November 2016 – RetiredPilgrim.com

Pioneers in the 20th Century is the true story of how I raised six children without running water or electricity and very little money. We lived in a one room house I built with my own hands while pregnant with my fourth child. Learn how we survived and thrived far form neighbours and modern amenities. With nothing more than a can-do attitude, our family met and overcame challenges unheard of in modern life. It will inspire you to persevere against all odds and meet life’s obstacles with faith and good old fashioned hard work.

From the book:

“I didn’t intentionally start out to live the pioneer life. My husband, Walter, who was from Barbados, was even less inclined. He came to Canada in the late 60’s under the impression that Canadian streets were paved with gold and opportunities were limitless. He found out the streets were as dusty and dirty as most city streets – only covered with snow in the winter.”

“One of my few requirements before agreeing to marriage was that we would raise our children in the country. My prospective husband heartily agreed at the time, my wedded husband much less so.”

“Any mention of country living met with my husband’s outright refusal to consider our prenuptial verbal agreement as anything more than a silly whim not worthy his contemplation. However, as fate would have it, my husband’s employment came to an end and he “reconsidered” a move.”

Thus began a series of events that led to our living in the wilderness with little more than a chainsaw and the need to survive winters that often had weeks of -40 degree weather. Our one room home, housing eight of us in just over 300 square feet, had neither electricity or a well for drawing water. With roving bears, moose, foxes, skunks and beavers as our neighbours, we were blessed with a life that built our resilience, and gave us insight into what really matters.

Available at Amazon.com and Amazon.ca

I admit it: I’m addicted. I never thought my habit would consume my every waking moment and haunt my dreams. But it does. I’ve tried to walk away, be strong, resist the urge, but it’s no use, I’m weak. Talking about it only makes it worse. Counseling only feeds it. The more I talk, the more I am filled with the compulsion that refuses to be silenced or denied. The need to escape, to be alone, to quench the thirst of my insatiable habit, summons my emanate return to its singular parlor. A sunset, a sunrise, every landscape, every flower, every gentle brush of wind sends me deeper into the clutch of its iron fisted tentacles.

My blinking phone display acknowledges family and friends have called. With no returned calls they wonder if I still exist in the land of the living. Green fuzzy and forgotten growth inhabits my near empty refrigerator shelves. Shopping for fresh nutritional replacements only results in a nightmare of whirling notions that beckon me to return home, to cloister myself once again, to give expression to the insistent hungered cry of my persistent addiction.

Should you fall into the steely grip of its hand, beware; your life will never be the same. Look at me and learn the truth. Take the step not lightly. Only if you are prepared to have your life consumed, your powers of perception quickened, your desires transformed on the altar of its allure, should you enter its hallowed gates, and then, and only then to rise above the ordinary, to become, to be, an addict, a writer.

I admit it: I’m addicted. Writing has become my compulsion, my life, and my task master. While I struggle to seek out the precise phrase, the most definitive adjective, the most powerful verb, the dusty cobwebs throughout my house hang undisturbed. Giving silent witness and undisrupted testimony of my compulsion, their noiseless slumber liberates dust-scrapes to reach their full potential.
For Christmas and birthdays I beg not for needless gifts of soap and shampoo, but for stamps and envelopes, and paper and pens. My friend, Slow Cooker, bubbles on throughout the day unless our comrade, Microwave, offers stale, nuked left-over treats. I can’t afford take out: I’m a writer. I have exchanged all the missed televised soaps, all the missed parades of misguided human fragility for the solace of giving life to tiny dots of ink on the landscape of blank white paper. And, in this giving of life, found my own.

I admit it: I’m addicted; I’m a writer.