Nebraska,A Prairie Life

Dear Grandaughters, 

    I am going to do a series of posts about growing up in Brady, a small town on the Nebraska prairie. I will be writing about my experiences in the '50s and '60s when life was different. At that time, we lived without televisions or air conditioning. Calling a friend meant picking up the phone and telling the operator what number you wanted her to dial for you.. We didn't have a swimming pool, or theater, and certainly not...computers. Our only store, except for two grocery stores, was the drugstore.

    
    This might sound drastic, but I have wonderful memories and a few not so wonderful! (I could be on the ornery side.) Nevertheless, I would like to share those things I remember., I will be writing about school, holidays, parades, the games we played. the Brady cafe, and much more. I will include my own antics. I hope you enjoy these blogs.  Love, Grandma Barb

Hope After Suicide

Last night I attended a group for those who had lost someone, or lost even more than one, through suicide. I too experienced this. I was a junior in high school when my mother overdosed the day before Christmas. I've had many years to deal with my loss, but I hoped to be a support for others who were hurting.Besides, I'm comfortable talking about the subject which wasn't always the case. In 1963, the year I lost Mom, people didn't talk about the subject. Suicide was a stigma--although last night,  I learned that to a great extent that it remains stigmatic.

In truth, suicide normally deals with those who suffer from endless depression--unending feelings of hopelessness--some turning to drugs and alcohol not knowing how to deal with life. Towards the end, my mother was drinking more than I realized.--For many years I thought that her death was my fault, when in truth, it wasn't. Unlike many who take their lives. she talked about wanting to die, yet I was stunned and numb when she actually took too many pills. I had to return to school within two weeks. I didn't want to cry, so I crawled inside of myself and returned to school with a big smile on my face and hidden pain inside. The pain was even hidden from me. In time it caught up with me--more than once. I suffered from anxiety and depression for several years. Fortunately, I had good professional help.

So what am I trying to say--what message do I want to get across?  First, I feel we need more education about suicide and those who are left behind, the survivors. We must do away with the stigma. When people die of cancer, we talk about the illness and approach the grievers. Often with suicide, people don't know what to say. Some survivors actually lose their friends.

I was blessed to have a woman who took over as my mom. I could talk to her and her husband. However, when I went to college, there was no one. Again, I tucked my emotions inside. Ironically, my first roommate, a wealthy girl, who appeared to have the world in her hands, took her life. I found her in our room one day. She was despondent, so I spent several days listening to her. Her parents took her away to a hospital. The next year, she died of asphyxiation. A tragedy.

As I am sure some of you have done, acknowlege the person who has lost someone. Hug them if nothing else. Feed them special nurturing foods. be with them...or rather let them know you are available. Say you are aware of the pain they must be experiencing. My closest friend's Mom was a help. I loved her smile and the fact that she took myself and her daughter to plays and once, to the Miss America pageant.

Not talking about or acknowledging what happened, doesn't help. The griever knows what happened;  it is on their mind, I can assure you. Suicide is different in that it never goes away and there is often no way to resolve the death. Even now, a day rarely passes that I don't remember.

In a college class in 1982, I was told I couldn't tell anyone what happened...that I might scare the other students. For goodness sake, it was a class on becoming a family counselor. The message was that I was bad, and the students would be afraid of me. This from a professor with a doctorate in family counseling!! Shame on her.

We are making progress with the topic of suicide, but we have a long ways to go. Suicide is rampant in the young. We need more education on how to reach out to those who are depressed and on touching those who are left behind, the grieving.    Those we lost were human and those who lose their loved ones are humans too. We cry, we laugh, we hope, we love, like others.
 In closing, I want to thank my high-school class for coming to the funeral. I turned around and all 16 were there. I was deeply touched and have never forgotten. I thank each of them. Their presence began a long journey of healing.

A Four Year Old and Grandparent's Day

   This coming Thursday, we attend Anna's preschool Grandparent's Day. I have been wondering what runs through her mind. For example, I have already planned my wardrobe! I doubt she's given a second thought to clothes. It's the same with other issues. She won't  ruminate on impressing us with gestures. If she does, her actions will be spontaneous. The same is true for apprehension about what we'll think of her,  how she looks,  how she cuts things out, or if we're going to like her art work. She's too busy living to touch on superficial worries. I'm not even sure she knows we plan to attend. For certain, she would have no idea about snacks or how long we're staying, though school only lasts for two hours, I think.

    I'm curious about what we'll do during that time. It could be that the kids are planning a skit or singing songs. I've heard her sing in church, and she seems to have no qualms. She might glance at us, but she doesn't seem blown away by our presence. If anyone has anxiety, it's me. In case you wonder why, it's the computer. If they are using one, I'm boggled by all the skills a four years old knows. At Christmas time, when leaving our house, Anna yelled out, "Mom, did you remember to pack my upload?!" I couldn't help but wonder what she was talking about. As it was, she was referring to  a Christmas gift- a game she got to play on the computer.

