As a young girl I was a voracious reader of historical novels. Gone with the WInd, Michener’s Hawaii,  I could  devour one a week. What came out of this love for epic historical novels was a secret desire to write. In college, after reading and loving Tolstoy’s War and Peace, I shared my dream with Brandon, my best friend and an aspiring writer. As if ashamed by my boldness, I tentatively told him “that someday I would like to write an historical novel but I would wait, until I was older, when I would actually have something to say.” Well, that dream like several others, was pushed aside in the dustbin of forgotten memories. I got on with my life, my career, marriage and motherhood.

Always surround yourself with people who believe in you. I have such an angel in my office at the spa. Alma, my CFO, and brain child read my last blog and told me I should write a book about my life. “No no, I said, I don’t want to write about myself but about one of the most fascinating women in history, Mother Jones.” Alma is from Romania and had never heard of Mother Jones and so I began an impassioned monologue of this great woman’s life. How she lived in the first Gilded Age, this being the second, and how she championed against child labor and for fair labor laws. I spoke of her wit, her charm and her tragic life. “Write the book, Alma exclaimed, it is a great gift if you do. You have the time now.” And she is right; I do!

I feel a renewal and a quickening in my soul as I write her story. A part of me that lie dormant begins to stir and I am excited by the vastness of life’s possibilities. It is never to late to dust off an old dream.