Robbie Kaye is a groundbreaking photographer and photojournalist, best known for her work illuminating the innate beauty of real women as they age. Her work The Beauty of Wisdom offers a fresh look at the way we perceive beauty. Robbie came to photography after working a musician for many years.  Now she sees melodies and compositions in the images she photographs. Please welcome Robbie Kaye to The Great Women Series today.

What is your favorite guilty pleasure? Eggplant pizza and rootbeer while vegging on the couch watching a movie, wrapped in cozy blankets.

Your one wish for the world? A collective higher-consciousness for self-love.

What is your favorite word? Delicious Least favorite word? Never

What was the most difficult age for you? 19, I lost the ability to escape into exterior pleasures and had to face my fears and feelings of being lost, not knowing who I was.

What has been the best age for you? Now is the best age for me, for all of the learning that I have done in all the previous ages leading to now is coming together, more clearly, more honestly, more lovingly.

Do you believe in karma? Yes Synchronicity? Yes Love at first sight? Not sure. Second chances? No, no regrets. (Thank you Edith Piaf!)

Do you have a secret talent? I write poetry and play classical piano.

Have you overcome your biggest obstacle? Yes… that obstacle was me… I overcame it, by loving it… me, honestly.

Will you share your biggest epiphany? It was while reading Eckhart Tolle – that I am not my thoughts!

Favorite song? I have so many but  “Dirty Work” by Steeley Dan is one of them. Favorite book? To Kill a Mockingbird or Eat, Pray, Love

Your work? My love of road-tripping and traveling throughout this country and others, allows me to take photographs of beautiful land and the people, animals and foliage that live on it. My Beauty & Wisdom blog is www.beautyofwisdom.com. I am on twitter as beauty of wisdom and on FB as Robbie Kaye and also Beauty of Wisdom Page. The Beauty & Wisdom Trailer is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVuwTs56IJg

One misconception people have about you? That I’m intense or gruff. What is your truth? I’m from New York, honest and I have emotions that I don’t feel I need to always hide.

What is the nicest thing anybody has ever said to you? It was a compliment about my energy… or about the work I am doing with Beauty & Wisdom.

What is your best advice for any woman who is struggling to become who she is meant to be? Read or listen to information that she relates to that helps her build that self-love muscle. For me it is Law of Attraction, Eckhart Tolle, Barbara DeAngelis and so many more… read and listen to cds or watch videos…  it’s like taking vitamins for my soul and it helps in the learning of who I am, who I want to be and who I am meant to be.

What would you tell yourself 10 or 20 years ago if you could give her advice? You have a right to be here, to shine as bright as you possibly can, everyday, and to be honest with yourself first… don’t compromise that which you know is true for you…. For you are an amazing warrior, powerful, beautiful and alive and it is your job to love yourself and live in joy and love!

You can find out more about Robbie on her website,  www.robbiekaye.com or www.robbiekayegallery.com Her fine art photography card store is found on Etsy: http://www.etsy.com/people/robbiekaye.

A guilty pleasure, if there ever was one?

Chocolate.  Always chocolate.  Dark and at least 70%.

Do second chances happen in real life?

I have to say that I’m having my second chance right now, having gotten through breast cancer treatment last year.  Also, see below, for my answer to number 7 (favorite age).

If you were trapped in an elevator for four hours, who would you want with you?

Leonard Cohen, singing.  And sharing his secrets with me.

What was the most difficult age?

My early teens were quite tortured.  I felt wrong in about a hundred ways, inside and out, and I wanted to be anywhere but where I was.

What has been the best age for you?

I’m surprisingly okay about turning 51.  I’m more true to myself than I’ve ever been, and I’m learning some deep lessons about how to be at home in the world.  This may sound new-agey and/or religious in a weird way, but I actually feel like I’m currently being reborn as a better and happier person.

Do you believe in karma? Synchronicity? Love at first sight?

All of the above, yes.  For better or worse.

How have you overcome your biggest obstacle?

I think I’m in the process of overcoming it right now.  That is, overcoming my own tendencies to repeat behaviors that cause me to suffer.  I also have had trouble with pessimism, which has caused me to be fearful about things that haven’t even happened yet.  I’m learning some new tricks for that too, and most of them are embedded in the spiritual practice of the Twelve Steps.

