Inspiration, Motivation and the Color Purple
This year I turned sixty. What better time to consider old goals, inspiration, philanthropy, Oprah and the color purple.
I knew when I was a child that at this time in my life I would dedicate my time to helping those in need in places far from home. This may have been more the influence of visiting missionaries at my grandmother’s Southern Baptist church in Sayers, Texas than actual intuition. Their visits to that country church were the first time I'd seen still color photos projected on a screen. That screen seemed, from my front row seat next to my grandmother, as big as the screen at the drive-in theatre. Most of the visiting missionaries brought their photos from a place they called Africa. I could see that Africa was as far away and as strange as Mars. The huge color images and their reports of the
“good” they did in far away Africa were very compelling to an eight year old.
My next ambition to do
good came when, through television, I heard about the poor in the coal mining regions of Appalachia. When I grew up, I would go there and be a beloved teacher. By this time I was ten and we had moved from my father’s family home in San Antonio, Texas to my mother's family home in the coal fields of Fremont County, Colorado.
My maternal grandmother entertained me with tales of her childhood in the mountains of Tennessee, which I knew was part of Appalachia. In my mind, however, her Tennessee and our Colorado coal mining community were completely unrelated to the poor mining families who needed my help. Eight years later, when I returned home from college one summer to find a Vista Volunteer installed in our midst, I realized for the first time that those who needed help were also in my back yard.
In 1957 Hurricane Audrey struck the Gulf Coast. The news of devastation reached us in the rural mountains of Colorado, despite our access to only two semi-clear T.V. channels and one fuzzy one that had problems projecting over Pikes Peak. I was eleven. I remember by father saying, “A guy ought to load his pick up with food and water and go down there.” Yes, when I became an adult I would do just that. When natural disasters struck the unsuspecting, I would immediately go to the site and share what I had. The vision of myself driving a pick-up didn't meld with my other vivid fantasies of myself as a grown-up, but no sacrifice was to large when it came to doing
good.
When Katrina struck the Gulf Coast I was already in a place away from my home volunteering my time. My 84 year old mother has extreme memory loss related to dementia, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a heart murmur and a tendency to small strokes. Her home in Southern Colorado is 300 miles from my home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. My brothers and I are determined to keep our mother in her home as long as possible, though she isn’t sure now whose house she lives in and doesn’t remember our names. She refers to me as “that girl who is always doing what ever she wants” as though that is a bad thing. My brother who is a Major General in the Air Force she refers to as “that big man who is all about business.” My youngest brother, who has lived within a few miles of her all his life and since our father’s death sixteen years ago has been on-call to her, is known devoutly as “Him.” While we are all involved in her life, for most of the last year I have been the live-in caregiver.
Professionally, I have been a secondary teacher, magazine editor and writer, taught writing workshops, developed after school and summer enrichment programs, done graphic design. More recently I’ve helped others get their stories, their memoir, on paper as a ghost writer or a collaborator. Sometimes those projects make it into book form (example:
Still Life with Violin, BelleCora Press, 2005). Writing and publishing has allowed me to stay with my mother and oversee her care, while still working.
In my childhood vision of myself as a caregiver, I was not sitting hours on end in my childhood home, trying to probe the fog of my parent’s mind and her jumbled dialogue. Instead, I was at the ready to rush to the site of the latest natural disaster and administer heartfelt attention. On television I have seen the on site response to the Gulf Coast hurricanes of 2005 and the generosity of celebrities and of everyday people. I’ve made my own small contributions and wanted to do more. I’ve been astonished at the creativity young and old have had in raising money, goods and services for Gulf Coast relief and fascinated at how their ideas seemed to sprout out of the air. I’ve been astonished and touched at how they have made those ideas work for the benefit of many.
Finally, my own idea came in the middle of the night. I can't say I dreamed it as much as I just saw it. The concept arrived so completely formed that I could not ignore it. Yet, I did mull it around for a few weeks; alternating between thinking it was an inspired idea to wondering if I might be sued by Oprah. I emailed the show, did hours of research on line trying to determine if it was a legally viable project or if it was even an original idea. I procrastinated....then I opened a fortune cookie that said “Look to the color purple for luck this week.”
My vision of a lasting flexible use book of inspiration with the title, I Heard it on Oprah, involved the color purple. Go figure! It involved Oprah. It was purple. Maybe I was dreaming. Where ever it came from…I saw shades of purple and grey on the cover, and pale lavender pages. Oprah says the universe speaks to us first in a whisper, then a nudge, then.... I ate the fortune cookie and decided that I had better make some effort on this vision before I was hit with something large.
The consistency of the Oprah Winfrey Show’s format of valuable, thoughtful information, is why we so often hear among our girlfriends and some guy friends, too,
“Did you know..?” …or “Listen to this great saying”…or…”Have you read…heard…seen?”,,,, Followed by “I heard it on Oprah.” In the summer of 1996, I was watching the Oprah Winfrey Show when the guest said something so significant to my life that I was stunned. I picked up my notebook and recorded what he had said. Since then I have been in the habit of recording the valuable things I hear on Oprah.
I chose sixty of those inspirational quotes…because, yes, I turned sixty in 2006. But, more than that, I didn’t want a daily quote book. I wanted the receiver of the book to have time to contemplate the thought…more of a weekly thought….but hey one gal’s weekly inspiration may be another gal’s ho-hum…so I threw in a few more to cover those ho-hums.
BelleCora Press is handling the production/publishing and distribution of my design. Together we will be donating some labor and all profits from sales in 2006-2007 to existing Gulf Coast Hurricane Relief projects. Though we do not have the exact figure right now, it appears that that donation will be between $7-9 per book. In late 2007 we will make a decision where profits from 2008 sales will go, perhaps Africa. Profits from this project will always go to humanitarian relief.
For more info or to purchase go to the
publisher's website. I hope you find inspiration in this book.
