In September, 2016, I’ll be publishing my second novel - The Leaf Queen - which centers around a young woman making a mess of her life by searching for love in men who feel entitled to cheat and who are too self-involved to love another properly. But, for me, the book is really about finding a way to forgive yourself for life’s mistake - for, perhaps, not realizing your childhood dream at all or maybe not on the timetable you’d hoped for.
Forgiveness is the gift you give yourself.
Which leads me, instead, to the third novel I’m writing. It’s really in the skeleton stage…scaffolding no more. Merely a rough an outline. But I think it may be my most meaningful offering yet when it’s completed.
In this novel - working title Illusion - I’m exploring life in Corporate America. It’s a landscape I know well. It’s an environment that, as I’ve learned to forgive myself for my own failed relationships and dreams, has created a pile of questions in my mind about the journey of others.
I find Corporate America to be an environment that is unhealthy to the body and mind. From the performance rating system to the need for validation by yet another job title to the climb to an illusion of success often by brutalizing other humans, it’s created an environment of exhaustion and pain for millions of people.
I’m asking myself “What makes a person so needy for validation that they can’t define success by how humanely they treat other people and how kind they are to their own health, body, and family life, but only by what title they achieve at work?”
I’m writing and it’s going slowly. Hopefully one day I can forgive myself for my own unhealthy work life by putting a spotlight on a place where I think change would improve the daily life of so many others.
Stay tuned…..