Inspiring Women Today: 3 True Stories, Volume A
By Denise Duncan, Diane Diaz and Audrey Boland
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About this ebook
"Wow! Empowering and motivating! Dealing with grief, knowing your why, and the desire to help those who struggle—Amazing women! Testaments to the fact that no matter how difficult and painful an experience can be, you can change your life for the better. An absolutely empowering book that will allow women to find their voices with a possibility of changing their lives for the better." —Liz Kelly, Addiction Recovery Professional
"A wonderfully honest and refreshingly real collection of life stories, as told by the amazing people who lived them. It makes me proud to be among those who call themselves women! —Jeanette Roberts, Retired Airline Professional
"Great stories. Everyone will find something that they can relate to in one, if not all, of these women." —Jennifer Bober Duran, Funeral Director
CANDID, TRUE STORIESby modern women like youwho each have something profound to share and the guts to share it, the Inspiring Women Todayseries will become an indispensable source of inspiration you will always want to keep and share. Beautifully designed in full color to enhance the vibrant and powerful stories of the authors.
In "False Evidence Appearing Real," author Denise Duncan shares her heart-wrenching struggle from sleeping in a van with her daughter through her discovery of true friends and lessons in self-worth that led to breaking the Million Dollar Club, traveling the world, and landing her today on her feet.
In "Good Grief," author and therapist Diane Diaz shares her lifelong brushes with tragedy, including the loss of her own son, and how these led to new hope for those she counsels and professionals she trains, as well as her making her son's life as meaningful as his death, and how she finds joy and inspiration today.
In "Mexico," author Audrey Boland tells the true story of her abusive childhood and abusive marriage ending in being abandoned in Mexico, and how it all came to together to lead to joy as a parent and the almost unexpected success of becoming a bestselling author.
And none of this steals the thunder of these tales as told in each author's authentic voice. Buy, read, and share Inspiring Women Today, 3 True Stories, Volume A.
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Book preview
Inspiring Women Today - Denise Duncan
Inspiring
Women
Today
3 True Stories,
Volume A
Excerpts from
21 True Stories, Volume 1
Denise Duncan
Diane Diaz
Audrey Boland
written and compiled by Rodney Miles Taber
in·spire
verb
fill (someone) with the urge or ability to do or feel
something; create (a feeling, especially a positive one) in a person; animate someone with (such a feeling).
breathe in (air); inhale.
Origin: Middle English enspire, from Old French inspirer, from Latin inspirare ‘breathe or blow into’ from in- ‘into’ + spirare ‘breathe’. The word was originally used of a divine or supernatural being, in the sense ‘impart a truth or idea to someone.’ —Google
For Dawn
"I know of no greater happiness
than to be with you all the time,
without interruption,
without end."
—Franz Kafka
Me and my wife Dawn in one of our favorite places, Gatlinburg, Tennessee
Contents
Contents
Introduction
False Evidence Appearing Real by Denise Duncan
Good Grief by Diane Diaz
Mexico by Audrey Boland
Want More?
Photo Credits
Introduction
Sure, he was great, but don't forget that Ginger Rogers did everything he did—backwards and in high heels.
—Bob Thaves, cartoonist
Four more of my favorite women:
From left to right, Aunt Raye, Fallon (my daughter),
Mom (Ronna), and Nana (Jeannette)
FOR WHATEVER REASON, I seem to have always enjoyed the company of and gravitated toward strong women. Even as a book collaborator over the last decade, my client list must be comprised 80 percent of women. So I wanted to celebrate women and once I had the basic framework for this project and announced it, the response was instant and energetic. And one of the things I enjoy most about a project like Inspiring Women Today is how as you conduct interviews common themes seem to bubble to the surface. They have for this, Volume A, as well as the larger Volume 1. Paying it forward is one of the themes, as you’ll see. So is strength, both in small and large ways.
In these pages you’ll find the joys, hopes, tragedies, triumphs, and wisdom each author has been brave and generous enough to share. My primary requirement for authors involved in this project has been candor, and the women involved really have been candid, often in such bold ways. I am truly grateful to each of them, because the hope is to create a series of books women of all ages and backgrounds can have whenever they need or might enjoy a dose of inspiration.
For example, I remember being nine years old, bouncing a kickball by our seven-story apartment building in New York (Staten Island) and hearing the ice cream man’s chimes. I looked to our third-floor window and hesitated to call for my mom, because I knew money was tight. But on that day I didn’t have to ask. The window opened and Mom leaned out, smiling under her red hair. My heart jumped at her smile. She waved. I put the ball down and waved back. She dropped a clear sandwich bag tied at the top, filled with change, and it landed in my hands with a crunch. There was bound to be enough for me and my little brother, Aaron, and I saw him already among the kids surrounding the ice cream van in the middle of Lincoln Avenue.
I ran over, thinking, cherry Italian ice, and wondered what life was like for my mom. I remembered the fights that led to the divorce five years earlier. They used to fight in the kitchen when they thought we were asleep, and I used to sneak down from my bunk bed and out of my bedroom to watch from the safety of the stairs. Money seemed to be the problem, at least one of them. And I remembered her letting me climb into her bed when I was little, where she’d confide in me like an adult—it made us friends.
My mother, Ronna, moved us to those apartments because my aunts and uncles and even my grandparents lived in the same buildings and they would watch us when she was at either of her two jobs. I remember her up early, off to the train that took her to the Staten Island Ferry, which took her to Lower Manhattan where she got on and off of a bus and then walked blocks and boarded an elevator that lifted her to the 35th floor of One World Trade Center. And I remember her not appearing at home again until late at night, after her second job waitressing at Beefsteak Charlie’s, in the frilly shorts they wore.
I also remember walks through Rockefeller Center at Christmas, tons of gifts below the tree each year, homecooked meals, private school and soccer league, and even an occasional vacation, usually around some family gathering somewhere. It was an incredible childhood. It pleased or worried me most of the time. And it was inspiring.
My mother would surprise me again when at sixteen I explained my girlfriend and I had decided to make love
and she was now late with her period. There, on the sidewalk in Pompano Beach outside our rented townhome, Mom paused walking her dachshund, and got serious, but not mad. Well,
she said, I can raise the baby as my own and when the time comes, we can let him or her in on things, so you two can still go to college.
But the test came back negative and we all calmed down.
My mother had a special relationship with her grandmother, Hannah, who was very strong. As a young girl Hannah Sanger rode in a wagon out west to Nebraska where her parents claimed land—a homestead—where she watched them bake bread and play the accordion for the Native Americans that showed up. As a young woman herself, she ran the farm while her boys were fighting in World War II. When Hannah was older, in her nineties, my mother asked her, Grandma, you did so much for us. How do we repay you?
"You repay me by taking care of your children," she said.
My mother is