This is the church I visited while touring Ireland while researching Crimson Death. I’m still sad I wasn’t able to use St. Michan’s on stage in the book. I’ve got story notes and always planned to revisit the Church, its crypt, and its mummies, yes, mummies in Ireland. I had no idea until we found the church and all its history by accident. We were lucky to be given a tour of the crypts by the historic preservation coordinator (I can’t find my notes, so if the title is incorrect, I apologize. Nor his name, deepest apologies, I will find it all later.) To be given a tour by the person who knew the most about all of it was amazing. He also shared that this was Bram Stoker’s family church while he was growing up in Dublin and the family had a crypt at the church. Walking down into the crypt I kept picturing Stoker as a little boy with only a candle to light the way. The crypt was dark with electricity, it must have been terrifying by lamp or candle, especially to a child. It was impossible for me to not think that the seed for certain scenes in Dracula were planted here. And then there were naturally occurring mummies in the crypts under the church.
Naturally occurring mummies in Ireland! One of the few places in the world where this has happened, and we still don’t know why or how! No, seriously, no one knows exactly why these bodies have mummified underneath this church. Our friend who works with the British Museum, and is an expert in her own right on Mummies, had no idea that she could find some naturally occurring ones just a day trip away. The Crusader and his crypt mates are artifacts of global significance, both to the historic record, and to origins of horror as a genre of fiction. I was hoping that some serious science would happen and we would learn the secrets of these amazing remains, and instead they have been desecrated, destroyed, and even parts of them stolen. The people who did this didn’t just take a head off a body, which is bad enough, they stole the history of Ireland. They stole the history of Bram Stoker and his family and of all the families that have relatives down in this crypt. They have stolen part of the story that created Dracula which was one of the very first modern horror novels. Without Dracula I might never have created my own vampire stories, perhaps no one would have, yes Dracula really is that important to the genre. I am hoping that someone will read this and help us bring this piece of history back. Help us reclaim this story, this inspiration.
A lot of you have asked me what the next Anita Blake novel is about, so I came up with a way for you to guess and me to answer without me giving away too much. I’m usually terrible at oversharing when I try to give hints, so let’s try this – the last few weeks the quotes that go up on Monday on my social media have been from one of the books that I reread as research for the latest novel.
Guess why I reread that book and if you’re right it will reveal some of the characters or plot of the novel I’m currently writing. This would have been much more challenging if you had to read the books to find the quotes. I even thought about asking people not to use electronic search for them, but it seemed unfair to make you read over all twenty-six books for this game. Also, you know someone will use an electronic copy and search for the quote, so it’s not fair to those who would play by the rule, so no rule. Find the quotes the way you want to find them. Once you know the book I used for research then let the guessing begin as to why. Why this book? Is it character, plot, world building point that I wanted to double check, or something completely different? There will be several quotes from each of the books I reread as research for the one I’m writing now.
Correct guesses as to why I needed to refresh myself with the novel/s that we quoted from may get a signed book, though not necessarily a copy of the book in question. I say, may, because if a lot of you guess correctly then we may have to pick random winners from all you excellent guessers. Or maybe we’ll ask your reason for the guess, and the best logic trail wins a book? I’m not entirely sure, because we’ve never tried to do anything quite like this before, so like writing a novel, we’re making it up as we go.
I wrote the story, Shutdown, an original Anita Blake story during a very different government shutdown under President Obama. I wanted to give my fans something positive during a very negative event, and here we are again just it’s President Trump now. I’m tired of all the politics and how they seem to care more about being right, then about doing what is right. To all the government employees and the contract workers that are being so deeply impacted by this shutdown my heart goes out. I know you guys are missing bill payments by now. It seems like there are no more grownups left in Washington D. C. to take care of business, or to take care of the people of this country. I don’t even know what else to say, except here for free it is as an ePub or a mobi file for Kindle, while this current and far too lengthy government shutdown continues is a story for you all to read. If this keeps up I might have to write you another story, maybe Shutdown 2, or something brand new.