Your biggest epiphany?

Progress not perfection.  I wish it didn’t sound like such a trite cliché, but this insight/mantra is really helping me calm down.  A lot.

Your favorite song? Favorite book?

I’m still and always completely in love with Keith Jarrett’s album The Køln Concert.  I find it impossible to choose a favorite book, but most of the time I say that To the Lighthouse and Mrs. Dalloway, both by Virginia Woolf, are my favorites.

Your best advice for any woman who is struggling to become who she is meant to be?
PERSEVERE

You can find out more about Liz at www.elizabethrosner.com.

Perhaps the greatest gift a mother can hope for on Mother’s Day is the love and devotion of her family. Patricia O’Connell relishes that gift every day. The adored mother of nine, grandmother to twenty-nine, lover of stories, widow, and lifelong writer, has an offbeat sense of humor and a gift for motherhood and prose. At 83, she is still going strong and writing “on the back of napkins, grocery receipts and cookbook endpages.” She is a former fellow of the Radcliffe Institute, and received a MA in writing from Boston University. She has completed several novels and short stories, which she hopes to one day find homes for. I’m honored to celebrate her on The Great Women Series today.

Is true love for real? I met my beloved second husband was I fifty.  That was a good age.  We were together 27 years until his death.  It was like that song, “I never knew love like this before.”  It sounds corny, but I truly did not know love could be like that.

The best and worst of times? My childhood was the worst time in my life, until I left for college at seventeen. I was born in the Depression era. Poverty.  Sometimes just turnips to eat for days.  My pretty tiny mother so frail, so sad, terrified of the babies that kept coming. She was so desperate.  I became the mother to the other five of us.  My father, cruel, cruel, beating us daily.  I cooked my first Thanksgiving dinner when I was nine, alone. I still love raw turnips.

Your best advice for first-time mothers? My advice to first-time mothers is don’t worry if the house is a mess; take lots of naps. Get a nice rocking chair that the two of you can dream in, look often and close into those eyes gazing up at you, and let her grip your pinky in her tiny fingers for as long as she wants.  Stay in love with your husband too, not just the baby. Relax.

Are there guilty pleasures? My favorite pleasure, now my favorite memory, was sneaking up to the pond with my old husband John, where the swans always are, with turkey sandwiches from Sally Anne’s bakery, oatmeal cookies and ice tea.  John read his paper, me with a great book. Maybe a Moe Keale song on the radio, singing our old favorite Maui Waltz.  I never felt guilty for a minute.

Thoughts on second chances? I do believe in second chances.  I wouldn’t need a second chance in many areas; I’m so at peace now with my life. My first marriage was full of pain, but the hollowed out place it left made room for a second marriage drenched in bliss.  I do wish I had realized earlier that just doing the work of writing wasn’t enough, that the publishers wouldn’t smell my stories like a batch of brownies and come knocking down my door. But still, just the writing made me so happy, laughing and crying in my room over something I’d just written. It may have been, maybe, enough.

Who would you want to be stranded with? My stuck-in-an-elevator buddy would be my granddaughter. We’d each have our dream/story/hope notebook, and we would talk about it ALL. She’s an intense little insightful beauty who has seen the world inside out and just oozes this pure illuminated love.  She has her own apartment in my heart, with a view of the water.

Any superstitions? I wouldn’t say I’m super superstitious, but I can’t help seeing signs, the two white swans I seem to always see when I think about John, how the big petaled pink magnolia we always loved will rustle when I think I feel his breath on my shoulder. Stuff like that. It’s in full bloom right now.

I think a lot about Karma, the rippling of actions good or evil, within one’s self. It makes sense. Reap what you sow.

I do believe in love at first sight because it happened to me and I was never the same.

Best and worst advice you ever received? The best and worst advice I ever got from my parents was the same: Work. Work, work, work. The only thing that mattered back then was function, it didn’t matter how cute you were or if you could sing, or write poems. Go pick the potatoes. Get the wood in before I get home. Never complain. Desperate to please my parents, I’d collapse before I didn’t finish the job.  Still, even now I’m a good worker.

