In my mother’s older years, she spent a good deal of her time writing stories about her life with my father who died at 36 of a heart attack in June 1956. At the time of his passing, she was seven months pregnant and just 34 years old. As a single mother, thanks to hard work and determination, she went on to make a good life for herself and her children. She got her bachelor’s degree and became a teacher. Later, she went on to earn a master’s degree and ultimately became the primary school … [Read more...]
Writing as a Pathway to Helping Overcome Addictions
One of the toughest challenges of battling any addiction is the feeling of isolation you experience in struggling to identify, understand and address the root cause of your behavior. For years, I struggled with alcohol, binging, purging and cutting as a means of dealing with my underlying feelings of despair, grief and distaste for myself. I justified my addictions by developing rituals to drown out the anxiety, fear and pain that enveloped my soul. My first such ritual was food, which I … [Read more...]
Storytelling and Life Lessons: Writing to Heal
For many of us, our most memorable stories come from family folklore. These are the stories that inform us about who we are and where we came from. We’ve either lived these moments or had them passed down from other generations, and have filed them in our memory boxes marked, Important Life Lessons. These lessons can be drawn upon throughout our lives, whether we are seven or 70. My very best and earliest storytelling teachers were Ida Mae, my next-door neighbor, and my grandfather, … [Read more...]
Stories Make Us Human
Nothing helps us heal like remembering, writing and celebrating our stories. In my case, storytelling is a part of my soul. I’m fortunate and grateful to have a great deal of poignant memories from days gone by. Over the course of my lifetime, many people have taught me important life lessons and I continue to draw on them, no matter how much time has passed. I’m not unique in having lovely and sometimes sad stories in my repertoire and I hope that sharing my experiences encourages others … [Read more...]
A Lifelong Journey – my personal story
My name is Tyra Manning and I am a grateful survivor. My story is one of recovery redemption and love. My new memoir, Where the Water Meets the Sand is that story. It is the story of my own personal journey, the story of falling in love with 1st Lt. James Larry Hull when we were young college students in Lubbock, Texas, marrying Larry and my struggles with mental illness after he deployed to Vietnam in 1970. I feared I would lose Larry, like I had lost my dad who died of a heart attack when I … [Read more...]