EDIT: Jan 30 2019: As The shutdown is over, we’ve removed Shutdown once again.
Sorry it’s taken me this long to blog about my first bird of the year, but I’ve managed to get a sinus infection for the first time in years and the worst migraine I’ve had in years. This is also my first winter in cold weather in years. I don’t think it’s a coincidence. Apparently I’ve become acclimated to the tropics. My younger self raised in Northern Indiana would call me a weather wimp.
Of course, maybe I angered the gods of wine and frolic with my last blog, because after saying I didn’t want to drink or party, I spent the rest of New Year’s Eve with a migraine. So, ironically without drinking a drop of alcohol I got the headache, nausea, and the next day had a migraine hangover. Probably worse than many of you that had a much more raucous party night.
New Year’s Eve will probably never be my favorite holiday, but I promise to keep the spirit of the evening in my heart and mind year round if I just never have another migraine. So in the spirit of this time of year I will make New Year’s resolutions, but first, the bird of 2019 for me.
When I finally woke on New Year’s Day 2019, which was close to noon I was feeling so rough I almost forgot it was the first day of the year. What was my first bird of the year? European Starling. Yep, a Starling. The pests that had just found our bird feeders and emptied them, and have emptied them faster than we can fill them ever since January 1. Did you know that all the Starlings in this country descend from two hundred birds released on the east coast? A Shakespeare society released the birds, because they thought it would be a good idea to have every bird mentioned in Shakespeare in America. My understanding is that they had to release Starlings more than once for them to survive. If I could go back in time I’d tell them the damage the birds have done to our native cavity nesting birds like the bluebird.
According to birder tradition, Starling will be my theme of the year. My bird of the year in 2018 was dove, matters of the heart, romance, Goddess, and certainly that was a theme for last year. I’ll blog more about that at some point, but let’s just say that I’ll take a year of the Starling over another year of the dove. Starling can mean communication, group issues, or maybe I need to reread Shakespeare? I’ll be mediating on the bird to figure out what lessons I’m supposed to learn from it. Oddly, the first animal I saw this year other than our house pets was a neighbor’s Australian Shepard. I did have a couple of years where squirrel was my message of the year, and the year that we got our first rescue cats it was a cat staring at me on our front stoop. So Starling and Australian Shepard, maybe? I’ll look up the history of the breed and see if there’s any cross over between them and Starling. Or maybe it’s my year of the Aussie? 🙂
Okay, in the spirit of truly celebrating New Year’s Eve here are my resolutions:
Walk and socialize the dogs more.
Add more cardio in the gym.
Add two more training sessions of FMA (Filipino Martial Arts) per week, to the two I’m already doing.
Use my new training gloves so much that they need replaced by next January 1.
What is it with all the pressure for New Year’s Eve? The perfect date, the perfect dress, the perfect drink, the perfect midnight kiss, who could ever live up to all that? What started as a way to blow off steam back in Ancient Rome with the Saturnalia has morphed into a, mine’s better than yours, evening out. What party did you go to? What bar? What dance? Club? Concert? Show? If you don’t want to go out on New Year’s Eve people treat you like a social failure, as if being an introvert or not wanting to fight the crowds is a personal failing.
Let us strike a blow for sanity! If you want to go out and party-hardy then do, but if the thought makes you’re introverted, social anxious hands sweat then look that co-worker in the eye on Wednesday and say, “I decided to go to my favorite place in the whole world.”
Let them lean in close, eyes eager, and say, “Where’s that?”
“My living room with my family.” “My bedroom with a pile of books and an only slightly smaller pile of cats/dogs/parrots/your pet of choice.” “My best friend’s house.” “My house with my best friend and his family over.” “I finally watched (movie you missed on big screen) with homemade brownies.” “Snuggled up on the couch with my husband/wife/partner/spouse/fiancée/boyfriend/girlfriend/ lover/bff with benefits.”
