. Therefore, in this case, since it was rather good, very few people outside of my immediate circle of friends ever heard about it.

Lesson #1 then is be prepared for disappointments and criticism. They are inevitable but not insurmountable. You can’t be “thin skinned” as Granny used to say.

The manuscript isn’t the only thing that requires preparation. You need a plan and for that plan to work you need realistic assessments of what it’s going to take to make your baby a best-selling winner. You need to know where you are going with the effort and what you want readers to absorb and remember. When I started writing Dear Mom and Dad, I had no outline. I had an idea of what I wanted to accomplish and after one chapter I realized that I wasn’t accomplishing a thing. So I stopped writing and spent nearly a month creating an outline. This is something that any author needs to do but it’s really critical for a self-published author.

Lesson #2 was, have an outline. Know where, and why you are going with your book.

The next thing I learned is that I was not prepared for the investment I was going to have to make beyond getting my book published. The investment for that turned out to be a drop in the bucket. If I’m honest here I will tell you that I guess, I thought I was going to sell a million copies after a measly $2,100 investment. If I had really thought it through I would have researched what a major publisher invests in publicity when it takes on a new book project. With what I know now I imagine that an investment of that kind is far beyond what most self-publishing authors are prepared to spend.

Lesson #3 then is it takes more than a couple of thousand dollars to make a book a best seller.

The fourth thing I learned about self-publishing is that it takes perseverance. Even with a big investment it will take time for the seed money to germinate. The more specialized your subject matter is, the longer it will take. Self-publishing is another way of saying self-promotion. What I should have remembered was something I heard the late Dr. Wayne Dyer talk about what he had to do to get his first book on the book shelves and in the hands of buyers. He would go into a book store and ask if they had the book without telling them who he was. When they said, “No, they didn’t have it.” He would introduce himself and tell them he just happened to have a box of books in his car. Then he called the publisher to find out when the next printing was scheduled and they said it wasn’t, he asked why not, since they were sold out and he knew they were because he had bought them all himself.

Admittedly things are a bit different than they were in the early ‘60s but the principle remains.

Lesson #4? Hang in there Cupcake. “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”

There is never ever going to be a consistent substitute for hard work. Writing is hard work for most of us and the hardest part of it is actually sitting down to do it. And, once you do the next hardest thing is to stay on message. We all tend to think that what we have to say is so important that however long it takes is how long it’s going to take. When I was finished with the original draft of Dear Mom and Dad, it filled a 2-inch binder completely. Published in that form would have meant a 700-plus page book. Cutting into my baby was tough because, after all, what I had to say was important. Of course it was … Cupcake. However, brevity being the soul of wit is also the soul of making your point effective. I lost track of how many times I edited that original version to get it down to the 270 pages which eventually went to the printer.

If you are self-publishing and you really want a polished product a professional editor can be a big help when it comes to punctuation and style. But if you’re like me and working on a shoe string budget that may not be doable. If you have a good friend who happens to be a journalism/professional editor like I did, don’t hesitate to ask. For me it was a Godsend because Linda Talley-Branch was not only my friend but had been one of my late wife’s best friends and knew us and our relationship well enough to make some very important edits and suggestions.

Lesson #5 summarized: It’s hard work to edit/refine your own work, but staying on message is critical.

I learned a lot more than these five things but they are the most important … especially if one is writing about one’s self. So … don’t just read … WRITE!!!

Another Afterword

Posted on May 21, 2016 by georgialeemc

My life has been a perpetual event; a perpetual moment of major effects.

I write in Dear Mom and Dad about various moments that have had a major effect on my understanding of what the heck was going on in the depths of my soul. Of all the moments of clarity the most significant, up to the point of publication, the three most significant were: the bathtub incident, the definition of a Wenkte and of course Genesis 1:26-27. But there have been more significant moments since that have further solidified my understanding of the dual nature of the soul God has blessed me with. But before I delve into the nature and in some cases the specifics of those incidents I need to backtrack a bit.

The first and most consistent issue that comes up is this. If I am truly dual-gendered then why am I living solely in Georgia’s world and not equally shared time with “George”? Good question. The answer to that question is rather simple. I was relegated to the shadows for years while George struggled to figure out a solution, and it was his solution to find. After all the body was his in all physical aspects.George is no more absent from my mind than I was from his. The only real difference in that respect is that I’m fully aware of where those “not so me” thoughts are coming from. For much of his life he didn’t.