Secret talent? My writing, unintentionally, has remained my big secret talent!

How about the next life? In my next life I’d like to come back as me again, with John and my kids and grandkids all the same with all the same people I loved.  I’d want to be a banjo player, a better writer who writes even more, and a tap dancer living in the Hawaii John and I knew, with the little old-timey place by the water.

How have you overcome your biggest obstacles? I have overcome many of my big obstacles, just by keeping on. Worked hard, didn’t quit.

I was accepted into some amazing writing programs. The Radcliffe Institute gave me whole office to write in for a year, like winning the lottery. I was the unanimous choice of the judges. Boston University, Breadloaf, Na’Au. I’ve written so many novels, one lost in a fire, one thrown out the car window on Rt. 128, some left in the house with my first marriage. I’ve finally polished what I’ve been told is the best of them, Night Windows, a book about Mary O’Hara, committed to an asylum after her young daughter is killed in the course of a family estate battle.  She has become the face at the night window, memories of her poverty stricken, abusive childhood mingle with the pains of her possibility of accepting love again, life.  It sounds maudlin but there are lots of funny parts.

My other big struggle, ongoing, is a lifelong one, for faith. I have only come as far as enormous Hope.

Favorite woman? My mother, Mary Kelly, is my favorite woman.  Four feet nine, little French-Irish beauty, romantic to the end, cutting little lace paper frames with cuticle scissors for love poems she was too shy to send until it was too late. She was born into the wrong life; she should have been a hat maker to the queen, or a harp player.  Six babies, born at home, so much fear, my brutal father, poor as turnips, feet always cold.  She fell in love much later with an Austrian doctor.

Favorite song and book? My favorite song is easy, the Maui Waltz . . .when John and I were lucky to go to Honolulu winters, our friend Moe Keale would play it for us, barefoot, under the Hau Tree in the sand.

About a thousand books tie for my favorite for first place..Anne Sexton, Reynolds Price, William Trevor, Flannery O’Conner, Katherine Anne Porter, on and on . . . all the stars to navigate the night boat by.

The nicest thing anybody ever said to you? “I love you” is the best thing ever said to me.

Your best advice? My husband, an athletic director, would say, “Work on your fastball.” I say, break out of the wishing, dreaming stage, and take action. Persevere. Take action towards your fulfillment. Begin now.

If you could say anything to your younger self what would it be? What I would tell myself ten years ago, thick in the middle of a time of such bliss, is that it is all a path. It led to where I am now, a good place. I wish I could have told myself that you will face the worst, and that you will have the strength, a strength that held.

What has been your biggest epiphany? Loving John. The shocking, wrenching power of love, from the days by the pond and magnolia tree up to the last weeks, touching his dry lips with something cool, trying to ease pain…love, so wrenching and exquisite and everything at once.  That and every time one of my babies was born. I never got used to it. Nine times and every time I think of it the wonder still takes my breath away.

A wish for the world? My one wish for the world would be that the great spirits are right after all, and death is just another happy transition.

Patrica O’Connell lives near Boston.

Award-winning children’s book author Jane Kurtz spent most of her childhood in Ethiopia and her books celebrate the stories and children of that country.  She also created the stories for Lanie, the American Girl Doll of the Year 2010.  Author of 30 children’s books, Jane will be honored this weekend with the University of Minnesota’ s highest honor for children’s literature, the Kerlan Award.

What advice from childhood has stayed with you?

My dad believed in being tough.  “Don’t throw like a girl!” he’d say when we were out with balls and gloves.  “A good ball player never walks.”  I like having some toughness at my core.

What is the nicest thing anybody has ever said to you?

When I graduated from college, one of my professors said, “You were a breath of fresh air.  Sometimes that felt more like a tornado…but I’m glad I got to know you.”

How have you overcome your biggest obstacle?

As a writer, a speaker, and a fundraiser for a nonprofit, I sometimes think every day is nothing but one big obstacle…and I draw on my dad’s toughness, my mom’s love of words, and my natural stubborn nature.  I also draw on passion.  I trust raw talent less than raw determination and the joy that pushes some people to do the same thing over and over.