Put a lot of feeling into it, let them know how much you enjoyed your quiet evening at home, or at a friend’s house. Embrace that you were happy to skip the crowds and the noise. Let people know how thrilled you were to be no one’s designated driver, and how tired you got of being the drunk whisperer. Let me just say for all of us that don’t enjoy drinking, that doesn’t mean that we enjoy watching everyone else get drunk. What may seem like an awesome night of fun when you’re drinking doesn’t translate for those of us who are just spectators to the show. Let us own our own joyous new year and opt out of other people’s ideas of the perfect good time.
I tried to be jollier than I actually felt for the family holiday get-together. I had these candy cane tights that Genevieve had helped me find; I used to love Christmas the way she loves Halloween, but even at my most ho-ho-ho, I never dressed in the bold colors of the season. I’ve owned one Christmas Sweater in my life and it was a gift. But I had these tights so I put them on and then I had a red skirt and a red shirt and even red laces in my boots. I looked very festive, but the more I passed a mirror the less like me I looked. Who was this person dressed all in bright red with candy canes on their legs? It was jarring every time I caught a glimpse of myself, like seeing a stranger when you were expecting to just see yourself.
I tried to keep the outfit on until the family arrived, and I made it for the first guests that arrived a little early, but by that time I was so unhappy that I excused myself and went up to change. I tried just changing red skirt for black, the boots were black so it still matched. I looked in the mirror and it was a relief to see less color and more black, some tension eased in my shoulders that had been growing all day. But it still wasn’t enough, I still didn’t feel like me, so I got out a black shirt with white lettering that says, “I’m only here because I heard Santa’s elves would be here.” There are red and green elf hats at the bottom of the shirt, but other than that it’s black. I put that on and suddenly there was enough black to balance out the bright blue, red, and green of the candy cane tights. This I could manage.
I went back downstairs to greet more guests still looking festive, but when I caught glimpses of myself in the mirrors it still looked like me. I was much happier and the evening went well. It was a good holiday with everyone, but to enjoy it I had to be me. That’s my bit of wisdom to share today, be yourself. If you are a Who down in Whoville that wants to decorate the house from top to bottom including a Santa Claus Hat with a bell on it for yourself and an apron covered in gingerbread men then go for it; be happy! But if you’re more Grinch, or Goth, then honor that. Find a black t-shirt with a funny, but non-insulting holiday image on it ( I say non-insulting if you’re going to be around family or friends that are more Whoville than you are. Let’s not start the family brawl if we can avoid it.) On the other hand, my fellow Goths do not let The Who’s pressure you into dressing like they do, unless you want to do it. Do not let them put you in something that makes you feel like a stranger to yourself, as if the body snatchers have come and whisked you away. Be yourself, especially during the holidays. It’s stressful enough without feeling like you’re wearing someone else’s clothes. And for you happy Who’s don’t get mad at your Grinch or Goth, if they want to wear black even on Christmas Day. It’s who they are and you love them, right?
So let’s avoid the Christmas wars this year and everyone be themselves. Be the happiest most you version of yourself this year and remember to honor the people you love and their level of Christmas cheer. If you are a Who, allow the family Goths to wear black, or at least don’t force them to wear that bright sweater with the glowing reindeer on it. If you’re a Grinch, don’t suck the happiness out of your family Who’s by behaving as if just sitting down to dinner with all of them is torture worthy of the Spanish Inquisition. Also, no sullenness or whining unless you’re under ten and need a nap. Sullenness and whining sucks the crunchy goodness out of everyone’s holiday no matter what side of Santa’s list you’re on.
So happy holidays, everyone! May you Who’s enjoy the season, the whole shiny package! May you Grinch’s find something to enjoy in between all this crass commercialism! May you Goths find a black shirt that celebrates the season just enough to keep the rest of the family from shoving you into an ugly holiday sweater! May those of you who love the big family and friends dinners have all the happy togetherness and great food you want! May those of you who think that Christmas should be spent alone reading by a fire with not a mouse stirring find your peaceful haven! Whatever the holidays mean to you, whatever will bring you the most joy, the most peace, the most contentment may you find it for the holidays and all the rest of the new year.