Through the early years of my “coming out” I was terribly confused by the conflicting emotions. One minute it was me and then suddenly out of nowhere the emotions and the thought process was George. I realize that sounds schizophrenic but it wasn’t. In schizophrenia the person affected has practically no control over who puts in an appearance and literally takes over at any given moment. That’s not the way it was with me,,, us. I make the point in my public presentations that, short of serious mental illness like schizophrenia, we all have control over our actions, but not necessarily our emotions. When those conflicting emotions erupted I always had control over whether or not I responded to them and how I responded.

As I said, my life has been a perpetual event; a perpetual moment of major effects. However, if I had to pick one particular moment in time, that at the time was most significant, it would have to be that moment when I realized I was on the south bank of the Rubicon. I wonder if Caesar, when he stepped out of the water on the south bank headed for the Imperial City; if just for an instant, he didn’t think, “Oh shit, what the hell have I done? Why didn’t I just surrender command and control of my future to the status quo and let someone else remain in charge?” That would be my single most significant moment, because of all the moments, that was the one moment with no recourse, no re-do, no return.

But was it Georgia or George’s emotions serving up that tumultuous batch of thoughts? After the tempest settled down in my/our head I had to admit that it was George. And it was George who rather quickly said, “Okay, okay, I get it. It’s your turn to take full and complete charge, but I’m not going away, ever. I will always be here just as you have always been here.” And with that, I proceeded toward the Imperial City.

If there is one central message I want to convey in Dear Mom and Dad it would be that if …when one really wants to live their life joyfully, meaningfully and purposefully, take the time and the effort to get to know your Maker and let Him show you what all those likes, dislikes, passions, talents and ambitions were intended to be used for. All of those ingredients that are you, are the recipe that if followed will result in a life that is a veritable banquet. Will it be perfect? Of course not. It is life after all. But, it will be fulfilling and satisfying beyond imagination. There will be moments like the last sentence of Dear Mom and Dad, when I quote an old Dennis the Menace cartoon, “Wish I was three again … knowing what I know now.”

Inspiration!

Posted on May 16, 2016 by georgialeemc

In the three plus years, nearly four years now, since Dear Mom and Dad, You Don’t Know Me, But …was published, no one has asked me what inspired me to write it … that is until now. So, I’ll tell you.

If you’re expecting a story of startling revelation or jolting inspiration you will most likely be disappointed. However, if you’re hoping for understanding and a view into the mindset that led to the writing of my memoir, then I think you will come away pleased with what you are going to discover … about me, my path and the many starts and stops along the way.You will understand how the inspiration for what I wrote eventually evolved into purpose and that it was the combination of the two that resulted in Dear Mom and Dad.

The first thing I ever wrote was a three-page theme for my 7th grade English class, titled “Wild Horse Hunt in Skull Valley”. It was about a wild horse hunt in Skull Valley, Utah that Dad had arranged for him, “our” brother and me/George to take part in. That was the only A+ “George” ever received in any academic endeavor.

One would think with that kind of encouragement,that writing would have become a passion, but it didn’t. From time to time, thought was given to various ideas for novels and a list of possible scenarios was even created, and a file started for those ideas. I still have that file … somewhere. But that was as far as writing ever got for me. I had difficulty even writing letters, beyond the ones, we were required to write every Sunday afternoon at summer camp which inspired the title for DM&D.

So years passed without ever writing anything. I relate in the book my first experience with the only job I ever had that involved writing. It was at a radio station and was due to the support of the man who is quoted on the front cover, my friend, mentor and chief encourager, the late Doug Benton. It was enjoyable and the results were surprisingly good. But after 3 years of that we moved to Arizona and the creativity streak ended.

After the death of “our” wife I became involved in Alpha Zeta, the Phoenix chapter of Tri-Ess International, a now mostly defunct organization for “Crossdressers” and it was there that I was first asked to write something about myself for the monthly newsletter. That effort was rewarded by a request to begin writing a monthly column. The result of that request was “Georgia: On My Mind”. Many of those articles were then picked up by Tri-Ess for publication in their quarterly publication, The Mirror.

My experience with Alpha Zeta and a “sister” organization TransGender Harmony brought me face to face with the primary dilemma in the trans community … “to be or not to be, to do or die” There was that segment of the community that only “dressed” on weekends, or once a month on meeting night. And on the other end of the spectrum were those that had “crossed the Rubicon,” so to speak and were living “full time” as they said. Those that had “crossed the Rubicon,” stood on the far side chiding those who chose not to.Considering them wimps and scaredy cats.