Your biggest epiphany?

I never thought I would have fundraising in my life.  The very idea would have sent me running screaming from the room when I was younger.  I never realized, then, that fundraising could be telling stories and dreams and listening well to other people’s stories and dreams.

What has been your most difficult time of life? Your best?

When I was 17, I decided I wanted to leave high school and my cozy Ethiopia world behind and trot my smart self off to college in America where my older sister already was.  At the time, I felt brave and strong.  Recently, a third grader asked me, “But if your parents were in Ethiopia, who took care of you?”  We were expected to take care of ourselves, including finding places to go for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and summer vacations and in retrospect, it was pretty tough.

I worked for 10 agonizing years to get my first book published.  In those years, I didn’t know how many people line up with rejections AFTER publication…and yet once it was clear I was going to have a life as an author, those post-publication years felt glorious.

If you had one wish for the world what would it be?

My parents grew up poor and (in my mom’s case) in a sad and struggling family, but books and stories gave them big dreams.  If I were Queen of the World, we’d all drop everything and read at least an hour every day.

Do you believe in second chances?

I believe we get endless chances to practice new approaches and attitudes toward the things that be-devil and bug us…and if we don’t step up and learn new things, the next chance to practice will roll right around.

Do you believe in synchronicity?

I wove synchronicity into one of my novels for young readers, Jakarta Missing, because it fascinates me.  The fabric of the world feels more mysterious and connected than I can explain.

Your recent work?

Since the American Girl Lanie books came into the world, I’ve been having the best time with a blog: http://janekurtz.wordpress.com

What is your best advice for any woman who is struggling to become who she was meant to be?

Be tough.  Read a lot of books.  Tell your story as a survivor’s story.  And look for a few stranded starfish you can throw back into the big ocean.

You can find out more about Jane Kurtz at www.janekurtz.com.

What is the nicest thing anybody has ever said to you? A woman came up to me once after a reading in North Carolina and told me that after her mother died the spark in her younger sister’s eyes disappeared. She told me that after her sister read Motherless Daughters her spark returned, and she thanked me for bringing her sister back to her. I still can’t even type that story without starting to cry.

Do you believe in second chances? Yes, even if it’s impossible to re-experience an event, I believe it’s possible to revisit it emotionally through imagination, writing, meditation, or other spiritual practice. I’d like to re-do all of junior high, and tell all the kids—even the mean girls—that what seems so vital during those years doesn’t matter that much later in life.

What has been the best age for you? Why? I remember being 27 in Iowa City, walking home from teaching at the university on an early spring day that was still cold but crisp and clear and right on the edge of turning green, heading back to my little house to work on an essay for workshop, being so happy to be in that place at that time, and realizing that I’d grown up to become exactly who I’d always wanted to be. So I would have to say the best age was that moment, age 27.

What was the most difficult age for you? Why? 42. That was the age my mother was when she died, and it was incredibly sad and poignant to reach it and discover how incredibly young it is, and how much living she still had left to do. The first month of 43 was hard as well, realizing that I’d outlived her and no longer had a mental road map for female development. Then I recognized that I had a full life ahead of me, and got down to the business of living it.

One misconception people have about you and your truth? Can I put two? 1. That I tell my stories because I’m self-absorbed and want to tell other people how to live. (Fortunately, only a small percentage of readers say this, but they’re vocal. And usually anonymous.) The charge is painful to hear, because it’s so untrue. I share my experiences in the hope that they’ll inspire or help people.  I would never try to convince anyone to live in any way other than the way that already makes sense to them. 2. That a writer’s life is glamorous. Readers sometimes come up at public events and say, “I can’t believe you’re so normal!” I spend half my life in yoga pants alone in front of a computer screen, and the other half driving my kids around. Not much glamour going on here, believe me.

How have you overcome your biggest obstacle? Well, I’m not sure I have. That would be the fear of losing someone else I love, and I struggle to overcome it every day—to not be an overprotective parent, to not be an overbearing wife, to not micromanage everyone and everything around me in an effort to keep everyone safe. To give people the freedom and autonomy they need and deserve, and to trust that everything will work out fine in the end. I’m much better at letting go than I was ten years ago, but it’s definitely a work in progress. It helps that my husband has the patience of Gandhi.

