Living Your Life in the Most Awesome Way Possible
By
Jo Davis
“Find out who you are and live it on purpose.”
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1
Your Story Matters
Like you do.
Once the individual sees who they really are—a divine, energetic entity full of potential and God-given ability to be greater than they ever imagined, they will be unstoppable.
That's you.
It's May 1, 2023. I'm in my office looking out the window at a Pink Dogwood tree in full flower. When we moved here 6 years ago, that tree was cut down to its bare bones, a trunk, and five branches. I wondered why the previous owners had cut that tree so severely, and I had no inkling what sort of tree it was. For the last couple of years, it has branched, leafed, and revealed itself as a pink dogwood, one of my favorite trees.
It's an old tree; the truck is large, and its blossoms are smaller than the young trees I see about town. But it is gorgeous, alive, and flourishing. I love it.
That tree tells me something about age and how living creatures can bounce back and thrive again. It doesn't worry. It just keeps growing and going through its cycles.
I curtained off an area for an office in the outbuilding beside the dogwood tree. The building was once a dance studio and still has mirrors on one wall and around a corner. We used it for storage until my daughter placed a desk there for herself and used it for a time. Now, in my curtained area, I have a comfortable little office. The heater under my desk keeps my feet warm, and my little dog, Sweetpea, sleeps in front of it. My computer is in front of a window, and my view is of the pink dogwood and the main house's backyard.
I have decided to write while the blossoms are on the tree. I'm aiming for 50,000 words It will be a race between the flowers and me.
When I told a friend that Natalie Goldberg (in Old Friend from Far Away) said that a memoir doesn't have to be an old person's story; it can be for those moments that take our breath away, my friend asked what such a moment that would be for me.
"My first kiss," I said.
I was a tall girl and felt self-conscious about it in high school when all the cute little girls were making out with their boyfriends in the hallways, but I had a boyfriend who took me out of all that and wrote sonnets about me being five feet nine with eyes that shine. He gave me my first kiss.
His sister, about ten years older than him, bet he would kiss a girl before he was sixteen. He held out as long as he could, kissed me, and said, "There goes five bucks."
We know individuals who have accomplished great things and become famous or notorious. They lived illustrious lives. Yet, as they have walked through fire, so have you. As surely as they have lived notable lives, so have you. Therefore, I am encouraging you to write about your life. Your life is important. You are important. But first read this, for you will be a different person at the end. Not that my words will have changed you, but your introspection will.
After accumulating a life of observations, teachings, and study, those learnings shouldn't be locked up in a trunk and buried 150 feet down. They are to be shared. Imagine strips of paper upon which you have written your insights. You throw them up into the wind. Others, like children with arms outstretched, run through their first snow flurry. Instead of catching snowflakes on their tongues, catch those paper strips. If they like what's written there, they keep the scrap. If not, they throw it back into the wind to be picked up by someone else.
My strips will contain plain talk about magical things.
I use the word magic metaphysically. I know physics is at work. I also understand that something divine is swirling around us.
Lynne McTaggart, in her book, The Field, says that "Science is put together piece by piece. We build on what we learned before." It was the same in writing this book. Sometimes, one of our theories needs a facelift. Sometimes, they just need fine-tuning or additional information.
And then there are moments of magic. Psychologist Abraham Maslow called them "Peak Experiences."
I felt magic the day I came to this house before we moved in…
A longer excerpt is available on Substack
https://joycedavis.substack.com/p/your-story-matters
A continuation of this excerpt will be available here next week.
Now a copy of my Newsletter
Hi, I'm Jo, coming to you from Substack.
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Below, please feel free to peruse my short booklets, plus The Frog's Song,a kindle version or a paperback published by Regal Publishing. It's available on Amazon. I have no control over pricing.
The Frog’s Song by Joyce Davis to see more click, https://joycedavis.substack.com/p/jos-newsletter-950
Non-fiction, available on Amazon. The Frog's Song
The
story of one family, one husband, one daughter, one seven-month-old
grandson, and one narrator who took leave of their senses and lived for
one year off the grid on a tropical Island.
Where Tiger’s Belch
Fiction, available on Amazon, or readable on Substack with a Paid subscription.
Once a tiger belched at the very spot where you find your purpose. Paulo Coelho in The Alchemist, called it one’s “Personal Legend.”
Where The Tiger’s Belch is the fictional account of one girls venture into the jungle to find her spot.
Mother’s Letters,…and mine
Non-fiction. Available on Amazon.My Mother's Letters
My mother’s letters written to the Holt Adoption Agency between the years of 1956 and 1987. They are my mother’s own words where she laid her heart bare to Grandma Holt.
It is a personal account of adopting 3 Korean children and watching them grow. The agency kept the letters all the years until Mom died.
After Mom’s death, they sent
xeroxed copies of the letters to her husband who gave them to my sister
who gave them to me. I assembled them and added commentary for there
was more to the story I don’t believe my mother knew about. (By the way, Mom loved Zenia s, the flowers on the cover.)
A Dog, God& Me
by Joyce Davis
Fiction, available on Amazon. A Dog, God, and Me
On Gabe’s and my walk into the forest, he began digging. I figured it was for a mouse or a vole, but what he unearthed was a book, an interactive book. It you moved the bookmark God would speak to you from that page.