But the ones who suffered most were the families. Here was Dad, Mom’s handsome prince morphing into something that, in all too many cases, was a sad, silly looking imitation of a woman. That’s not what Mom met and fell in love with; that’s not what the kids wanted for a father. For many of us it was a hard lesson to learn, that Mom especially was not the least bit excited with this new “best girlfriend”.

For me, I simply couldn’t bring myself to say to my children, “I, Georgia, am doing away with your dad; putting an end to his existence. I had seen that happen a number of times and it was heartbreaking. The fact is that I did have two complete sets of emotions and just didn’t identify them as such. So, what happened?

I also learned that the suicide rate in the “gender-variant” community was horrendous; one study pegged the rate and nearly eleven times that of the normal world. I discovered too that there were many who were perfectly happy going back and forth from one to the other gender expression. How did these two spirits that were engaged in a tug-of-war in my soul manage to reconcile their differences.

I had two conversations with friends; both of them women that I/George had known for some time. I relate the incidents in my memoir. The first conversation involved the definition of a Sioux word, “Wenkte”. Loosely defined as a “two spirit person” and was a man who lived as a woman in the Sioux tribes.

The second conversation was with a woman I had known even longer than the first, but had never known of George’s “other side”. George shared the knowledge with her over lunch one day and when he was through, she quoted verbatim Genesis 1:26-27 which ends with, “So God created people in his own image; He patterned them after himself; male and female he made them.”It was the final key for me. George didn’t have to die for me to live. Whatever I chose to appear as on the outside was not as important as what was on the inside. And what was on the inside was two distinct sets of emotions.

In 2006 George was a victim of corporate downsizing due to the collapse of the construction industry in Arizona. I needed money and naively thought I could easily publish “something” that would yield some income. Silly me. What was I going to publish and how? Two things occurred almost simultaneously.

The first was an invitation to spend a weekend with friends at their home in the Sonoran Desert northeast of Phoenix. While I was there I was handed a copy of “How I Got This Way” by Patrick F McMannus. This book turned out to be a major inspiration because it was actually a collection of articles he had previously published in magazines like Field and Stream which were sandwiched in between a chapter on his early life and a chapter on how it all turned out for him. That was the answer for me about how to get publishedwhat I had already written. I would put together a collection of my best articles for Tri-Ess. But how would I get them published? I had the form but now I needed the how.

When I was in high school I had occasion to utilize Writer’s Market and thought I would find the solution to my publication dilemma there. So off to Barnes and Noble I went in search of a current copy of Writer’s Market. I found it easily enough but on the same shelf was a copy of “Get Published”, written by Susan Driscoll, then president and CEO of iUniverse, and Diane Gedymin, then editorial director of iUniverse. It was, for me, the perfect book at the perfect time, because it had detailed, easy to follow instructions on how to prepare a manuscript for publication. Within a month I had selected, edited and prepared a manuscript according to their instructions. In addition, I had e-mailed a copy to the president of Tri-Ess and asked her to write the Foreword. And then I waited.

While I waited for the promised Foreword to materialize I had time to think; to think about, among other things, my audience. My audience would be, at most, the membership of Tri-Ess which at the time might have reached two thousand. Call me grandiose, call me egotistical, call me greedy, but I wanted a bigger audience. I wanted the whole world in my theater. But, how was I going to achieve that?

It would be impossible because without a back story the world would not come to my theater. The title of McMannus’s book literally leaped off the cover; “How I Got This Way” ,,, how did I get this way? Indeed! How did I get this way?

I took a lead from my experience in AA where we are told to follow a simplethree item course in talking about our experience; what it was like, what happened and what it’s like now.

Maybe that could be called inspiration, maybe not, but I finally began to write, really write, for the first time in my life. However, as each page materialized I became aware that I had no idea where the next page would take me. I soon realized what all writers must realize at some point; that being the necessity of an outline. My outline revolved around the homes I had lived in over the years. After that list was compiled, and it was a long one, forty to be exact;the next step was short notes about anything or anyone that came to mind in relation to that home and place in time.Writing about a person’s own life can be a bit troubling at times, especially if one is brutally honest with themselves.

I confess that the first draft, while it may have been cathartic, was more ventilating as well as an expression of memories based in a desire to absolve me from responsibility and give the appearance of the various outcomes being the fault of others. Had that version gone to print it would have been over seven hundred pages long. In addition, it would have most likely resulted in numerous lawsuits. Thankfully, the man I had begun working with at iUniverse convinced me that seven hundred pages was totally unrealistic unless my name was James Michener.