Twenty years of allergy shots and I finally have a cat. My inner five-year-old is very happy.
Do we ever get over wanting our parents to approve of us? Do we ever get over wanting that Hallmark movie moment with them? For most of us the answer is, no. No matter how old we get, or how accomplished we are. There’s still a part of us that is five and wants to jump up and down, and say, “Look at me! Look at me!” Or fourteen and wanting that word of praise on the football field, or at the science fair, or just anywhere, any time from the person who raised us.
I think this is part of what makes the holidays so stressful for many of us, that we’re still chasing our parents’s approval. For many of us it’s a rigged game, like carnival games that no matter how good you are, you can’t win. You’re never going to get that stuffed panda, or an atta boy, or atta girl from your parent. So how do you keep those unmet needs from ruining your holidays, and maybe raining on everyone else’s?
Honor that excited five-year-old. Don’t tell yourself I’m twenty-four, or forty-four, and too old to still be stuck there. (I tried that for years and it just doesn’t work.) Honor that awkward fourteen-year-old that’s still stuck under the mistletoe with no one to love. You can have more than one inner child inside you feeling lost and alone, and they’ll be different ages, so honor them all. Honor that moment that you didn’t get your needs met, or when the world collapsed around you and part of you got stuck. Sometimes it’s a true trauma, a death in the family that you were too young to deal with, but it can be much less trauma worthy to the outside world and still have hurt you deeply. Don’t tell yourself that it wasn’t that big a deal that you didn’t get asked to the Christmas dance, not if your fifteen-year-old self is still stuck there feeling unloved and unwanted. Honor your teenage self by dragging the memory into the light and telling her it’s all right. If you have romantic partner tell them about it, and let them help you comfort that stuck part of you, and maybe just maybe you can begin to unstick yourself and heal.
If the hurt involves family sometimes you can share it with them and that can sort of exorcise the ghosts of past pain, but if the circumstances that caused the pain are still present they may not be much help. Or they’ll tell you, that was so long ago, why are you the only one holding onto that? Just because it wasn’t a trauma to your brother, doesn’t mean it wasn’t one to you, so honor your inner child and love yourself. Sometimes you can’t explain it to your birth family, but you, yourself can love and honor your own inner self. You can love your own inner child.
If at five you didn’t get the teddy bear Santa promised you, and there’s still a part of you that’s moping over that long ago Christmas, then go out and buy yourself a teddy bear. Sometimes literally you can parent that inner part of yourself. If that stuffed toy, or train set, or sparkly dress not being yours is still making part of you that unhappy, stop telling yourself you should be over it by now and gift yourself. Sometimes it can be that simple, and no one has to understand why that in the box mint train set means so much to you. The only one that really has to know is you and that inner five/ten/twelve year-old.
If your inner child is tired of your mother fixing your favorite vegetable every year, because it’s actually your sister’s favorite vegetable, and you actually hate black-eyed peas, then cook your very favorite vegetable and bring it with you. You know what your favorite things are, cook them, make them, and bring them yourself. I hear some of you out there saying, but I want my mother to acknowledge me, rather than her favorite which happens to be my sister. Well, yeah, so did I, but waiting for your parent to fix an issue they don’t realize is an issue, is sort of a losing proposition for you. If you’ve told your parent that it’s not your favorite veggie for years and they still can’t remember, then it’s not going to happen. I’m sorry, but you can fix your own favorite veggie and bring it, or bring the fixings for the dish and cook it there in your childhood kitchen. Think how empowering it is to not only fix your own favorite food, but to do it in the midst of all those childhood ghosts.
