The March + PTSD and Ellie + The Convent Memoir

Just a brief posting today because I’m a little under the weather. Three things:

Yesterday my niece and I went to Lee’s Summit, Missouri, for the March for Our Lives. The group couldn’t get a permit to march, so we stood in front of City Hall and lent our energy to the speakers, who inspired me with their youthful fervor.

Lee’s Summit is a relatively small town, but there must have been about 200-250 of us there, equally divided between the young and the old. All of us were clapping for the articulate and passionate words of the high-school students who spoke.

I’ve marched to protest the Vietnam War in Minneapolis in May 1970, to raise awareness of animal rights in Washington, D.C., in 1990, and now to chivvy our Congress and President to cease being indentured to the NRA and to pass gun laws that outlaw assault rifles, raise the age to buy guns, and do stringent background checks.

The wind chill yesterday was in the low thirties, and I wasn’t dressed for the rally, but I felt as if I were in my mid-thirties again, marching with the college students to protest the war. Only this time, it’s the high-school students leading us!

The tiff between Ellie and Maggie that I shared last Sunday has ceased. Maggie thought Ellie had bumped into her when in reality it was I in my stocking feet. Maggie cornered Ellie and threatened her with claw and teeth. Ellie, who’d been declawed before we met, mostly just hissed when attacked.

I kept Ellie in my office with the door closed for three days—just the computer on the desk, the kitty litter box, her cat bedding, her food and water, and the chair I’m sitting in now. After three days, Maggie had gone on to other concerns, and Ellie wanted out. So now they’ve entered a truce, except that Ellie continues to pee in her bedding, which I’m washing every day. I hope that she gets over her PTSD and that Maggie ceases her unrelenting stare campaign that so traumatizes Ellie.

 One of the bloggers whom I follow, Melissa Ann Goodwin, posted a review of the convent memoir, Prayer Wasn’t Enough, on her blog. If you’d like to read it, click here. Her blog is about her yoga classes, and it’s well worth reading.

Melissa knows about publishing because she’s had two books published: The Christmas Village and Return to Canterbury. I enjoyed them both when they were first published and gave them as gifts to young friends of mine. Click here to go to her author website where you can read about and listen to her excerpts from her books.

Now back to bed with some Earl Grey Tea and a cat for warmth. This general malaise is, I think, an aftermath of yesterday’s chill.


But I don’t want to end this post without thanking all of you who have e-mailed me about the memoir and purchased it and in general given me the support that has become one of the great gifts of blogging.

Thank you. Peace to you, pressed down and overflowing.