Something about actually dealing with someone there at iUniverse brought the reality of my effort actually being published into focus. What I saw through that lense was the real truth of what had transpired in the past and that the people involved would know if I was not being honest and would certainly protest angrily if I wasn’t. That of course required that I be brutally honest with myself about the actual events and relationships. I recommend that activity to anyone regardless of whether or not they intend to actually publish or not, because that process alone did more to bring peace to my soul than anything.

The fact that I had responded to the inspiration to write in the third person, me always being there and observing George work his way through life without understanding why he felt so different from other people, aided greatly in dealing with the events of our life honestly. And that brought me to the brink of purpose; that being to share my experience and solution with others who might be coping with the confusion of two distinct sets of emotions, one male and one female.

Ultimately, I believe that God was the inspiration behind each and every move and that He intended me to be exactly what I have become. And that is the true inspiration behind Dear Mom and Dad, You Don’t Know Me, But …

Restroom? Really?

Posted on May 10, 2016 by georgialeemc

I really don’t know where to start. If you don’t know me well you might assume that on the issue of bathrooms and gender identity that I would be railing against the narrow minded people on the hyper-conservative right end of the spectrum, but you would be wrong. That would be like railing against a stray dog that has never been house trained when you let it in the house for the first time and it pees on your new carpet. It and “they” don’t know any better.

The dog that’s never been house trained is not the one to blame. The owner, and there surely was one at some time or other, who didn’t bother to house train the dog is the one at fault there. Likewise, the hyper-conservative, generally hyper-conservative Christian, who’s railing against the transgendered person, which in most cases is a transgendered woman, for peeing in the house (the women’s restroom) is not the one to blame. Why? Because, like the untrained dog, they don’t know any better.

So, why don’t they know any better? Why haven’t they been trained? Or to state it better, why haven’t they been educated? In my most humble opinion, it’s because the voices in the gender identity community have made practically no effort to educate them. There were no efforts at all, to speak of, for society to learn anything about those of us who find ourselves in a situation where our bodies have little in common with our brains. As Paul Newman’s character, Luke, in “Cool Hand Luke” said just a nanosecond before he was shot, “What we have here is a failure to communicate.”

.One of the first things I discovered when I first became involved with the transgendered community was that virtually all discussions were about how to make society accept us. If the discussion is on that topic it’s about how to force acceptance on society. There were few, if any, serious discussions about how to gain acceptance.

In my experience, the activists among us, who like to think of themselves as martyrs for having stepped into the line of fire, cause more discrimination because their solution to the problem is to force trans acceptance on society; to take what they don’t appreciate and rub their faces in it. Call me narrow minded or ignorant if that makes you feel better, but the result of cramming acceptance down society’s throat is like picking a scab. It only prolongs the healing.

I get angry every time I read or hear about some trans activist raising a ruckus over the smallest affront, perceived or real. Get over it. Do “normal” people normally make a career out forcing their wishes and opinions on everyone around them? Not “normally.”

Another issue that I found disconcerting, was the fact that trans people tended to go “out and about” in groups. It seemed to me that it was more like a “pack” of whatever, dogs, wolves, coyotes. I understand why. There is safety in numbers, but packs tend to generate fear in people who intersect with them. I am not a trans-activist. I consider myself a “trans communicator.” We are never going to be accepted by the society we live in until we learn to communicate instead of agitate. We are never going to be accepted by society until we, the genuine trans community, weed out the trouble makers, the perverts, self-appointed martyrs in our midst.

There is a flip side to the coin of this argument. My big question for the hyper-conservative self-appointed “stray dogs” is this; of all the times in the course of a single day in this country, how many reports are there of a woman being attacked in a restroom by a “genuine” transwoman? And my point here is the word “genuine”. It’s an important point to make and here’s the reason.

A genuine transwoman is a person who is making a real effort to be and act as close as possible to a real woman as is humanly possible without having been born a “real” woman. “Real” women do not hang out in restrooms alone unless perhaps they’re hiding from a man. If a “real” woman enters a women’s restroom and sees a person who is obviously not a “real” woman because they are only partially or garrulously dressed as a woman, and that person is just hanging around, loitering, then and only then should security be called.

