First, an apology for letting nearly two years go by without posting. Life took a terrible toll on me two years ago as my husband of nearly 40 years died in an airplane crash. Less than two weeks prior to that, my mother had passed away – gently, while holding my sister’s hand. She was nearly 101 years old, so she had lived an amazing, long life. I miss her still, but believe she’s now at eternal rest and, hopefully, reunited with my dad.
Losing a dear loved one far too soon is indescribably difficult, so I won’t say anything more here, other than to recognize I needed the past two plus years to regroup, to grieve, and to contemplate the purpose and meaning of life. One lesson I’ve learned is that equilibrium/peace of mind is a temporary state of being, and that we must embrace all the deviations and obstacles that delay our achieving it. As others before me have said, with the bitter comes the sweet, with the night comes the dawn, with the dark comes the light.
With the support and love of family and friends, I’ve been able to re-engage with writing. I’m starting to query publishers for my next YA novel, which (ironically) deals with grief. I hope my next blog post will be an announcement that I’ve found the right home for “AFTER MATT”. As a teaser, here’s my pitch from #PitMad that attracted a publisher’s attention recently:
“Teenage girl grieving her brother’s shooting death must choose between caregiving her PTSD mother or joining the sport she believes will save them all, biathlon. FALL FOR ANYTHING x WINTER OLYMPICS”.
Brenda Joyce Leahy 
I am so happy to hear of the hunt for a publisher! Thank s for posting – your honesty in writing is an inspiration, Love Lani
Sent from my iPad
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Dear Brenda,
I’m SO happy to hear you are emerging! One can say all kinds of things about the fickleness of life, but in the end we just get on with it.
I have just returned from a visit with Marge in North Carolina. She is doing well in assisted living but is certainly more frail than she was before she broke her leg last December. She’ll be 93 in a month. Bruce and I have been wrestling with the question of moving, now that both Kate and Andrew are out of the house, and have decided to stay in Wisconsin. The state is becoming more conservative, which we don’t like, but we really don’t want to go back to the terrible heat and storms in the southern states even though we would be closer to family. Andrew is happy with his job in Air Force Intelligence in Denver, and Kate has come home from three years of nomad travel with her (now ex-)boyfriend. Her last adventure was a women-only trek in the Annapurna Range in Nepal. She would go back in a second, as developing countries are of great interest to her. I am working two days a week at a very large local food pantry; it is shameful that we feed several thousand people a month. Bruce is working with several organizations to coordinate large scale composting in the metropolitan area; that is a very slow moving and long term project to say the least.
Keep us up to date with your news! Mel
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