Woman Author's Adventures and Income Through Writing

Marilyn is an author, which means she makes an income writing wherever she is, at home, or on the road. Some time ago she provided the following post for an earlier blog that is no longer available, I hope that if you are thinking of writing, or are a writer, you will find it inspiring. 

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It is with great relief and pride that I can announce that the completed first draft of "Questing Home: A Safe Place for My Holy Grail" is now done. It now goes to the first readers who will give me feedback for flow, continuity, and to my children to see if they want themselves portrayed as I have written them. This has meant pouring over journals, letters, photographs, court documents about my divorce and interviews with people who were in my life from 1989 to 1996.

Writing this third book has been hard work and often emotionally difficult. Breaking the old rules of my childhood upbringing about keeping family secrets and turning the other cheek has challenged me. I have removed myself from a lot of life to be able to get this to this stage. Fortunately I work at home. I feel as if I am now free in a way I haven't been free in many years yet I know there is a lot of hard work ahead.

For those who have read "Questing Marilyn" 2003 (took me 17 years to get done) and Questing France 2005 you know I love to travel and I have travel adventures in this book too so I am keeping with the theme Personal Growth Through Travel.

It is my hope that this book will be recognized as a significant contribution on issues of adult bullying, the inequity of the divorce process most often but not always for women and how people in powerful positions can abuse their power with impunity. It is filled with personal growth and stress management methods and experiences.

The next steps include making the edits my first readers suggest if I agree with them, then having it copy edited professionally (even then some typos have slipped through as Questing France was edited by paid editors twice.) and making the corrections found, having it designed including a cover design and pictures inserted then printed. Whew! A long process. I hope to have it ready for sale in May.

I hope this book will become one that women's centers and advocates for a more just process of marital dissolution will use. I know my first two books have helped both men and women find their voice and stand up for themselves in abusive and disrespectful situations. I've had wonderful feedback.

Best wishes to you and as this is a dream coming to fruition for me. I hope your dreams are coming true too!

Marilyn Bellegham
http://www.questpublishing.ca

Updated 11/27/18

Making Beautiful Jewelry, Grandmother's Home Business

It's a pleasure to introduce you to Angie Baker, a "crafty" grandmother.  When you read her story, you will see how a creative gift can become a business. Enjoy!

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I am a mother of eight children-four grown boys, four grown girls.  All of whom I am proud of. I have seven grandchildren, three girls, four boys.  Six of my grandchildren are living.  I lost my Maxwell Shelby Ray Haworth at one year of age, but he is still mine. He was born with a heart deformity, half a heart. It was not found out until he was six weeks old, then they said he  was an old baby and his chances of survival were slim. Max was a gift for a year.

I got into my jewelry design business quite by chance.  I had purchased a beading kit from Costco at Christmas 2006 for my oldest granddaughter Brittney.  She didn't come that Christmas, I didn't get around to mailing it. So here sits this perfectly good craft item. I have been a crafter since birth, I am 56 years old now, so that will give you some idea.

Back to the beading kit. I decided to start playing with the beads, in February 2007, they were not top quality glass beads, but they were still pretty and interesting.  I created a few bracelets and decided to post them on a social site called Made Big Nation.  There you post items for sale and get made big coins in return, so that you can purchase other items posted there.

Along comes a person by the name of Donna Young.  She sees my chunky bracelet in orange and blues and asks me to create a bracelet for Valentines Day.  I agree, I also tell her I am new at this designing of jewelry but I will do my best.  I created the jewelry, sent it to her and she was pleased. She then contacted me to create another piece for a friend, which I did. Needless to say, she purchased a total of 16 bracelets, and my business was born.  There is more to the story, but I shortened it.

As to my interests, I love people, animals, anything creative, art, knitting, crocheting, candle making, soap making, leather work, rock tumbling, etc.  I have done it all.  You should see my craft room. It looks like a store!

Updated 11/27/18

Home Business Plus Many Grandchildren = Fun

After receiving a legal secretarial degree from Bryant and Stratton and working at GE for engineers for six years, I quit to raise our two boys, born exactly one year and three weeks apart. (My husband said, “We’re not going to have your mom watch TWO, are we? Mind you, I was sobbing at the time as he went out the door with our oldest.)

Seven years later a third son arrived on the scene and I worked at a quaint little local restaurant an evening or two a week to bring in a little extra cash. (And, admittedly, to remind myself that I still could “process thoughts” – Oh, the stories I can tell!!)

