After her mother dies, Michelle finds a bundle of letters hidden in an old jewelry box that force her to confront realities of her past buried since childhood, imprisoning her and now threaten her relationships with her teenage daughters. Her discoveries place her on a journey of healing, one with surprises and treasures along the way.
days left
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As The Dandelion Blooms is a novel about an artist facing the challenge of raising three teenage girls. When her mother dies, she finds letters hidden in a jewelry box. The discovery takes her breath away. She had not spoken to her mother or sisters in years. She fears that her own relationship with her daughters may end up like that of her own sisters and mother. Who had written these letters? The situation becomes more complicated when her troubled middle child finds her reading them.
Eventually, she shares the letters with her three daughters and begins to form a bond that strengthens their relationships, but not without the trepidation that it could crumble at any moment. She must also confront her past.
As The Dandelion Blooms is an inspirational journey toward discovering that we are all like the dandelion, a symphony of complexity, and challenges us to awaken and bloom in all of the splendor that the universe provides us.
My target reader is a mother of teenage girls, age 35-50
To follow. I am in final editing stages so haven't yet sent it out for full reading.
I have been writing words of inspiration for many years. The words come from my heart. My resume on inspiring those who face daily struggles include being a nurse for 45 years, mother of a teenage girl, caregiver for an elderly mother with Dementia, guardian to my autistic brother, experiencing breast cancer alongside my sister. Married, divorced, financially destitute. Realizing the everyday miracles that moved me forward every day, and determined to use the talent of writing given to me to reach out to others, letting them know that there is always hope.
The publishers will be visible after the campaign has ended.
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(Letter #2) I am so afraid. All the time. If I knew what it was that I was afraid of, it would help me cope. I mean, sure I know a lot of things that I am afraid of–I am afraid of spiders. Those big, furry gray and black ones. I am afraid of bees, especially the big fat yellowjackets. I am afraid of tripping and falling in front of people. I am afraid of swallowing a bug in my sleep. I am afraid of sleep. I am afraid of falling out of bed. I’m afraid of getting into bed. I always check between the sheets. I am afraid to turn out the lights. I am afraid to close my eyes. I am afraid that when I come face to face with what I fear, it will be a force that I will not be able to overcome. Again.
Michelle looked up and took a deep breath. Fears. She could certainly understand that. She too had many fears. Bees and spiders, of course; who isn’t afraid of those? There were so many times that she herself woke up in the middle of the night, fearful of the dark, the quiet, wondering what might be behind her. She smiled slightly, remembering as a child when she and her sister Lisa would hide under the covers to avoid the ‘boogeyman.’ Lisa eventually grew out of that fear, but Michelle’s fears continued. Their bedroom was upstairs in the attic of a cape cod house, dark and chillingly quiet, a perfect setting for a ghost to appear out of the depths of the hallway outside their door.
She remembered lying in bed, terrified, knowing her sister was beside her but afraid to speak. Somewhere deep inside, she believed she would alert the evil lurking in her room and it would attack. Each and every time, at some point, her fear of not reaching out to her sister overwhelmed her fear of speaking. The conversation was always the same.
Young Michelle forced a soft whisper. “Lisa. Are you there?”
“Where else would I be? Scaredy cat.” Inevitably, Lisa turned toward the wall to attempt to ignore her sister’s nightly fears. “Go to sleep.”
Michelle could feel a chill in her body, even under the two comforters draping over her. “I heard a sound. In the hallway. I peeked out, and I saw a shadow.”
Michelle waited for a response, but there was none. She pulled the covers just slightly down enough to reveal her eyes, but they could only stare forward in fear. She didn’t dare blink. “Lisa!”
Lisa flopped over to face Michelle. “What?!”
“Do you see anything?”
Lisa picked up her head and looked into the hallway. She fell back and sighed. “Nope. I don’t see anything. I hate it when you do this. It spooks me!”
The two lay in silence for a long stretch. Michelle lay frozen in her bed, her ears perked and listening for any sound other than her sister’s breathing.
Lisa peeked over the top of her covers. “Do you want me to turn on the light?”
Michelle wanted the lights on more than anything, but turning on the light was a sign of her defeat. It meant that once again she was caving into her fears. She sighed. “Yes, please.”
Lisa huffed as she stretched to turn on the light. “Okay, big sister. You’re supposed to be my protector, you know. Not the other way around.”
The memory ended there, likely because she always fell asleep once the lights were on. Michelle smiled as she remembered the simple, innocent intimacy of sisters. They accepted each other just as they were, even with all the arguments, the fights, and the differences between them.
As she got older, those fears lingered. She remained uneasy when she was alone in the house, or even when she crawled into bed by herself. A nightlight helped to lessen some of that uneasiness. At least until she fell asleep. However, when she awoke in the middle of the night, it almost made the anxiety worse. The nightlight created an eerie glow amidst the shadows that made her more uneasy than the dark. It seemed that the light was calling all the creaking noises in the night to come to life; the wood floors expanding and contracting to the changing northeast weather, the pilot of the fireplace kicking on, the wind outside beating against the windows, ready to infiltrate her home like a thief in the night.
