Welcome!

Welcome to The Modern-Day Renaissance Woman blog, aka MDRW! As opposed to my other blogs, Creative Codependence and The Interdependent Life, MDRW will not only celebrate my (soon-to-be) book publishing career but will shamelessly (and endlessly) promote my work. 

You have been forewarned.

Besides being the inauguration of my newest blog, October 11 is also the day I submit my manuscript, Notes from the Bottom of the Box: The Search for Identity by a Modern-Day Renaissance Woman, to the first (and hopefully last) literary agent. 

So, in honour of my new manuscript, stay tuned for weekly excerpts to entice and entertain. And as publishers like authors to be self-motivated marketing geniuses, be sure to like my FacePage. Uhhh… glowing reviews wouldn’t hurt either.

To begin, may I share my proposed book flap?

Drum roll please.

Inspired by a three-year sojourn as a big box cashier (hence known as the Big Box), Notes from the Bottom of the Box is a collection of semi-independent stories woven together with the universal themes of identity, self-worth and self-acceptance. A journey through many of my forty plus jobs, this memoir is at times funny, poignant, and soul-searching as I explore the past in an effort to find meaning and value in who I am, and ultimately, who we all are in this interconnected web of life. The book concludes with the discovery that self-worth lies in “being”—not doing—and, on a more humorous note, that finding oneself in mid-life wearing a foolish-looking work uniform is not such a bad plight.

Notes from the Bottom of the Box begins on a whimsical note with the interview process, where perceived identity meets reality—haven’t we all stretched the truth just a little in these impromptu therapy sessions?—and then winds its way through the mean streets of delivery service, the perils of telephone soliciting and the adventure-laced halls of hospital basements. From that inglorious inauguration into the working world, Notes slowly brings the reader into the author’s psyche: What drives these diverse career choices that ping-pong from mountaineering entrepreneurship to working with the street-entrenched; from building an alternative healthcare practice to eventually finding truth at the bottom of a Big Box? 

From the carnival-style mirrors encountered in working with the addicted and the mentally ill to the minute conversations stolen over a cash register, this collection of stories and poems finds compassion, laughter and even sorrow, as I share this most-human desire to be seen, heard and loved.


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