I’m thankful to have been able to work around our family, but where does a closing-in-on-40 year old woman go to find a job? For me it was an Oral Surgery satellite office 20 minutes away which I managed for two doctors. They kindly allowed me the opportunity to work while updating my computer/office skills. Six years later, with one son in college, another a senior in high school and the third closing in on high school, I needed a full-time job to help with college expenses and high school extra-curricular activity bills. And that is how I ended up at a local business as a sales coordinator for nine years.vI know – trained for lawyers and worked for engineers, doctors and salesmen – nothing “relates”, does it?  Plus, nobody needs “secretaries” anymore – everyone does their own thing on computers! And, NOW I’m closing in on SIXTY!!

After we were blessed with 6 (yes, six!) grandchildren, with two more on the way, I left that job two years ago. In hindsight I am even more thankful because my father went to be with the Lord (and mom) this past Dec. 26.  These past two years were filled with many medical appointments for him that I am SO thankful I could do.  (I was thankful at the time, but even more so now!) I LOVE being with my grandchildren, but I’d also like to help my husband financially. Plus, they say our brains “go to mush” if we don’t use them.

Ameriplan®, USA, offers the chance for me to do it all. Yes, it’s network marketing and I’m learning, learning, learning – which is FUN! It’s VERY affordable to begin your own business. Plus, this company provides things I NEED in addition to a paycheck – discounts for dental, vision, prescription and chiropractic needs, as well as help with child ID, legal fees, medical expenses, identity theft (the fastest growing crime in America) and much more.

[As I update this post, I am not sure whether Debbie is still in business, but am leaving this information just in case!] If interested, I’d love to hear from you via e-mail at DJohnson70 at ameriplan.net or by phone at 716-355-4223.
We women need to STICK TOGETHER!! And we aren’t getting older, we’re GETTING BETTER!!
God Bless you all!
Debbie Johnson

Updated 11/27/18

Generations of Immigrants, a Personal Story

Hello all,

Thanks, Claudia, for creating a community of working grandmothers. What a neat idea!

This is my introductory post, and I'll make it about emigration and extended families. [Emigration is the act of leaving one's country to live in another, immigration is the process of becoming part of the new country].

I emigrated from Holland to Canada with my geologist husband in 1969 at the age of 25. I have never been sorry for a single moment, but only recently have we started to realize how much the next generation is deprived of extended family.

I come from a close, matriarchal family.

My mother had 4 sisters and her father died when Mom was 12. "Oma van Eijk" was definitely a presence in our childhood.

I was always a bit scared of her, and did not like the way us kids had to behave better than normal (we were really pretty good) when Oma came to stay with us. We did have some good times together when I went to stay with her in her home. But I did not start to fully appreciate her courageous and difficult life till long after she was gone.

My father's parents were more fun, especially since they lived in a downstairs flat with, oh joy! a backyard with an apple tree, a gap in the hedge that led to Opa's brother's backyard next door, and even a few chickens at the end of the yard.
Besides that Oma only 5 feet tall, if that, and was a lot of fun to measure yourself against.

When I met my husband his redoubtable and remarkable grandmother on mother's side was still alive. "Moele" lived in a huge home filled with antiques and souvenirs of her many years in the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia. She organized a lavishly catered family reunion every Christmas season where all the nieces and nephews gathered. She told us (in 1965) that she wanted to stay alive to see a man land on the Moon. She did. Quite a lady.

I can't say the extended family was a daily part of our lives, but there was definitely a network of aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents that one took for granted and it was there in the background.

My parents used to visit here a lot, Mom almost once a year. But none of my siblings had kids, for various reasons. The family tree has shrunk instead of expanded. Four kids, two grandchildren, one great-grand, at least so far. There is still hope :).

This leaves my children in the world without cousins on that side of the family. My husband's sisters had 5 kids between them, but his family is less close than ours.

This was simply not a big deal when they were growing up. We were part of a rural "back-to-the-land" community, with friends taking the place of family. But the young have all scattered, as they must to find more opportunity than a small resource town can offer.

Fortunately our daughter married into a small but close family and her in-laws live in the same town as us. We are good friends, so we are creating an extended family in that way. It is great!

There really ought to be a word for sideways relations. What do you call people with whom you share a grandchild? Our grandson, who will remain un-named because my girl guards her privacy, has cousins on his father's side. The other grandparents of those cousins live here too, and have kindly included us in a sort of sideways extended family. We have even had Christmas at their place.

What do you call people whose grandchildren are cousins to your grandchild?

