by sheila morris
my books
I have signed new copies available of several nonfiction titles of mine that will make great holiday gifts for yourself or someone you love:
Get ’em while they’re not hot for $5. each plus shipping cost of $3.99. You can send $ through paypal.me/SHEILARMORRIS
Pardon the interruption for this shameless self promotion. As my daddy used to say, whosoever tooteth not his own horn, the same shall not be tooteth. That was my dad.
Stay safe, stay sane and please stay tuned.
This past Tuesday night I spoke at Chris Maw’s monthly social Words and Wine which brings authors and readers together in an informal setting for food, wine, and friendly interaction. My thanks to a friend of many moons, Fred Quattlebaum of Modern Family Asset Management, for sponsoring the event and to musicians Marty Lopez and Julien Kaprino for providing great entertainment. I was invited to talk about my newest book, Four Ticket Ride, but whenever I speak about my writing, my thoughts turn to truth and equality.
I read while…
…Pretty’s smile sells books!
At her press conference this past Saturday following her loss in the finals at Wimbledon, Serena Williams was questioned about why she lost. Although she tried to say her opponent played a brilliant match, the members of the press wouldn’t let it go. They asked her if she thought her lack of match play in 2019 had hurt her, whether her role as a mother took too much time away from her tennis, and finally someone said they heard Billie Jean King wondered if she spent too much time supporting equal rights or other political issues.
Serena’s quick response to that question was “The day I stop supporting equality is the day I die.” I can identify with her answer because I’d like to believe my actions to support equality and social justice are two of the dominant forces of my life.
My first understanding of how it teels to be treated as a second class person came at an early age and became the impetus for my lifetime support of equality, too. My dad gave me the vision of looking at the whole world as my territory. Nothing should be impossible if I set goals and then worked hard to achieve them. There were no limits, according to him. When I entered the work force at the age of 21 in 1967, I learned very quickly that there were, indeed, limits.
Limits were imposed by powerful men in positions of leadership in the places I worked from Houston, Texas to Seattle, Washington to Columbia, South Carolina – men with tanned skins and silver hair who sat behind large impressive oak desks, men who saw me despite my impeccable credentials as lesser than my co-workers whose singular good fortune was that their gender and the color of their skin made them superior to me in the eyes of my bosses.
It was a rude awakening for me to find out that my dad had been wrong. But that rude awakening changed my life as I took part in the battleground for ratification of the equal rights amendment here in South Carolina in the 1970s, my involvement in the civil rights movement in Columbia in the 1980s and eventually coming to the most passionate cause of my life: the LGBTQ movement for equality in the 1990s. I want to be able to say with Serena that the day I stop supporting equality is the day I die.
For me, writing has been my platform for supporting equal rights during the past 13 years. For ten of those years, I have had the most fun as a blogger on my wordpress blog I’ll Call It Like I See It. When I finish a blog, usually after many re-writes, all I have to do is click on the word publish and my words fly through cyberspace to readers who either choose to follow me or randomly read my posts whenever a topic interests them. One observation I’ve made about my readers is that you all are far more interested in Pretty than you are in my political commentaries.
I saw a segment about the author, vlogger and you tube super star John Green on Sixty Minutes this past Sunday night. John Green, the author of the Fault in our Stars and a ton of other titles has a Twitter following of more than 5 million. My blog, I’ll Call it Like I see It, on the other hand, has 1,700 followers. Thank goodness my daddy also offered me the good advice of never comparing myself to others. Some people will be better off and some people will not, but that’s not how we are measured. In spite of that advice, I will do a small comparison.
I am thrilled that in the first 6 months of 2019, I’ve reached people in more than 60 countries from Argentina to Vietnam through 36 posts with nearly 5,000 hits. My top five countries for followers are the US, the UK, India, Canada and France. Small potatoes to John Green, but quite an amazing audience for a little girl from deep in the piney woods of Grimes County, Texas who grew up in a time where her family’s only communication device was a two party telephone line that her grandmother on her daddy’s side used for spying on her neighbors.
Truth telling is a lost art. Honesty is no longer a virtue nor is it admired by everyone we come in contact with. Nonfiction writing lacks the pop and sizzle of fiction, although I like to think sometimes it’s a close second.
One of my favorite scenes in the movie Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is the scene where the tortured son Brick played by Paul Newman discussed his problems with his father Big Daddy played by Burl Ives. Brick blamed his alcoholism on mendacity which he claimed affected everything in the universe but especially the family he came from. Big Daddy wasn’t so sure about that claim, but I have to say Brick just might have been on to something powerful. I was so impressed with this idea that I devoted a chapter I call Human Frailty and Mendacity in my latest book Four Ticket Ride to the concept.
Ideas for writing come to me in random places, but what I can promise you is that I try to bring truth telling to every piece I write.
Stay tuned.
P.S. Thanks so much to everyone who bought my books from Pretty Tuesday night – we almost sold out! I loved meeting you all and look forward to seeing you again in November.
