Beginnings and Endings

Welcome to my blog! This is a beginning, for me and for you, as we start to learn about each other.

There are so many beginnings in life.  Besides being born (kind of a big one!) there is beginning to walk, beginning school, beginning to drive, beginning college, beginning a family...the list goes on and on...(and I've left out a ton of beginning steps along the way!)

This year brings two big beginnings for me and I'm not sure I can qualify one as bigger than the other. They seem equal in my eyes.  In no particular order, one is my older daughter's freshman year of college; the other is publishing my first novel.

Time-wise, my daughter definitely came first!  Her birth was what I thought was the end of a long journey of infertility (I came to find out that wasn't true, exactly, more to come!) and the beginning of our lives as a family unit.  We had lots of beginnings with her, of course, and I've savored every one. (Okay, I admit, I could live without the beginning of toilet training.)  But the biggest beginning, by far, has been the beginning of her adulthood, which started in September when she left for college about a six hour drive from home.

Rebecca has always been the independent sort, and she's traveled and spent many summers away from us at sleep away camp, so I knew she would be fine.  But still, beginning college is a big step, both for her and for us. It's taken me a while to get used to her not being here.  She is very busy, living the beginning of her adult life as a college student, going to class, joining clubs, meeting friends, working.  It's the beginning of a lifetime of separation, of the very real possibility that Rebecca may not live near me ever again, that she will have a rich life full of other people and ideas and experiences that I won't know about or experience myself.

The other beginning is my novel, Child of Mine.  The novel is younger than Rebecca -- thankfully -- but still, a journey of all its own. I started this novel four years ago, when Rebecca was in ninth grade. It took me a year to write, and then a year to edit, and then another year and a half of my amazing agent trying to get a publisher to take it, and then  months until we decided that we would publish it anyway, as an ebook, through the agency's ebook division, because it's good. Because it tells a story that so many are familiar with -- the desire to begin a family.

I'd love to hear about your beginnings.  What are you trying to begin right now? What are some of your best beginnings? Some of your worst? Contact me using the form on my web site and we can talk.

Judy