The further point I want to make here is this; and it’s a point I make early in my public presentations; the probability that 95% of the population of this world is strictly what the world would call normal to a large degree. Agreed?
So, for the “normies” of this world, and I will start with the men,If you are “normal”, you enjoy sports to one degree or another. You might wear your hat backwards on the weekend; you like your loose fitting comfy jeans and your New York Giants football jersey. Maybe you feel good in a suit and tie. In other words, you are comfortable in your own skin … you like being a “guy”. Your mental and emotional make up matches your body in a way that society approves of.

How would you feel if society said to you: “We don’t care what you “feel”; we don’t care that the way you express who you are shows in the way you want to dress and act. We, society, say that you have to shave your carefully trimmed beard, and your legs and your armpits. You have to pluck your eyebrows, wear makeup, dresses, high heeled shoes. In short, you have to dress like and act like a “lady” because that’s what we, society, dictate.”
For the women “normies” … flip that record over. You like to look feminine for the most part. You probably enjoy dressing in way that reflects your femininity. Maybe you enjoy having a man hold the door for you, send you flowers and pay for dinner. How would you feel if, regardless of what your inner emotional and mental make-up is, you cannot do all those things that make you feel good about who and what you are; no more shaving your legs, armpits, plucking your eyebrows, no more makeup, no nice dresses etc. In short you have to drag your knuckles and burp and belch, because we, society, say you cannot live your life according to your emotional and mental make-up. You have to live according to our dictates.

Life would be a miserable existence under those circumstances wouldn’t it? Well, that is what the average “trans-person” endures until they finally respond to their inner emotional and mental make-up. And then they have to endure the slings and arrows of a large portion of society. As an old saying from my southern background goes, Put the shoe on the other foot.”
In closing I have a word for the handful of conservative clergy, and this from a devout Christian who has read every word of the bible not once, not twice but repeatedly; quit acting like Pharisees and take your lead from your Savior and get to know the people you’re condemning. Then let’s talk.

Monika Kowalska interview with Georgia Lee McGowen

Posted on April 19, 2016 by georgialeemc

Below is a link to Monika Kowalska’s interview with me which posted this morning.
http://theheroines.blogspot.com/2016/04/interview-with-georgia-lee-mcgowen.html

If I Could Save Time In a Bottle …

Posted on April 3, 2016 by georgialeemc

I am not one to dwell on regrets; the what-could-have-beens; the if-onlys. But there is one major regret that haunts me to my core. It’s music; music from our past; George’s past and my past and it’s a regret because Marilyn loved music. She heard the words and they meant something to her. But Music was just recognizable noise to George that reminded him of places and times in the past. If you asked him to recite more that the refrain he couldn’t and often as not, he couldn’t recognize more than a few chords.

Marilyn on the other hand listened to music much of each day. Usually she worked with headphones on as she plied her artful touch to the ceramic crowns and bridges her job required. I don’t know exactly why she seldom commented on what she was listening to. Maybe it was because she knew that her handsome prince wouldn’t respond with more than a grunt to anything she had to say about anything she was listening to.

When she died she left behind a treasure of more than 300 LP albums that she had purchased over the years and they were all in pristine condition. There was no specific genre that could be assigned to the overall collection, a fact that spoke volumes to the wide ranging taste that she had in music. Albums from Glenn Yarborough to Barbara Streisand, Boston Pops Orchestra to Randy Travis, Dan Seals to Gregorian Chants, Eugene Ormandy leading the Boston Pops in Wagner to Willie Nelson, Cheryl Crowe to Hank Williams, the list of variables could go on infinitum.

When the house in Chandler was being built she made sure that her handsome prince wired every single room in the house and the back patio for sound. How this passion for music and the meanings behind all those lyrics never rubbed off on George is beyond me, but it didn’t. It’s not that he was unaware of the importance of music in her life because he most certainly was; to the point that the night she passed away the music of Peter Gunn was echoing through the house.

What is haunting me now is the fact that I now hear virtually every single word of the songs from the past that I hear on KOOL Radio.I find myself thinking, wishing that I could turn back the clock and play those love songs to her. But I can’t can I? At this moment I can feel her presence and sense a tender expression of love from her. Is it that I’m crazy or just still so in love with her that these emotions create an imaginary presence that comforts me in spite of the companion tears? As long as I can hear the music she’s still alive.

Then there’s the other presence that accompanies much of the older music like Andy Williams’ “Can’t Get Used to Losing You.” That presence is George. The music that springs from his time; the time before “me”. That music from the past that makes we wish “we”, George and I could sing love songs to her. It would be a major Broadway or Las Vegas production, with a full orchestra, spot lights on the three of us.