    I felt undone. She knows more about the computer than I do. When I was four life was all about my baby doll and doll dishes. That's as far as I'd gotten. All of this new "early learning" sort of intimidates me. Oh well. Regardless, she'll charm Grandpa and me beyond anything we can imagine because that's what grand kids do so effortlessly. I can hardly with to go. I hope she'll approve of my black velvet pants and a top with a red jacket. Signing off...Grandma

Inner Joy: Doane stuns No. 1 Morningside

Inner Joy: Doane stuns No. 1 Morningside: Doane stuns No. 1 Morningside

Doane stuns No. 1 Morningside

Doane stuns No. 1 Morningside

Loving Life- Low Maintenance Style

I sit here on this sparkling summer day and think about Love. Don't take me wrong. It's not about that kind of love but love about being alive. It's about the little things like summer at the cabin, the mother goose with her babies floating through the water. A deer that stopped and  looked both ways as I crossed the country bridge. Or the mother cat with the kittens. She's wild and had moved them at least two times. I know she's hungry and stressed. Will there be enough mice while I'm gone for a few days. I feed her.

My love isn't high maintenance. I've been there and while it's nice to be free from financial worry, I've never been a big spender. Of course, I write, and this cabin on the Little Blue provides my needs. For me, love is about the birds out on the feeder. The male cardinals feeds the females a seed to regurgitate for her babies.  How romantic! Or the wood peckers. We have three varieties of those red headed beauties. Even the cranky blue jay adds color. Along with those, we have the wild turkeys strutting down the road, slowing you up.Just across the way we have a 100 year old farmhouse along with a barn that's of the same vintage. The house has wanes-coating and a room upstairs where I can write. It's perfect for poetry.

Then to top it of that, we got a golf cart and an old boat on sale. The granddaughters come out here and ride over by the walking bridge. Better yet, little Anna and I took a walk the other night and went past the bucolic cabins that were built in the late 1800's when ferry boats brought people up the river to dance at the lodge or go into Crete Nebraska, a small college town.  Robert Taylor went to school here.(Doane College).
I hear about depression. Money is often an issue or self-image. I've been there, but for me, love isn't money, and love need not cost a bundle. Find your niche whatever it is. For me this is enough.

A Cyber Bully and Your Response

In a country that offers freedom, we have a powerful new weapon. The Cyberbully.....

A Cyberbully is a small and insecure person who lacks self-confidence and character. Think of them as being the size of a frog. They feel little and insignificant. So how can they feel big. They can increase their size by intimidating you on the internet on social media sights. I know becuase it happened to me. I felt powerless, embarssed, humiliated and very alone. I had posted a poem and someone blasted it. Why? 
Because they didn't write the poem and becuase I was having fun and my trust level was bigger than it should have been. I was not expecting that to happen. I confronted the bully who denied and asked how I could possibly call him that. Well friends, it happned four times with this person. They were no going to stop!!! I decided that my only recourse was to block the bully. Guess what? Now I can't post on Linked In. I went from being a person of influence to losing my right to say anything. Futhermore, there is nothing I can do. I can't offer any explanations for why I blocked them. Here we are on the July forth and I have no voice on LinkedIn. OK. That's all right. I can post here and I will.

Cyberbully- an insignificant person who uses words without consequences to humilate and degrade. Why? So they can feel bigger. So they can make you afraid to post or create a poem or write an opinion. Call then green, jealous, had beens who are power driven.

What can you do?
1. Remember: you are dealing with untrue words...A label and nothing more.

2.. Ignore the response and act like you never heard it. Ignoring is powerful. Ignore everytime they come at you. IGNORE

3.  You can leave for awhile while you decide what recourse to take. However, try to feel flattered. Apparently you did something right or why else would he bully want to put you down? A bully is jealous and troubled. They never have enough inside to thrive on their own accomplisments. 

4. Turn to people who love and support you. Frankly, being bullied can feel like a sting and blow. So go to your friends for reinforcement.

5. Study bullying. Learn what you can do. There are sites on line and you could even become an advocate for teens and small children. A child is helpless. When I was a therapist the best advice I gave was HAVE FUN. Always have a passion on hand to dist ract yourself.  Remember just how lovable you are and that their words are AIR. The are gutless people who turn to the vocabulary. In fact, it's easy to do on-line. Their are no consequenses...no penalties. 