You do not have to wait on your family to acknowledge your pain, or your unhappiness. You can acknowledge it and act on it, because that way you are in charge of it. You can parent your own inner child rather than waiting for someone else, that puts the power to heal yourself in your own hands. You can love yourself and love your inner child/children. You can take control of it and be the adult you, yourself needs, or needed long ago. Empower yourself this holiday season and treat your inner child as if they were a real life child that could take your physical hand and look up at you. Do for that younger part of you what you couldn’t do then, and maybe it can still be the happiest time of the year.
Me and Amanda Palmer backstage at The Pageant, November 2010
My grandmother told me not to toot my own horn, which meant that I wasn’t encouraged to take too much pride in my accomplishments. She also believed that you should never enjoy anything too much, or God will punish you. These two beliefs made her life incredibly bleak, and in turn made my childhood not exactly a bowl of cherries. Skip ahead decades of therapy later and I thought I had worked through the issues those two messages had given me. Of course, bedrock issues from childhood aren’t so easily conquered. In fact, one of the things that’s been most disappointing about therapy breakthroughs is that even after you figure out what your personal demon is, the demon doesn’t always go away. Sometimes they do, sometimes the exorcism works and you’re free of that issue – free forever. I love it when that happens, it feels so liberating, but there are some issues that no matter how much cognitive therapy holy water you throw on them, they refuse to let you go.
I have trouble being proud of my accomplishments, because though my grandmother has been dead for years she raised me and she raised me not to be too proud. I’m not sure why taking pride in a job well done was such a sin. Weirdly, you were allowed to work hard to get good at something and then to do it, but once you actually started getting positive attention about it, then you had to not be prideful. It was an odd double message, be good, but not too good. It was good to get good grades and be smart, or good in athletics or whatever, but don’t get a big head about it, don’t get too full of yourself. It was okay for you to be told you were pretty, or smart, or whatever, but you couldn’t call yourself any of that, because that would be getting above yourself. Conversely anything you were bad at, or not perfect at would be pointed out immediately with comments like, “You’re so clumsy. You’re stupid. Etc . . .” I don’t know why she felt it was so wrong to praise success, but totally okay to criticize on the other end so harshly. I wondered in hindsight if she thought cutting me down would help keep me humble, just like not praising me to my face would? At her wake friends came up and told me how proud she was of me and how much she praised my accomplishments. It was news to me, and by that time I had totally taken in her mixed message of succeed, but don’t let yourself enjoy it. Due to my parents divorcing when I was a baby, my grandmother was with me from birth, and the only parent I had from age six when my mother died. She was my only parent, my world, and a lot of her beliefs and behaviors had a profound influence on the person I am today for better and worse.
I have pictures of me with famous people and I’ve posted almost none of them. Actors, singers, other writers who probably fully expected me to post the images on social media, but I didn’t. Why? Because I still can’t shake a terrible discomfort with being that kind of famous. In fact, the picture with this blog of me with Amanda Palmer, singer/song writer/author, almost didn’t get posted with this, because it made me so uncomfortable as if just the picture was bragging, and bragging wasn’t allowed. Then this morning I got the notice that Amanda had dropped a new song from her upcoming album to Patreon’s only, and since I’m a Patreon of her’s I listened to it. Gods, it was so intimate as if she were whispering into my ear, her breath against my hair. The rawness of it, it feeling so personal made me cry, and in that moment I knew that I had to use the picture of the two of us together for this blog. The picture is seven or eight years ago when she came through as one half of the amazing duo that is, The Dresden Dolls. I joined Amanda’s Patreon in part because she seems to thrive on social media and attention, and be much more comfortable with fame than I am. She is one of several people that I’ve tried to study to see if their ease with fame will help my discomfort. What I learned is that I can’t be Amanda Palmer, or anyone else. I have to figure out how to be famous as Laurell K. Hamilton.
I’ve had offers of free stuff, if I’ll just wear their clothes, or use their product and post about it, take pictures of myself in or with it. I accepted one offer of lovely shoes and then I didn’t post any of the pictures when they wanted me to post them. Why? It would take me a few more years to realize it was because the idea of me wearing shoes being possibly able to influence other people to buy them freaked me out.