Are you superstitious? Oh, boy. Do you really want to go there with me? Don’t open an umbrella in the house unless you’re checking to see if it’s broken; don’t leave a hat on the bed or cat hair might get all over it; don’t walk under a ladder especially if your husband set it up quickly and then forgot to put it away; if a black cat crosses your path, pick it up, give it a hug, and make sure it has a home. But do not bring it home with you. You already have one cat too many.

Thoughts on karma? Synchronicity? Love at first sight? Yes, absolutely, and sort of. I think of the latter as meeting someone who’s on the same spiritual wavelength (or maybe it’s more of a vibration? I don’t really know, but we all know it when it happens) and recognizing him or her as a kindred spirit right away. That’s happened to me many times over the years.

What is your favorite guilty pleasure? Reality TV. I can lose hours watching House Hunters International, and I’m strangely fascinated by Billy the Exterminator.

In your next life who do you want to come back as? Me, except with better hair. And (if anyone is taking orders) I’d like to be able to sing. Seriously, I really like being me. I don’t like the idea of coming back as someone else at all. How would I know what to do?

Your recent work? The memoir The Possibility of Everything is about taking my daughter to Mayan healers in Belize to get rid of her imaginary friend and saving my marriage and restoring my faith in the process http://www.thepossibilityofeverything.com. I also had a recent “Modern Love” column in the New York Times you can read at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/24/fashion/24Modern.html.

What was the best advice a parent ever gave you? To never think I’m better than anyone else, and never let anyone else get away with acting as if they’re better than me. (This became particularly good advice for someone who wound up living in L.A.)

What is your best advice for any woman who is struggling to become who she was meant to be? You already are who you were meant to be. Sometimes you just need to clear away the clutter so that person can shine through.

You can find out more about Hope at www.hopeedelman.com.

Author Thaisa Frank is known for her boundless imagination and inimitable voice. Her fifth book, Heidegger’s Glasses (Counterpoint Press 2010) is testament to both, delivering a spellbinding rendering of Nazi Germany as seen through the eyes of characters known as “the Scribes.” See what Thaisa has to say about her most difficult age, the truth as a liberating force, and how a shift in perception created a new view of the past.

Do you believe in second chances?

I believe in second, third, fourth and x (n+1) chances. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be a writer or a mother.

What’s the nicest thing anybody has ever said to you?

“Sometimes you’re late, but not irreparably so.” I relate this to my belief about second, third, fourth and x (n+1) chances.

You’ve spoken about your most difficult age. How has your perception of yourself at that age changed?

Without question my hardest age began at twelve and began to end when I was sixteen. My family was unhappy, chaotic. I understood this when I was as small as three and this helped me make distance from them throughout childhood. But when I was twelve and began to experience myself as a social person with peers, I felt intense shame about my family, as well as guilt about that shame. I didn’t want anyone to know about my mother, who slept all day and delivered tirades so loud, neighbors heard them. I didn’t want anyone to know about my father, who was given to fits of abuse. So I created a façade of a happy family and confided in no one at a time when I most needed to confide.

Years later I had a reunion with a classmate from junior high and high school. We met in a Los Angeles coffee shop, over 3,000 miles from where we’d gone to school. It was there that we told each other the truth: Neither of our families had been happy.

We were both surprised because we each thought the façade we’d created was transparent. Instead it had worked beautifully—at great expense to our well-being. We were both sad that neither of us could find a way to talk about these things while we were living them and most needed someone to talk to. But we acknowledged that it was much easier to talk about childhood when we’d left it behind.

Can a shift in perception be a liberating force?

In college, away from home, there was less pressure to keep up a facade. Since my friends confided in me about their families, I began to confide in them about mine. Sharing the truth with other people was incredibly liberating. There were also professors who valued me, even though I didn’t like myself enough to understand why.