P.S.P.S. Thanks to our friend Saskia for taking pictures.
In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Five hundred years later in 1992 the maiden voyage of the Space Shuttle Endeavor began when the spacecraft was launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Seven astronauts were aboard; the flight lasted nine days and was successful on several missions including the first time three astronauts walked in space together. 1992 was also an election year with President George H.W. Bush running for re-election in the U.S. against Bill Clinton and Ross Perot. The UK also had an election, but no news was more important in that part of the world than the breakup of Prince Charles and Princess Diana.
The USA Mall of America opened its doors in August, 1992 at a time when the average income in the United States was $30,030 according to The People History. The Summer Olympics were held in Barcelona, Spain and the Winter Olympics in Albertville, France. The North American Free Trade Agreement better known as NAFTA was signed by President George H.W. Bush in December, 1992 a month after he lost his bid for re-election.
I was 46 years old when I voted for Bill Clinton in the 1992 election. I was in the third year of a new career path as a financial planner for Jefferson Pilot Life Insurance Company in Columbia, South Carolina, my home since 1972. In other words, I sold life insurance on a commission basis along with annuities and mutual funds to sweeten the deals. I was barely surviving financially and nowhere even close to the average annual income for U.S. citizens. I had to borrow money from my mother that year to pay my bills and keep consumer credit card companies happy. Something had to give.
I was also madly, passionately infatuated with a pretty, fun, smart female client thirteen years younger than I was. We had loads of fun and sex whenever we were together, and that affair which began in 1991 carried an additional element of danger because we were both in long term relationships with other women. This, unfortunately, was a pattern I had established in my early twenties for my interpersonal connections that seemed to fit the sociological profile of serial monogamy. I was in my third long term lesbian monogamous partnership; the first two both ended with my infidelity. Add early onset menopause full of hot flashes to the mix, and I was truly a hot mess.
Recently I discovered a journal of mine from that time period. I was amazed at the contents. The entries were dated in the month of February, 1992. By this time my partner and I had split. She had found my indiscretion at the end of 1991 through a phone bill that was clear evidence of what was going on in my affair. After six years together, she told me to get out and think about what I wanted in my life. One of our dogs, a Westie named Sassy, and I moved into an apartment not far from our house.
1992 was twenty-six years ago now so I have a few memory lapses, but I get exactly what was happening through the journal which was a day by day response to prompts from a self-help course taught by one of the popular gurus of the 1990s. Regardless of the creator of the course, I must have been desperate for help and unwilling or unable to consult a therapist. I would have been afraid to discuss my problems with someone who might judge me for being gay. I was out to some friends and family but not out at work and in many ways still struggling with internalized homophobia. The journal showed a gradual progression of self-awareness.
My journal was called the “Success Journal” – 20 days to success.
Day 1 – February 20, 1992
Two things to do that will improve my quality of life:
*Done February 21, 1992 (with no noticeable improvement in my quality of life)
Day 2 – February 21, 1992
Four things I have not done that I want to do:
Days 3 and 4 were focused on Controlling my Destiny around the four things I had not done but wanted to do.
The losing 12 pounds never happened in the past twenty-six years although I faithfully made it my number one New Year’s resolution every year. I dishonestly changed wish #2 on Day Four to why I needed to stay in that relationship because I was afraid to make a change. Not too many days after Day 20, the Final Breakthrough Day, Sassy and I left the apartment and returned home where we stayed for twelve more years until my partner found someone new. Karma was alive and well.
I defined being financially wealthy in 1992 as buying new golf clubs, buying a new car, repaying the loan from my mother and paying off my credit cards (the order was vague); and having a maid, cook and gardener. I’m fairly certain I got the new golf clubs.
I will omit the discussion of empowering and disempowering neuro- associations, pattern interrupts, overcoming fears, and the next 18 Days to Success except for two poignant revealing passages in the journal.
Why I must come out to others: (Day Four – February 23, 1992)
As long as we are invisible, we are vulnerable.
The personal costs of the closet were the most important lessons I learned from my 20 Days to Success Program. I believe acknowledging those lessons in the winter of 1992 speeded up my coming out process that prepared me for the personal epiphany in the March on Washington the following year in April, 1993.
On Day 10, the day for Setting Goals, I wrote “I would love to write a book!” In 1992 that goal seemed as unlikely as having a maid, cook or gardener but in 2007, fifteen years later, my first book Deep in the Heart: A Memoir of Love and Longing was published.
Was my “Success Journal” a success? That’s a tough one for me. Are journals important for writers? That answer probably depends on the person, but journals indicate the compulsion writers have to record their experiences. This journal was only one of several I’ve started through the years, but periodically I open it to read about that middle-aged menopausal woman struggling to become a whole person.
(Thank goodness for Pretty who rescued me from myself 8 years later in 2000 and encouraged me to write that first book. Wow – all my happy trails lead back to Pretty.)
Stay tuned.
I'll Call It Like I See It 
You must be logged in to post a comment.