Any time that I got too much attention in this area I’d sabotage it, not on purpose, not actively, but it was still self-sabotage even if just by procrastination, or losing an email. I’m never so disorganized than when it’s something that might raise my profile higher than it already is, and honestly if my agent didn’t insist on it, I probably wouldn’t say, New York Times #1 best selling author, but I am and my agent has chastised me enough times that I use it.
A journalist on the tour for my latest novel, Serpentine, this summer asked me if I’d thought about where my papers would be donated. It took me a second to realize he meant my archival papers like my drafts, notes, literary detritus and mementos. I was completely at a loss. It hadn’t occurred to me that any college or institute would be interested in my literary fingernail clippings. I explained that I’d been raised not to take too much pride in things and I just couldn’t shake it. He was older than me by a couple of decades, and we talked about the fact that some things that we know are damaging to us, old beliefs we were raised with that hold us back, never leave us. He said something to the effect that you have to stop trying to get rid of the parts that won’t go away, and just accept them. Since he’d been trying to slay his personal demons for at least a decade longer than I have, I appreciated him sharing his insight. It should have been discouraging that twenty years from now I’m still going to be fighting this deep issue, but it wasn’t discouraging, instead it was encouraging. (I cannot find the file with all the interviews from last summer’s tour that would have this wonderful, and professional newspaper journalist’s name in it. I’ve sat on this for two days trying to find the information, until I realized I’m using it as an excuse not to post this blog. When I find it, I’ll post with all his information, but for today, no more procrastinating.)
I’ve had open invitations to come back for radio, blogs, podcasts, and all sorts of wonderful interviews with great people who wanted me to come back any time I wanted, and they meant it. I have not initiated a single return interview except when a new book came out and my publicist told me to do it. Why? I don’t know why, or I didn’t, but I know what issue is behind the behavior.
So, to all the celebrities that tried to get into contact with me, especially early in my career, I’m sorry if I dropped the ball. Sometimes I couldn’t believe you were actually contacting me, like the shy girl who suddenly gets asked out by the most popular guy in school. There must be some mistake, or it’s a cruel joke and will end in ridicule and tears.
I will be trying to post more of the pictures as I find them, and I will try and believe it when people say, come back any time for an interview. I’ll try to be more comfortable with it all. Now that I know what some of the issues are that hold me back in this area I’ll try to move forward as if I don’t have the issue. Fake it until you make it, I guess.
I will at the very least stop torpedoing my opportunities for more publicity and fame. I can’t get rid of the part of me that squirms with embarrassment about me being “famous”, but I can admit it its a problem. I can admit that as successful as I’ve been I probably could have been even more successful if I had been able to embrace that success more wholeheartedly and not missed certain cues. Here’s to being a better dance partner with my success in the future, and kicking this particular inner demon down the road.
I’ve been under the weather for a couple of days, nothing major, but enough to distract me, so imagine my surprise when I saw how much above and beyond you guys had donated to our charity from Giving Tuesday, Mary’s House of Hope at A Safe Place. Thank you for donating on Tuesday and for continuing to donate. You guys are the best! In fact you’ve been so amazing that we’re going to keep the fundraising going. I’ve signed so many books and we will continue to give away signed books as long as you guys keep giving so generously to this wonderful charity.
I’ve chosen to do a couple of very personal blogs recently. One with the video from my Pikes Peak Writer’s Conference keynote speech where I talked publicly for the first time about what has happened in my life when fans became obsessed, and/or turned into haters, or worse. Then I followed up with an equally personal blog explaining why I chose the charity that I did. Your reaction to both blogs has been overwhelmingly positive and supportive, thank you all so much. In fact, you’ve been so lovely about it all that I’ve decided to continue to share.
When I was first being interviewed about the Anita Blake novels, almost every journalist asked me some variation of this, “Why did you decide to write a strong female character?”
My reply was a variation of, “Growing up I learned, that you were either strong, or a victim. It never occurred to me to have a main character that was anything else but strong.”
