It's been a while since I blogged. I was just lamenting the other day about the fact that when I started blogging back in 2005 it was a novelty, there weren't that many Bloggers and there was a good chance that you could reach out and touch a great deal of people. I had started with my Breasts Not Bombs Blog through which I chronicled the peace demonstrations I had orchestrated to bring attention to our topless activism and our efforts to stop war and remind the public that underneath it all, we are human. Still I had only a few followers and longed for a wider audience. Prior to blogging I had done radio commentary for 11 years on the community radio station in Mendocino County where I live; KZYX. I know I reached a lot of folks through the airwaves and I used the internet as a back up.
But then the Blogging floodgates opened and what seemed liked millions of writers took to the Blogosphere and freely distributed their opinions on zillions of subjects and I retreated.
I'm really an old fashioned girl, so I returned to grassroots activism. I founded the first Medical Cannabis dispensary in the Village of Mendocino and provided medicine to thousands of patients struggling with Cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, migraines, depression etc, etc, etc. After 2 years of that we were raided, I went to jail and turned the whole experience into a One-Woman Show for the theater called TAKING THE HIGH ROAD - Comic Confessions from Behind the Cannabis Curtain which I have been touring throughout California.
So, why am I returning to Blogville? Well, I find myself brimming over with Political commentary and I have just released a Book! THE FIRST PRACTICAL HANDBOOK FOR CRAZY PEOPLE - Making The Best Of Mental Illness - So, I thought it was time to return to the Blogging Community and reach out to an audience craving relief from the constant madness of this explosive and confusing world.
THE FIRST PRACTICAL HANDBOOK FOR CRAZY PEOPLE was originally written by my mother, Shelly Glaser. She had spent most of her life, since she was 4, trying to navigate mental illness. Both her mother and father were sick and she became subject to the horrors that lurk in the dark mentality of insanity. Somehow, she not only survived sexual abuse, abandonment, and foster care to go on to fall in love with my father, have children, sustain gainful employment, graduate law school, write poetry, plays and this book. She would often tell me she had to stay alive to finish this book. She did. Her last wish was that I publish.
My mom died in 2010 of kidney failure, an unfortunate side effect of the Lithium that kept her sane for 27 years. I, of course, experienced monumental grief and it wasn't until 2015 that I picked up the manuscript and got down to editing her work. In the Process I was so inspired I thought; Why not include my experience around mental illness, especially through the eyes of a daughter who most certainly inherited the crazy gene. I wrote the second half of the book (Sherry The Sequel) based on my ability to not only avoid a diagnosis, but to become a great actress, write my own one-woman shows, have a family and live a scrumptious life.
Also included in the THE FIRST PRACTICAL HANDBOOK.... is a questionnaire that my mother "channeled" that is a groundbreaking approach to address the basic questions in life that help us make "informed choices" rather than repetitive, self destructive behaviors. The Outline includes the topics: Who are You? Why were you born? What do you want? and What will you do? In fact, the reason my mother went to Law School in the first place was because she wanted to get into the prisons and juvenile system to administer the questionnaire and help those who saw themselves as "victims" realize their full potential and realize their purpose here.
I've just uploaded the book to Amazon Kindle and it would be so marvelous if you, kind reader, if you feel any resonance with my story, would download today. Print copies will be available soon.
So, I'm back blog blog blogging. I've got so much to say and perhaps there is an audience waiting, wanting something that has hope, humor, healing and a radical feminine point of view. I mean, when have you read any kind of MOTHER-DAUGHTER continuum before. I like to think I'm still breaking ground in a world that is almost completely broken.
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