fear – Page 3 – Anjuelle Floyd

Of Mothers, Understanding, and BeComing Present …

1 Comment / Articles and Essays / Anjuelle Floyd

How might your life be different if you knew more about your mother?

Knew her fears and worries, not just about you, her daughter, or your siblings, and your father or other family members.

What would it mean to you to know and understand your mother as an individual with her own hopes, dreams and wishes, regrets, ambitions, etc?

How might you be different, your life changed if you could see the entire person that comprises your mother, the little girl who lives inside her?

A pang of fear grips me as I write this for

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Of Remembering, Mourning, and Striving to Become a Better Parent…

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“What you can do as a parent is “strive to be like them.” The easiest way to do so is to consciously look back to your own childhood. Remember what it was like to be small, culturally disrespected and invisible, and everything that accompanied that, both the good and the bad. In this way you will find in your heart the understanding and empathy that can manifest the respect your child deserves. When you “think like a kid” you minimize the natural and cultural differences between generations to build the strongest, most sound foundation of a healthy relationship as a parent and child.” Want to Be a Better Parent? Think Like a Kid/Be a Better Parent by Thinking Like Kid by Linda Dobson

The first time I felt someone truly understood how difficult my childhood had truly been was when reading a book on alcohol and substance addiction when earning my MA in Psychology.

The most powerful and profound aspect of the text was the author’s clear and precise description of how

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Of Memoir, Climax, and “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother”…

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Writing teacher and mentor, Clive Matson, always said that if a writer found her or himself wanting and/or needing to explain her or his story that the reader might gain the author’s intended message, the author needed to revise their story further.

Completing a manuscript requires more than simply writing the story, editing and revising it for clarity regarding grammar and typos, or even for development of plot.

Within each story or novel lives the narrative of that story, and how it came into being.

The author’s understanding and exploration of this process informs

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Of Arrows, Psyche, and Moments of Empathy, Grace and Redemption…

2 Comments / Articles and Essays, Relationships / Anjuelle Floyd

The outset of the Greek myth of Eros and Psyche, shows Eros leaning over the sleeping mortal, Psyche, and fervently prepared to strike Psyche with one of his arrows and create a wound that will command her to fall in love with a beast.

Eros’s mother, Aphrodite sent him on this mission out of her jealousy of the beautiful, young Psyche.

And yet something about Psyche and/or her beauty evoked sorrow in Eros.

A silent knowing moved between them even with Psyche asleep and her eyes closed.

Perhaps he saw himself, weak and driven at the merciless hand of his mother, Aphrodite’s less than virtuous and ethical desires.

Though Eros is careful and quiet,

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Our Greatest Fear, Our Earnest Hope: To Love and Be Loved…

Leave a Comment / ...married life ... / Anjuelle Floyd

Love strengthens and transforms. It also frightens.

Experiencing love, true unadulterated and unconditional love, freely given soothes us in places long hardened over time by insults and wounds inflicted in the flesh and to our character and emotions.

Love and acceptance despite and because of who we are, faults, shortcomings, warts and all exhumes not only our previous injuries, but lifts our vulnerabilities to the surface.

The frightened girls and boys that our hard exteriors have hidden over the years are summoned forth.

We descend to our knees in the face of an eternal truth.

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Of Fear, La Petite Mort, and the Transforming Power of Love…

Leave a Comment / ...married life ... / Anjuelle Floyd

I named my publishing company, NOJ Publications, after my husband, his named turned backwards.

I write about love, committed and constant, persevering and sustaining, which he has given me.

My stories and novels express what I know and have learned in relationship with my husband.

Love holds a most transforming power.

It dispenses hope beyond our wildest dreams.

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Of Towers, Castles and the Battles Writers Wage…

1 Comment / Articles and Essays / Anjuelle Floyd

The Rook, Tower or Castle in the game of chess speaks to boundaries.

Towers and Castles of the medieval era served not simply as homes, but also places of protection, that place to which rulers, those of their court, and the soldiers guarding them retreated and from which they waged battle.

The Tower provided a place from which the sentry or guardsmen could look out and view those coming to do battle or offend–those who sought to defeat the monarch and occupy her or his home.

Each time we set out to write a story or novel, we wage a war.

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