And now in the process of writing this and listening to the songs from our past I stop writing and look up through the tears toward the ceiling and scream, “God, how I miss you.” Then the next song on the CD is Perry Como singing “Some Enchanted Evening” and I’m taken back to that night on the dance floor at Francisco’s Cantina y Ristorante in Durango when I/we realized that at last we were totally and completely lost in a love that had only been a dream until that moment.

It is such bitter sweet memories and the music that evokes them which makes me wish at times that I was still oblivious to the words and “ … could save time in a bottle.”

Dear Abba.

Posted on March 12, 2016 by georgialeemc

Dear Abba,

I know we talk often and more often than not I do most of the talking. You know, the private, just you and me conversations that no one else on earth is privy to. But, it seemed appropriate at this time to drop you a line instead. It just feels like the right thing to do.

The first thing I need to say is, that I am just plain scared. Yes, that’s what I am. And the hell of it is that I don’t even know exactly why. I guess part of it is due to the fact that a part of me, the biggest part of me, is convinced that the very large investment I’ve made in promoting the core of my life’s expression has been what You want me to do. Then there’s the part of me that fears that I’ve been making a huge investment in vanity. That’s what they call the self-publishing industry … the Vanity Press. Of course You know that already don’t You.

You know all of that, and my saying it isn’t news to You, but I just needed to say it. After all the blessings you showered on me last year I feel rather inappropriate to be expressing anything bordering on complaint, but I suppose that in light of my angst the term complaint seems most fitting. So, that brings me back to fear; fear that I’ve failed to understand exactly what it is You want from me.

There’s a passage in the New Testament which speaks to the shame of hiding a glowing lamp under a basket. And, although I feel at times like that is what I have been doing for the last few months, just as often I feel as if the lamp has gone out so it just as well stay under the basket.

Most of all Abba, I just want some reassurance.But, then I think what’s the point of faith if reassurance is necessary. My friend Brett gave me a copy of Wm. Paul Young’s “Eve” and after reading it five times the request that Adonai made more than once was for Adam to trust Him. Is it a lack of trust in You that propels me toward the sea of doubt, or is it a lack of confidence in my own understanding and/or motives?

The way that Young presented the issue was one that I had never considered because it was presented as an alternative to impatience and self-will and self-doubt. In the course of those five readings I slowly began to get the point that Young was trying to make, I believe on Your behalf. I just have a hard time waiting for You to act on my behalf, which of course is in the end on Your behalf, and what makes it worse is when I think You have begun to do so and then realize it was only wishful thinking. So please Abba, be patient with me while I learn this late in life to be patient and trusting.

Another manner of expressing trust is my favorite term for expressing confidence in; that word, of course, is faith. More than anything I want to trust that what I think You’re telling me is, if nothing else, close to the core of what You want me to understand. After spending so much of my life without a thought of what You intended for me, it has become the basis for every conscious decision and act. I like to think that what You want for me is so ingrained in my psyche that even when I’m not consciously considering my actions that Your preference is the automatic result.

The last thing I want mention is the other point I recognized in Young’s effort is the difference in relationship with You and relationship with a human being. My heart went out to Adam first and then to Eve because I can relate so closely to that absence of physical and emotional human interaction since You took Marilyn to be with You and left me alone here … to learn once again to live alone. Except this time, it’s been a different kind of singularity that I find myself in. When I was alone before I met Marilyn I had never known what love really was.Loving her and living with her love changed my perception of relationship entirely.

So Abba, I guess what I’m trying to say is that while I realize now that the relationship I have with you now would have never been possible in the context of my relationship with Marilyn. I’m content with the singular relationship You and I have at this point, but I would really like to experience a relationship that involved You, me and a woman of Your choosing. I know that sounds a bit kinky on the surface of it, but You know my heart and what I mean; a woman who knows You the way I do. So, how about it Abba? Am I ready for that in Your view? I really hope so.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Kirkus Reviews Dear Mom and Dad, You Don’t Know Me, But …

Posted on October 29, 2015 by georgialeemc

Kirkus Reviews has this to say about Dear Mom and Dad:

“McGowen’s book gracefully weaves together these stories of reconciliation: Between George and Georgia, among George, Georgia and Marilyn and between McGowen and her Christian faith.”

Follow this link to the entire review.

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/georgia-lee-mcgowen/dear-mom-and-dad/

Seventy-one or Thirty-four

Posted on October 20, 2015 by georgialeemc

Today is the seventy-first anniversary of the birth of this body and the entry into this world of my dual spirited soul. But as I look back on the past I realize that there are some very important details of a mental and emotional nature that I have tended to overlook. I’m not certain as to the reason that I’ve overlooked those details, but there are a couple that need to be acknowledged today especially.

