Post #111 – Memoir Writing – Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler
Author Shows Determination
Women’s Memoirs is pleased to welcome Kathleen Hewitt to our site today. Kathleen is one of our award-winning authors in last year’s writing contests. Her stories became part of our bestselling series Seasons of Our Lives (Spring
When Kathleen told us her story, we invited her to share it with you.
Welcome Kathleen and congratulations on the publishing of your memoir/novel.
An Empty Nest and a Publishing Contract
Kathleen Hewitt, author of The Scent of Her
My youngest child, my only daughter, left for college this fall. The words ’empty nest’ came chirping from everyone who knew what those first days and weeks would be like for me. I wondered and worried about it, too.
But in a grace-filled moment, I remembered a nest I had found abandoned in my backyard many years before. That day, I had picked it up and carefully held it. I even put it to my nose, for some reason, and as I did, something soft, like a whisper, touched my cheek.
I looked deeper into this quiet, empty nest until I saw blonde hairs, long ones, woven in layers. A long wisp was curled and longer than the others, hanging over the side of the sweet thatch home. I recognized the hair, the same golden tones of my daughter’s and in that moment I recalled the hair trimming that I had given her on the back deck one beautiful breezy summer’s day.
Somehow this mother bird had found windblown ribbons of it and used it to blanket her shelter, her nest. I wish I could have watched her do it, the industry of it, the attention, the natural state of providing for her young. How blessed I felt to know that this had happened in probably as much time as it took me to save some of my daughter’s summer hair in a wax wrapping that day and put it between the pages of her baby book. So long ago–mother bird and mother me.
There are so many beginnings in our transitions and we can always tenderly fill our nests within.
Rriiinng…Rriiinng. The first day that I was without her, my little sweetheart, my summer girl, my heart, the phone rang as I sat in the sunshine on my lemon yellow couch. I almost didn’t pick up. I answered the call and heard words that startled me and within seconds, my heart was racing, and then my soul was dancing. The publisher, the last publisher that I would send my memoir to after no less than 42 rejections, was offering me a standard publishing contract. He told me that he had spent time with my story and that it was a story that needed to be shared.
New beginnings. New transitions. Filling our nests within.
I had worked on this memoir on and off for 15 years. I had edited it countless times. I had cried over its’ pages quite a lot over the years. I worked it. I reworked it. I dug deeper. I sent stories to womensmemoirs.com contests because I wondered if I were really a writer at all. Matilda and Kendra heard my voice and so I finally dug in. I cried some more as I read my words, fresh words, new words and I laughed a lot, too. The manuscript went into a drawer during my cancer treatment. It was nowhere to be found during soccer seasons and prom times, and it was in my hands just one week prior to this phone call. On that occasion, I said a prayer and put it in an envelope, sending it to Texas.
The Scent of Her
Kathleen Hewitt was born in Boston, Massachusetts. She spent a long career doing bedside nursing and later earned a graduate degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Lesley University, Cambridge, MA.
Her book, The Scent of Her
You can find this Kathleen on her blog, emptynestwritings.com.