We need to enrich this language!

Anyway, that's enough for now....

Ien in the Kootenays, Mother of daughter, 33, who just got her PhD in microbiology, and son, 28, a geologist like Dad who is moiling for gold in the NorthWest Territories, one brilliant grandson, 9.

I market wild whole foods products for middle-aged women who are so exhausted and muddled that they can't even finish their own sentences anymore, like I used to be, and I have a special interest in keeping kids with ADD off drugs! Don't be afraid to ask, I don't believe in "selling" and will gladly share everything I have learned on ADD. (There was originally a link to a site, but it is no longer connected to the author at this update, and I cannot find her. Perhaps she will find us one day.)

Updated 11/27/18

Grandmother Teaches Marketing Skills Lessons

Several years ago I came upon this article on one of those article marketing sites that were popular at the time, and thought it was cute. In it, a man shares how, by doing the simplest of things, his Grandmother helped shaped his life. I hope you enjoy it.

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Sometimes in looking back I do wish that I could tell you I developed my marketing skills at some nice Ivy League school, but things just didn't turn out that way for me. Being self-studied in marketing and advertising is the only way I could explain my background in marketing. My first experience in marketing started back in 1979. Me and my cousin Eddie where watching television. At the time he was 9 and I was 7 years old. There was no internet or "Laser" marketing. The "Big Time" marketers did T.V. commercials, snail mail, and print advertising.

As we watched the "One-Eyed Monster" we caught a great piece of marketing before the T.V. fried our brains and made us lose our vision from sitting so close. Well, that's what we where told by my grandmother. After viewing the commercial by Country Tyme Lemonade where the little kids where selling their lemonade from a stand out front of their house. We had a great idea! Not a unique idea, but nevertheless it was a great one to us. So, I may partially owe my first business and marketing joint venture to Country Tyme Lemonade. We jumped right up and headed to my Grandmothers room to get an approval on our lemonade sales. Seeing two cute little kids asking to become lemonade sales and marketing professionals how could she say no, especially as cute as I was? We made the lemonade, set up the stand, and created the sign for advertisement. Then my Grandma gave us our first marketing advice. "Hey, why don't you take your stand out closer to the street and flag down some traffic with your sign? That should get you a lot of customers." We thought that was a cool idea, plus for the first time we had permission to play close to the street.

Well, the first day went pretty good, but our marketing and advertising was still off a little because it was kind of hard to get folks to pull over even though we had several people to circle the block. All together the $1.10 we spent at the penny candy store down the street was well worth it. The next 24 hours we spent time thinking on how we could have customers lined up down the block. So of course we turned to our top marketer for advice. She said "You can start letting people sample your lemonade first, and you can also stand by the stop sign which will help stopped drivers see you better."

When we set out the next day to try out our new marketing and advertising approach everything turned out great. Sales more than doubled! Then I learned a valuable lesson that made sales go through the roof! Right before we called it a day I found our target market. The mailman who we missed the day before was now walking towards our house. I walked up to him and said "Mister, would you like to try some lemonade we are selling?" He said "Yes, that would be great because I'm very hot." I replied "Well, we have a lot of ice if you're hot." Not only did he buy 1 or 2 cups, but he brought a total of 5! At that point I had become a sales, advertising, and marketing baby guru. We looked on in amazement as he gulped down the fifth cup. after that I started looking for more people who where walking, hot, and tired. I did land a few more sales before counting our profit of $5.50. The next couple of days we made about the same amount. Give or take a buck or two. All due to our new marketing and advertising approach, and the later found fact that my Grandpa had friends he worked with at the Post Office.

This article was originally obtained from a site called "Articles On" which no longer exists. It was written by Mr. Penn, who at the time was owner of the "Work at Home Help Spot" site. I can no longer find him or his site, perhaps one day he will find us? 

Updated 11/27/18

What Is a Grandmother?

Being a grandmother means many things to me. But all rolled up into one meaning is having these marvelous little people in my life to teach, mold, and love.

And, best of all, to be loved in return.

To be blessed with a knowing of who they come from and what their belief system is and will be through-out their life. To have the honor of taking part in the shaping of little minds that will develop into strong and focused minds. Minds that will will go forth with ideas and what our family's have stood for through generations.

To keep the family traditions alive and meaningful.

What a marvelous place to find myself!

Guest Post by Bea Kunz
Happy Grandmother of 3 boys

http://www.sagehillfarmsandvintagestore.com

Updated 11/27/18