The first detail is one that I haven’t thought about for a long time. I have been fortunate to have nearly perfect health for nearly all of my life and that is what makes this first detail the most significant. What is that detail? Well, it’s this; in George’s life apart from mine he was never able to envision being older than fifty-six years old. For someone who was forever looking to the future, and loved history, that would seem an odd state of mind. Nevertheless, he was never able to see beyond that age. I don’t ever recall it ever being a worrisome thing but there it was.

Take that mental detail and add to it the fact that he could never imagine Marilyn as an old woman either. This in spite of the fact that she used to tell him that after he died she was going to move in with Peter and Heather, live in their basement and teach her grandchildren dirty words.

When I give serious consideration to the inability of George not being able to envision living beyond the age of fifty-six I arrive at one immutable fact. He had just turned fifty-six when Marilyn passed away. It was at that point that I began to play a much bigger role in our combined life and in less than seven years I had assumed the majority role in our existence

Another detail; neither George nor I ever envisioned ourselves as mature adults. We could never get beyond the ability to see our relationships with other people in any other way than being us being less mature than they were. In other words we were mentally in a state of perpetual adolescence. For someone who wanted to grow up as badly as George did that is totally in-congruent, but that’s the mindset he lived with, and one that I inherited.

As to the number thirty-four; that’s how long it has been since that fateful night when Marilyn took a swipe at George’s leg with a razor and asked the question, “Want a shave cowboy?” That was the moment of epiphany that ushered me into a reality that none of us was prepared to cope with. The aforementioned detail of not being able to see ourselves as more than teenagers is important here, because my behavior at the outset was the equal to that of a fourteen year old chippy. So maybe in reality I’m more like forty-eight years old.

Bottom line? I don’t feel seventy-one. I don’t look seventy-one, a fact that Dr. Bower’s noted when I met her the first time because my first question for her was, “Am I too old?” Her response? “What makes you think you’re too old?” I said, “Because I’m seventy years old.” To that she gave me this look of incredulity and responded, “I would have never guessed. My first thought on seeing you for the first time was that I was looking a person who was in their early fifty’s” Thank you Dr. Bowers. Coming from you that makes my day, week, month, year. Heck that makes the last seventy years.

So even now, I just don’t feel like I’m much more than forty years old. Admittedly there are times when I take stock of certain portions of my body I do have to acknowledge some parts that are considerably older than forty. At least those parts can be hidden by clothes and I have no plans to embark on a modeling career.

So here I am … seventy-one chronological years old today; renewed, remodeled, still feeling fortyish, and experiencing my first birthday completely me. My future is aglow with possibilities and my soul is at peace. Yes, complete is the right word, or maybe completely happy and content is more to the point..

Right and/or Left

Posted on October 9, 2015 by georgialeemc

When I was 13, give or take a year or two, I asked my mother one day what the difference was between republicans and democrats. Her answer was simple. Republicans believe that people should be free to make their own decisions about how they spend their money and make the decisions affecting their own lives. Democrats believe that the government is better qualified to make those decisions and should therefore be the one to make them.

In the years that followed I fluctuated between adherence to first one and then the other of those two ideologies. I once heard the following: “Show me a young man with no heart and I’ll show you a republican. Show me an old man with no brain and I’ll show you a democrat.” … or something to that effect. You get the idea. Young people are guided by emotions and feelings. Old people are guided by experience and common sense.

As I aged, the myriad of facts that I had absorbed in my reasonably extensive reading of the biographies of the famous and not so famous persons who had peopled our nation’s history, and in a few cases the histories of other nations; those facts began to shape the way I viewed our society.

One of the benefits that came from my interest in history was the way I viewed contemporary events. I viewed them as history in the making, which of course they were. At the same time events in my personal “history in the making” began to move me further to the right. (As an aside, I find it rather significant that the word “right” happens to mean “correct” as well as the political meaning of the opposite of left.) The most dramatic and what proved to be the permanent; shift in my political alliance came when I woke up to the fact that the IRS was going to take nearly a third of the profits from an investment Dad had started for me and which I had luckily added to. That was followed by several similar instances of government interference with my business and personal life.