Shawn working the night shift was tough. She wished that Shawn was there in bed with her every night, so she need only turn over and there he would be, protecting her from the big, bad shadows and noises in the room. But now she needed to face these fears alone. She loved the nights that Shawn didn’t have to work. It was so irrational. She was a grown woman, and she was still afraid of the dark.
Of course there were other fears she faced that were more reasonable. She feared for the safety and happiness of her children. She feared that they would not be able to see how much a mother loves her children, and that they would grow away from her over time like she did with her mother. This afternoon with Janine had made that fear grow stronger. She feared that they might grow away from each other as her siblings did. Some days, she feared being able to pay the bills and if she would have enough money for next week’s groceries.
As a developing artist, she feared that she wasn’t good enough to show her work. She remembered her first art exhibit. Her mentor and friend, Marilyn, tried to help her through this first show.
Marilyn stood with her hands on her hips, giving Michelle that stern look she was famous for. “What are you afraid of? Your art is amazing!”
Michelle gazed at her abstract art. She reached up and softly touched the textured surface. “What if my art doesn’t truly express my soul?” She depended on her art to be her voice, the articulation of her inner world. She sighed. “At the same time, I’m afraid that my art will indeed express my soul!”
Marilyn sighed. “So….you want the world to know what is inside this amazing, creative soul, but afraid that it won’t be good enough once they see it? Honey, you have a message to put out there, and the viewers will love the message.”
Michelle shrugged and tilted her head as she gazed upon her work. “Maybe.” She stepped back and tried to get a different view, listening for the canvas to speak to her. How will they know the message? How will they see what I am trying to say? Sometimes I wonder if I even see it.
Michelle shivered as her mind returned to the present. She felt so disassociated lately, reaching out to her art to help her frame the pieces of her life together as wife, mother, friend, artist, teacher, sister, daughter. What if the frame is never closed? What if she is never able to feel whole? Completed like a piece of art? Accomplished as a woman works to achieve completion in her life? Accepted? Worthy? Happy? Loved? Yes, she lived every day in fear that these would never materialize and she may be left as a fragmented, insufficient, unnoticed smudge on the map of life. She took a deep breath. She shook her head and shoulders as if to dismiss the cloud hanging above her.
Second sample:
Michelle pointed to the kitchen chair. Janine obediently sat. Michelle and Shawn sat down at the table with her.
Michelle broke the silence. “Well, where should we start?”
Janine’s head was down. “I don’t know,” she mumbled.
Michelle could feel her muscles tighten. She knew there were a few ways this conversation could go. “Well, I don’t know either. How about with how long you have been skipping school? And why has the school not called me? And who are these ‘friends’ you have been hanging out with? Where do you go when you are not at school? Are you shoplifting? Have you been drinking? Where did you get the paint cans? And do you have any idea what happens to your life, and to our lives, when you get yourself arrested? Then we could go into, What have we done so wrong that is sending you down this path? Oh, and how about…Why? Just why?”
Shawn reached over and placed his hand on Michelle’s arm. “Before we get into all of that, maybe we should start out with confirming that we love you more than anyone will on this earth, and nothing that you do will change that love.”
“I haven’t been skipping school completely. Just a few classes now and then. It was just in fun…It was fun. Exciting.”
Michelle laughed. It was a curt sound with no humor in it. “Exciting? Was it exciting when the officer pushed you into the back of that police car? Do you know what he said to us? He said next time it will be an arrest mostly because of racial profiling. You are presumed guilty just because of your skin color.”
Janine slapped her hand onto the table. She looked straight into her mother's eyes. “Oh my God, here we go again. Look, I am sorry that my skin coloring is such an embarrassment to you! I wish you had married some white man so you could have white children and be proud of them! So you wouldn’t have to worry about them being arrested and ruining your precious reputation and your art career! This is who I am and I can’t change it!”
Michelle bristled. There was a familiarity in this conversation. Michelle remembered having similar feelings about her mother when she married Shawn. Even though her mother never said as much, Michelle assumed that marrying a man of color was an embarrassment to her mother. Maybe that is what drove a wedge between them? Maybe that is what kept her from visiting more often?
Marrying a man of color. Michelle wondered what Janine would think if she knew Shawn wasn’t the first man of color she fell in love with.
In her mind, she was suddenly with Daniel, her first and only love in high school. Daniel was one of the few African American boys in her class. They met in science class, and their chemistry was undeniable.
“Why do you want to be with me?” he would ask her over and over.
Michelle was always willing to open her heart to Daniel. “Because you make me feel beautiful.”
“Well, that’s not me. You are beautiful.”
She would shiver every time he leaned over and kissed her.
But their love was not meant to last. That shiver of excitement turned to gut-wrenching fear as they walked down the hall. Their bodies would tighten as they heard the snickering of their schoolmates.
“Hey, there goes Chocolate and Vanilla! Do you actually taste like that?”
One day Daniel tried to stand up for Michelle and a fight broke out. Daniel ended up in the hospital. His parents moved him out of the school, and he never spoke to her again.