The Rag Princess - Barbara J. Franzen : iUniverse

The Rag Princess - Barbara J. Franzen : iUniverse

Tracy's New York Life | A Blog About Life in New York City: My New York Sunday: What I Wore, What I Did, and What I Spent

Tracy's New York Life | A Blog About Life in New York City: My New York Sunday: What I Wore, What I Did, and What I Spent

Inner Joy: The Rag Princess

Inner Joy: The Rag Princess: http://goindiebooks.com/406110/ The Rag Princess by Barbara Franzen Developmental Edit-Ladette Randolph A Nebraska Story Meet the Cast...

Inner Joy: Inner Joy: Grandma

Inner Joy: Inner Joy: Grandma: Inner Joy: Grandma :    My Grandmother Stella ,  long dead, elicits the most wonderful memories. I can still see her when I knocked on her ...

The Rag Princess

http://goindiebooks.com/406110/


The Rag Princess by Barbara Franzen
Developmental Edit-Ladette Randolph

A Nebraska Story Meet the Cast:

 Celeste Dusty- a twelve year old farm girl-

 Socialite Aunt Sylvie from Lincoln - emotionally abusive to Celeste

 Pastor Evan (pedophile in desguise) who likes Celeste  more than God-

Will Temple-the boy from Celeste's  past with whom she falls in love-

Travel about the farm and field and see the John Deere's and Allis Chambers and Fords

Witness the Great Depression and Recreation-Banner Country Church, with baseball games
Cake walks, Box Lunches and the Harvest Festival and Canteen for WW11 and the Ladie's Union Aid, a Cessna, Vintage Department Stores and Lincoln's Sunken Gardens and A Street and see Shridan Boulevard at Christmas or watch Celeste fix her first dinner for Will and watch their first Kiss as warm as summer breezes and as sparkling  as  the fourth of July-


Meet the fill in cast of colorful character-1930-40

Bev Temple who fixes a traditional country Thanksgiving feast

Perky Ginny -Celeste's best friend from childhood

Country school teacher and Miss Whippet city school teacher


Fly in a Cessna, fall in love-learn about the worst abuse and the process of healing and disclosing

Laugh cry weep and dream---The Rag Princess on the plains of Nebraska-by Barbara Franzen

Amazon.com  Kindle softback and hard back or see the Link

Inner Joy: Grandma

Inner Joy: Grandma:    My Grandmother Stella ,  long dead, elicits the most wonderful memories. I can still see her when I knocked on her black screen door. Pe...

Inner Joy: Grandma

Inner Joy: Grandma:    My Grandmother Stella ,  long dead, elicits the most wonderful memories. I can still see her when I knocked on her black screen door. Pe...

Grandma

   My Grandmother Stella, long dead, elicits the most wonderful memories. I can still see her when I knocked on her black screen door. Peeking through her window, I saw her inching her way slowly towards me, then opening the door, her  face broke into a big grin. "Oh for land sakes!" she'd say waving her hand through the air. The next thing I knew she was drawing my face close for a smooch. A shrunken lady, because of her camel back, she would say,"Come on in," while her eyes laughed, "ha ha ha"...
   Stepping inside her house, I would take note of her long plaid house dress and her long apron. It wasn't unusual to find her baking her oatmeal cookies, an aroma that filled her house like potpourri. And if she wasn't making cookies, she was working with rhubarb or pitting cherries out on her back porch there in her house, beside the park, at the top of Main Street in Gothenburg, Nebraska. A one time homesteader and the wife of a rancher, who helped build the Union Pacific, Grandma cooked for a hotel in Brady. Of course, that was when she was young. In fact, she was making the pastries the day my French Grandpa came over from the saloon side of the hotel to the bar side. By the time I met her she'd moved to town and had grown fairly old. She was in her eighties. 
    Among the best parts were her wild flower garden, the fact that she lived beside the park, and the cherry tree in her back yard. My sister and I would get up on ladders and pick cherries which she baked into bubbling pies. My other favorite time was evening. We would sit down and talk about what we wanted to watch. Sometimes it would be a detective show or a talk show. I  remember how much she enjoyed Lawrence Welk. Even if I didn't like the show, I liked it because I was with her, and she was contagiously good natured, and because she was as talkative as I was. We spent a great deal of time researching relatives in my search for someone famous. They were either English like her or French like Grandpa.
   Grandma kept wrapped candy beside the couch. They were those chocolates in colorful foil. She had a gas log fireplace and a wrought iron, miniature stove that looked like a toy. Among her pretties was the flower covered china clock painted by Aunt Poe. Around ten o'clock we would turn off the TV lamp on her television. Fifteen minutes later we'd be laying side by side, Grandma in her silk nighty. We'd talk for a bit and make plans for the next day. In no time,  I'd hear her snoring. As soft spring breezes blew in through her window,  I'd listen to the traffic go by on Main Street, knowing that tomorrow would be as sweet as today had been.

Would You Believe Me if I Said...

Would you believe me if I said I was never sad, never had bad moods, or had never had a fight with my husband? 