My grandmother fought back against my grandfather and never let his abuse turn her into a victim. She was a fighter and she helped make me one, too. She’s a big part of why Anita Blake is so strong, stubborn, and unflinching. Her telling me that Rawhead and Bloody Bones would get me if I was a bad little girl, instead of the boogeyman, would give me a plot for the fifth Anita Blake novel, Bloody Bones, and send me researching Celtic mythology, which led me to write the Meredith Gentry series. My grandmother probably helped me give strength to Merry in the face of the abuse of her own family. Helping turn her from helpless princess to Los Angeles Private Detective and Queen. You, the fans, have told me that Anita’s strength, Merry’s strength, have helped you be strong in your real lives. Strength shared is strength multiplied, let’s keep sharing the best of ourselves, and thank you again for your generosity to Mary’s House of Hope, at a Safe Place.
My grandmother was born in 1911, and at fifteen she fell in love and married my grandfather. It wasn’t that unusual an age to marry in the hills of Arkansas back in the day. I’ve said before that I’m only one generation away from wearing shoes only in the winter, and I’m not entirely joking. At fifteen my grandmother was so in love with the man who would become my grandfather she used a box to cover one of his footprints so the rain wouldn’t wash it away. She was embarrassed that she ever thought that much of him, because soon after they married he started hitting her. By sixteen she’d had her first of five children by him, and the abuse continued through their entire marriage. He was abusive to the children, too, but he saved the worst of it for my grandmother. She was 4’ 11” and he towered over her, but she was never his victim. She fought back as hard as she could for all those years. Why didn’t she leave? Because back then there was no place to go, and he would have gotten the children. They were still seen as his property not hers. She wouldn’t leave her kids, because she was afraid of what he’d do to them without her there to protect them. She stayed until my mother, the youngest, was fourteen and old enough to choose where she lived.
My grandmother told me once, that she left when she was afraid that either he’d kill her, or she’d kill him, and then what would happen to the kids? She endured at least twenty years of abuse to protect her children. She told me once that if she hadn’t had two sons that she would have hated all men, but she loved her boys and her grandsons, so all men weren’t evil just most of them. But she allowed my grandfather to visit us, he taught me to catch butterflies and to hold them just so around the middle on the thorax so that I didn’t damage their wings. I still remember the zebra swallowtail that we caught beating its wings against the screen in the window. I never caught another one in Indiana. I can still hear the ping of it hitting the metal, desperate to escape. When I’d seen it long enough he helped me set it free, because you always set them free, he said. I remember even at five or six being confused that his big hands could be so gentle with butterflies and yet had almost killed my grandmother multiple times. It took me years of therapy to understand why I write about monsters that turn out not to be, and about people that turn out to be monsters. When I asked why she let him visit, my grandmother said, “He’s their father and your grandpa. There’s nothing I can do to change that.”
All five of their children took the grandkids back to visit Papa in Arkansas in the summer. I have pictures of me at his house with his favorite dog and one of the cats. He had a white pony that I had named Lulubelle. No, I don’t remember why I chose that name. Papa died when I was ten, and it was only when the family gathered for the funeral that the grandkids discovered that Lulubelle was also Snowball, and several other names. Every set of grandkids had a pony at Papa’s house, but since we never visited at the same time it was the same pony. I don’t know what that says about my grandfather, but he could be charming. He was well liked by everyone except his wife and kids.
If my grandmother had had a women’s shelter to go to with her children all those years ago it would have made a great deal of difference to her and my uncles, my aunts, and my mother. That’s why my charity is Mary’s House of Hope at A Safe Place. So that the women enduring abuse today, right now can take shelter with their children and their pets. Most shelters won’t take pets, and some women stay to protect their fur kids, just like their human kids. It’s one of the reasons I want to support this place, because you bring all that you love. I couldn’t change what happened to my grandmother, but you can help me make a change for other women, other children, other families. Together we can make sure there is someplace for them to go where they are safe.
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