No time

15 years later

1993 Lake Geneva, Wisconsin
June 1993 Last Day of School!

It has been a few weeks since I posted anything. I have been swamped. Work at the high school is consuming me. I am writing long social development studies on students. I have to get 4 more done by Dec. 17th. It is difficult because that gives me 10 days in the school to meet with the students test them with the BASC, getting the BASC rating scale out to teachers, and schedule meetings with the parents..then the fun part writing up the report and watching all those numbers from the BASC give back important information. It is just hard doing all these reports on top of grad school. I am working on papers, power point, exams coming up. It is exhausting and I feel there is not enough time in the day to get things done. However after Dec. 17th things will become a lot better. My supervisor has already told me I only have two social development studies in the next semester. PHEW! I just wish the ones I had now were spread out they are all overlapping.
I am also busy working on my author publicity packet. Filling out media questions, bio, few sentences on each chapter, paragraph or two on what the book is about as a whole, list of people I am connected with for reviews, I put together newspaper articles, video pieces on GMA and Montel, and magazine article. I am going to finish this weekend by burning DVD of speeches I have given which I have been trying to get around to. My publishing company would like to see that.
Then there is that lovely place that I am stuck at..I am going through listing out the title of each chapter but I am stumped on the title of the “BOOK” the most important piece I feel along with the cover. It is what reaches your readers. I have a compelling idea for the cover that my editor is aware of that I feel will grab at people walking by in a bookstore however it is finding the perfect title to represent that image and the book. A title that will jump off the shelves to make people want to open up and read the book. I am not just trying to reach survivors of child sexual abuse in this book, I am trying to reach the world to wake up and realize just how huge this epidemic is and we need to end the stimga, taboo, and silence and get people talking. It begins with breaking your silence. I have a few idea popping up all the time and I try to jot them all down…I just need to nail it down and decide what it will be. I am hoping for that light bulb moment where it will come to me. I know it will happen.

I had an awesome experience this weekend. A childhood friend I have not seen since I was 8 years old got in touch with me through facebook. If your on facebook and were not friends look me up “Erin Merryn.” Anyways my best friend from my childhood Shannon moved very close to the same time I moved. She moved to Arizona and I talk about her on pg. 5 of my first book and how she moved away and I have not heard from her since. How strange it is that I talk about her in my 2nd book. She played a significant role in my childhood that she was unaware of but she help me avoid an evil man by becoming my best friend. I had looked for her before on facebook but never had any luck that is until last week when I noticed a woman pop up in search engine with her same name and living in Arizona.
To make a long story short it was her, we began talking over internet it just so happens she was driving back from Virgina to Arizona and made a detour to Illinois to come visit me this weekend. Imagine seeing your best friend from 15 years ago when you were 8. I have so many fun memories with Shannon and we sat on Sunday at Starbucks reliving many of those moments sharing much laughter, I then went and met her boyfriend whose parents live 2 minutes from my parent’s house..small world. I brought photos from when we were young and she loved looking at them. She remembers fondly coming to my lake house in Lake Geneva and already have talks about doing it this summer when she comes to visit.

So I have added some photos of when we were young and us reuniting 15 years later. Here goes to show that while we cannot erase the mental photo album in our heads of memories that often only you can see yourself you can look back on real photos you can stare at in your hands smiling at some of the more precious happy moments. That is exactly what I see looking back on these. As I have said before my childhood was no fairy tail but there are many things I was blessed with back then and this friendship was one of them.