She could still feel the devastation just thinking about it. The heavy feeling in her chest. Hard to swallow. Numbness in her arms and legs. Self-hatred that she wasn’t good enough for either race. Caught in between colors. Heart aching so bad she could do nothing but cry. She never got over that heartbreak and never dated anyone until she met Shawn.
When Michelle gave birth to her girls, she gazed upon their exquisite, beautiful brown skin. She couldn’t believe that love made these beautiful beings. But she couldn’t help but feel bitterness, too. Such beautiful girls, made from her own flesh, each one their own miracle. Yet they were also a reminder of what her life with Daniel might have given her sooner, if the opportunity had not been ripped from the two of them. All because of racial prejudice. And now, it was Janine that felt this prejudice from her own mother. She looked at her daughter. She was exquisite. And she was made with tremendous love. How could she possibly be embarrassed by that?
Michelle recognized Janine’s accusation as her own self-hatred. A sense of urgency crept through her body. She couldn’t let this continue for Janine the way it had for her. She swallowed hard to suppress those familiar feelings from overcoming her. “Okay, now stop right there. This family is about love, not color. Marry another man? You won’t witness greater love between two people than your father and me. And embarrassed by your color? You are my flesh and blood, dear child. Racial profiling is something we take very seriously; it is not a matter of embarrassment. It is a matter of fear for your rights in this country. Fear of watching my daughter sit in a hard, cold jail cell for no good reason. I pray for you and fear for you every single solitary day when you leave this house and get on that bus! You are my life. What happens to you, I feel. Someday you will understand that. But for now, we need to get back to the issue at hand, which is not your color but your behavior, that put you in the back of that police car today. Were you really going to pour paint on that statue? Don’t you know that this is against the law? It’s called vandalism. Destruction of property.”
“We just didn’t think we would get caught.” Janine looked from her mother to her father. “I guess I screwed up on that one.”
Shawn reached out to hold Janine’s hand across the table. His voice was gentle but direct. “Honey, you screwed up on a lot more than that. We have got some unraveling to do. Let’s start by just getting some facts clear. Do you know why the school has not been letting us know when you skip out?”
Janine shrugged. “Maybe because I changed our phone numbers so they couldn’t get a hold of you.”
“And how did you do that?!”
“I wrote a note and signed your name.”
Michelle felt like screaming. She stood and poured herself a cup of coffee. She leaned against the counter and gulped it, scowling at Janine.
Shawn squeezed Janine's’s hand. “Okay, so tomorrow you and Mom and I will go to school and get the correct numbers reinstated. I hope you understand the seriousness of this. If something happened to you, if you were having a seizure or something, they need to be able to get a hold of us.”
Janine nodded. She looked at Michelle for confirmation.
“We’ll drive you to school in the morning and we will go straight to the office. What happens after that, maybe you can shed some light on how I am supposed to know any time of the day or night where you are? When I put you on the school bus in the morning, what happens after that? How do I not sit in worry all day long for your safety? Any ideas? Maybe I should put you under house arrest and do homeschooling.”
Janine pushed her chair back so she could turn towards her mother. “Mom, you are always so intense! Always thinking things are worse than they are! Now you want to imprison me and cut me off from all of my friends? Are you going to lock my windows too so I can’t jump out and slip into a getaway car?”
“If I have to. Keep talking, I am getting lots of ideas.”
Shawn jumped into the conversation. “Okay, so we are not going to solve all this in one afternoon. It’s been a very difficult day so let’s attempt to retreat, take a breather, deal with step one tomorrow and take it one step at a time. In the meantime, you need to go to your room and think about the very close call you had today. And how you being arrested could affect everyone in this house, including your sisters, who are innocent bystanders.”
Janine stood up and began to walk past her mother.
“Stop there.” Michelle spoke as Janine turned back towards her. “And no phone calls.”
“I was supposed to call Alison.”
“Nope.”
Janine shook her head. She turned and headed towards the doorway. “Oh hell.”
Michelle called after her. “Don’t say hell.”
Janine glared back at her mother and walked out of the kitchen to the stairway. Michelle took a sip of her coffee and almost fell into the chair at the table. She looked at Shawn. “That went well.”
Hello to my friends and followers! I am so excited about the preorders I have received through my campaign for my book on Publishizer.com. I hope …
So excited to share copies!!
Good luck Ellen!
So very proud of you!
Hi Ellen,
Congratulations on your book coming out! Can't wait to read it :)
So happy for you!
XOXO, Mary Elizabeth
Hey Ellen, I just ordered red your book, and can't wait to read it!
Love, Joy, Peace, Tawnya
Great job Ellen!
Love,
Norah
Congratulations Ellen! Can't wait to read it.
I can’t wait to read your book! It sounds incredible!
We are so excited for you Ellen! Congratulations on dreams coming true!
Can’t wait to read your book! <3
on Feb. 20, 2025, 4:59 p.m.
Always looking for good books for my book club. Can’t wait for this! You’re amazing, Ellen.