My Strings Attached Reveal

Dear friends, you know I'm not one to shy away from the truth. Over the years, in this blog, I've traced my nomad journey through some tough transitions – through loneliness, through love and heartbreak, through hurricanes, through my crooked spine and her slow, stubborn healing. I share because I know that truth transforms.

It's part of what I do with SeeChange — help others get to their truths to clear the way for a powerful present and future.

But I've been hiding something from you. A secret about a lot of secrets. One that may be holding me back.

Over the last decade — or three — I've been working quietly, painstakingly, behind the scenes. Through seven revisions, hundreds of pages, and critique sessions with my beloved writing group — getting to the truth of my checkered past.

Happily, with no small amount of relief, I report that in March, I typed these two tiny impossible words: The End.

It's time you knew about Strings Attached: A Memoir of Music, Marriage and Escape.

It's Lolita — but from the girl's perspective. And she marries him.

Not disgusting Humbert Humbert, but her charismatic — yet predatory — music teacher. Yes, I can use that word now -- it took me ages.

I was 15 — the babysitter to his three children, first flute second chair in his orchestra. He was the maestro. He taught me more than good bowing technique in my basement bedroom — down on the floor, stretched across Mom's Indonesian animal print throw pillows. What was my Caroline my nascent crooked spine doing then? Already contorting. Already pretzel-bending — push-pulling, yes-noing — to be what he wanted.

I was the willful eldest, wise child, older than my years. Or so I was led to believe. But even then, age 18, standing at the altar, having eloped, I knew...

Our lips touch; though suddenly I'm not there. Drifting up, diaphanous, I watch from the rafters — separate from the present, from my new husband, his face aglow with adoration. I've learned how to split in two — leave my body — even though now I must stay.

There's a Polaroid from that day — a closeup of my stepdaughter and me, a bit washed out now, but evidence nonetheless, and a reminder of that moment as the photo came to life before our eyes -- both of us smiling broadly, the mischievous grins of girls who can't believe where they are and what's happening to them. My hair cropped short, tom-boyish, cream boat neck collar shows my collar bones. Lia, age 9, my flower girl in her calico Heidi dress, could be my little sister. I gripped her shoulder with my left hand, as if trying to hold onto something: that special moment. No, I see now: it's that moment of lost innocence.

I kept it all buried as I marched on with life. So many of us have pasts we keep secret — and in the dark secrecy is where the shame grows, an algae bloom.

It's time to let it go. I've been protecting that guy for way too long.

Sure, writing this story has been therapeutic. But more than that — it's been a process of seeing, of revealing my truth.

And in another way, this story isn't about me at all — but the universal woman who has lost herself early in life and longs to get her self back.

So…would you like to read it? The twisty, turney story carries you through to my heroic escape at age 25. Now that's a scene you'll have to wait to read until this baby is in print.

If that's a yes, I hope the agents and publishers feel the same way.

I'm on a new leg of this journey now — trying to get this book published and out into the world. It's the Million Dollar Highway I once drove in Colorado — miles of hairpin curves that looked not unlike the shape of my crooked spine, adrenaline coursing, hands gripping the wheel for dear life.

I sent my first submissions last week – wheee! Two asked for additional pages. Whee. Then both of them send succinct and courteous form letter nos.

Oh. Ouch. Breathe into the belly, calm the system, release the QL muscle tension. Because this part of the journey is only beginning.

Next up: Swimming in the River of Rejection – which hearkens back to my days swimming the rivers around Asheville. Cold, roiling, and oh so exciting. You know my scoli spine, Caroline – she loves to swim – defying gravity, she and I feel free.

Wheee, here we go.