All of this took place in the late ’70s and early ‘80s. Being a business person, albeit a not terribly astute business person, I began to take stock of the dividends that accrued to my benefit as a result of the rather high taxes I was paying. The safety and security in my daily life as a result of the portion of my taxes which went to our national defense was the first thing on the list … and the last. (If I was to add one more it might be the US Postal Service except that it was in the process of being privatized … sort of. Like everything else the government has even a minor involvement in it soon became another bureaucratic albatross) At first I was intending to include our highway system, but then it occurred to me that most of that was funded by the tax on gasoline.

That was it. I received no benefit to speak of from the remainder of the taxes I was paying to the U.S. Treasury. However, a lot of other people were reaping generous benefits from my taxes. The personnel employed by the federal government were enjoying well paying jobs from which they could hardly ever be fired and they didn’t have to contribute a single dime to Social Security since they had their own retirement annuity system that paid rather nice dividends on retirement. The most outrageous aspect of this system is that in the beginning those people worked for slightly less than their counterparts in the private sector as a balance to having permanent employment. But in the last few years they have seen their pay and benefits rise to nearly double that of people performing identical tasks in the private sector. And that is an outrageous miscarriage of justice.

The social security payments which were deducted from my earnings every payday went straight to the general coffer to help fund all the social welfare and Great Society programs, which again I received no benefit from either directly or indirectly. Not one penny of those payments ever earned a dime of interest or dividend.

The primary irritant in of all this is that among the many supporters of this legal theft are many well meaning friends; people who genuinely feel that it’s justifiable for Big Brother to take from me and give to someone with less. What makes it even worse is that if they profess to be Christian, they rely on the scriptural justification to support their thesis.

There are four primary scriptural sources for this notion that we should support the government in taking from the fortunate winners of life’s lottery (that’s what they call those who have benefited from fruits of hard work and long hours). The first source of justification is the numerous calls of the prophets to help those less fortunate. The second source is Jesus’ repeated admonition to the wealthy to “sell all, distribute it to the poor and follow him.”

The third and most common defense for confiscation of wealth is Jesus instruction to “Pay unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and the rest belongs to God.” In the language of today’s liberal progressives, “Pay unto Uncle Sam whatever his elected and/or un-elected representatives deem appropriate, and if there is any left over after bills, car and house payments etc. belongs to God” … or the “universe” or whatever entity people on the left deem to be in charge.

Last but certainly not the least frequently mentioned defense of government confiscation of wealth is found in the book of Acts. Luke describes how the new Christians shared “everything”; sold all their property and turned the proceeds over to the apostles to be distributed to those they deemed most in need. That is further enhanced by the narrative of what happened to Ananias and Sapphira when they withheld a portion of the sale of some property from the church. They were struck dead on the spot … not for withholding, but for lying about how much they got from the sale. Case closed. Pay taxes and don’t cheat or else … “’cause the Bible tells me so.”

The point that all these biblical defenses of taxation conveniently miss is this: They are all voluntary contributions. Where is the virtue in government enforced generosity? There is none is there? And where is Christian virtue when citizen A, who has voted for people who exempt him from taxes, votes too for people who force citizen B, who does pay taxes, to pay citizen C for whatever citizen C thinks he/she is entitled to. Paul exhorts the believers to pay their taxes to the Roman government, because the government is there to protect us. (refer back to second sentence of the fifth paragraph above) But then what else was he going to say … he himself was, after all, quite proud of his Roman citizenship, a fact which ultimately backfired on him.

It seems to me that when the government takes full responsibility for feeding the poor, housing the homeless, tending to the sick then I can, with a clear conscience, absolve myself of any personal responsibility to extend aid to anyone in need. I don’t even feel a need to ascertain the worthiness of who is aided and to what degree they should be aided. After all … I paid my taxes. Let the government figure it out. I’ve got more important things to worry about … Like which restaurant to dine at before I go to whatever computer animated action movie is the rage this week.

My closing salvo to this statement of mind, is about the disconnect between my devout Christian friends spiritual beliefs and their political defense of, in my mind, the indefensible attitude and actions of the very people they support when it comes to the attacks leveled daily in the press and liberal blogs on religious freedom of expression. Abba gave each of us a unique set of characteristics for purposes of communication and expression. If the above mentioned members of the left had their way there would be no churches and no freedom to express anything that they disagreed with.

Am I defending those on the right who disagree with things like the right to marry, and scream that our way of life is an abomination? Of course not! But I can tell you this: I’ve found it far easier to sway the minds of conservative Christians to acceptance of things like equality for ALL through sincere and open conversation than it is to even have a sincere and open civil discourse with most people who consider themselves liberal progressives.