Would you believe me if I said I never got lonesome or wished I had more friends?

And what if I said I'd never embarrassed myself, felt foolish, or wished I could do it all over again?

Would you believe me  if I said that I liked everyone and had never gossiped or had a bad thought?

And would you believe me if I said I never complained about anything like ice on the streets, boredom, hunger, being too warm or thirsty?

What  if I said  that hot flashes had never made me miserable...that I never worried about my hair and didn't care a whittle about what others thought or that my feelings were never hurt? 

Or how about my saying that my house was always clean with windows that sparkled and a toilet so white it squeaked. 

Would you believe me if I said there were no dust balls under the bed or that I still looked perfect at midnight when I laid my head down on the pillow? 

How about my saying that I said I fixed my husband a fully cooked meal three times a day and made desserts twice a week?

Just wondering what you would say or do if I said that all of these were true or said that even one of these was true of me?

The Rag Princess-Why A Book About Child Abuse-Emotional and Sexual

The Rag Princess  About Celeste Dusty Reclaiming Her Identity After Taken From Home

Following a tragic accident Celeste needs a new home. She is content living with the Temples-but an estranged Aunt Sylvie,a Lincoln Socialite moves her to her mansion in Lincoln
where she faces emotional and sexual abuse-

The predator is a popular pastor. Or is he bogus?

The other abuser is Aunt Sylvie-

Later Celeste's pretend boyfriend from childhood, a boy who was her best friend's brother, discovers a rag princess turned Cinderella- The ugly duckling has blossomed but remains scarred from years of abuse
A love story ensues in part three, the final half of the book

I chose to write this story due to my work with severely  with abused children. Multiple sclerosis cut my work short. 

 I worked with kids ages three to seventeen. The cases were heinous. Until doing this work, I had no idea how bad it really was. With Celeste's story,  I hoped to teach about the predator and the experience of the child. I included humor in the writing as a means of emotional breaks and because life includes humor. It is one way of coping.

While my work was with the children, I interviewed a male therapist who worked with the perpetrators. I think in order to catch abuse more quickly, the more we know, the faster we can intervene-The perpetrators are slick and good at what they do-using threats, gifts, anger, love, whatever the child buy into. 

Many CHILDREN are afraid to talk and if their abuser is a parent, they feel guilty at the idea of incriminating someone they love-or they believe they are at fault-It wasn't unusual for a mother to blame the daughter-not wanting to believe the man she loves could do this or that her child has been hurt or that the home will be torn apart.

1. Among those I worked with_One child that I saw was beaten so badly by a mother's boyfriend that almost every major bone in his innocent sweet body was broken. 

2.Another child had been strangled by his father. He hid under desks in the classroom and was afraid of everything much like an abused animal.

2. Another girl-came in week after week to talk about what she was doing wrong. It turned out that a very prominent parent was beating her out of rage.

3.With the sexual abuse, I had a child who was being abused by a predator, a friend of the family, while his mother, unaware, made supper in the next room. She thought the man liked her little boy and was playing with him. The same person had him for overnights and took him swimming in his pool where he proceeded to molest him. The young child was attacking other kids sexually.

Celeste, the main character-hopes to make a dent-In a sequel she marries-during the war-PRAIRIE BRIDE- a fun story-

Inner Joy: The Rag Princess-Approaching Child Sexual Abuse-

Inner Joy: The Rag Princess-Approaching Child Sexual Abuse-: The Rag Princess takes an intimate look at child abuse- Both sexual and emotional. Writing about the emotional was much easier. Deciding ...

The Rag Princess-Approaching Child Sexual Abuse-

The Rag Princess takes an intimate look at child abuse-Both sexual and emotional. Writing about the emotional was much easier. Deciding if or how to approach the sexual was far more difficult.

 I thought it would be simple...I worked with those kids day in and day out. Was I in for a surprise? YES- I spent three years writing the scenes over and over.  One editor suggested I skip it. Another person said..."But, it probably does happen." In fact, she said, "It does happen." She was right.

If I was going to write about the perpetrator and the victim, I wasn't going to gloss over it- as thought it wasn't painful and messy and heinous and frightening... 

I wrote about sexual abuse the way it happens, telling  what it's like for a young victim. One   goal of my story was ... to expose the perpetrator- to paint a picture of how smootly they work. They use gifts, they threaten, they find vulnerable victims and scare them witless. Perpetrators know what they are doing-They know their craft so well that they can be abusing a child... with the parent... in the next room. They threaten... telling the child that he or she will die or lose a loved one if they tell the secret-

I chose to be straight and to the point about this topic in The Rag Princess. I interviewed a therapist who has worked with the perpetrator treatment program for over ten years. 
 ...Regardless of the manner used to groom a child-the outcome is ugly-I chose to write it realistically, hoping to make a dent-a big dent...