Still, emergence from identifying with my family was a slow process. Slowly I began to realize that I wasn’t their mirror but a separate person: I didn’t have to feel shame or guilt. I could confide and trust that my vision of them wasn’t malevolent, but clear.

What would you tell your younger self now, if you had the chance?

The more I became comfortable with myself, the more I found people who had my best interests in mind. Most importantly, I understood that they cared about me and valued me. Eventually I was able to see that people had always reached out to me and often had some understanding of what went on at home. If I’d been more trusting as a child I would have been able to reach back to the people who reached out to me. And so I would tell my younger self that trustworthy people existed. I would tell this self to take notice when a teacher encouraged me or a classmate asked what was bothering me. There are people who believe in you and like you, I would tell myself. Don’t push them away without giving them a chance.

Your biggest epiphany?

That I move in the world as a tangible body that others can see. I’m not just a mind. I’m not just thoughts or feelings. I’m a tangible physical body. I’m aware of this now as I’m typing this.

Favorite song? “Dreams” by The Cranberries.

Do you believe in love at first sight?

I believe in love at first sight. But I don’t believe in remaining in love at first sight.

Thoughts on synchronicity?

I’ve sometimes had amazing coincidences in my life—like seeing an original manuscript on the day I got the page proofs of a novel. Or seeing a picture of a baby I fell in love with before my son was born—and then having it turn out that my son looked just like that baby. But these may be magnetic forces in us that draw us to things, rather than some force in the universe that brings two things together.

Your work?

I’m a fiction writer and occasionally teach fiction in graduate programs. My fifth book is Heidegger’s Glasses, a novel that takes place in Germany during WWII. My website is www.thaisafrank.com.

What is your best advice for anyone struggling to become who she is meant to be?

Don’t be afraid of fear. It happens before every great enterprise. Fear is your friend. It’s telling you that you’re stepping into the unknown.

Many fiction writers immerse themselves in their subjects, however, few would follow a passion for extreme weather into the eye of a tornado. Several

Will you share your biggest epiphany?

My biggest epiphany led to my writing my first novel, THOSE WHO SAVE US.  I had written a short story about the main characters to round out a collection I was working on, and I woke one morning knowing how the novel could be structured around the story.  I remember staggering from my bed and around my apartment clutching my head dramatically and feeling like Beethoven.  I was both annoyed because now I’d have to write a whole book instead of a collection and wonderfully excited.

Your work?

THOSE WHO SAVE US is about a German woman who becomes the mistress of an SS officer to protect herself and her daughter in Weimar during WWII, then the daughter’s quest fifty years later to determine what the mother did, since the mother will never talk about it.  My second novel, THE STORMCHASERS, is about a pair of boy-girl twins, and the brother, Charles, is bipolar, whereas his sister Karena isn’t.  Charles, when he’s manic, chases tornadoes—which I did myself, for research and because I love severe weather, with a stormchase company called Tempest Tours.  To learn more about the novels and my life, please visit me at www.jennablum.com.

How long have you been chasing storms?

I’ve been stormchasing with Tempest Tours for five years now, going on my sixth summer.  I followed behind their main vans in my own vehicle (a big red Jeep Laredo) to start with, and this year I am graduating to hosting my own tours with Tempest!  I’d love for readers to sign up so I can show them how this majestic adventure has alchemized into fiction.

Any tales to tell from the road few have traveled?

One of the great things about stormchasing is you really come to love the people you chase with. I have a whole second family out on the Plains! Chasers tend to be passionate, curious, committed people—like writers.  They are always trying to make sense of the world through an experiential and natural lens.  Most people think we’re adrenaline junkies, but in fact, when I was talking with a chaser friend the other day (Jim Reed, one of the premier weather photographers in the world), he said thoughtfully, “You know, I think I’m an experience addict.”  And that summed it up for me.  Chasing isn’t just about the storms—it’s about the beautiful, lonely landscape of the Plains, the rootbeer floats and Dr. Pepper cake you can find there, the people you meet along the way.  It’s about the adventure of not knowing what’s going to happen that day, where you’ll end up.  It’s about the story.

It’s also, of course, about the storms, and yes, I have been scared.  As one character says in THE STORMCHASERS, “If you’re not scared, you should be scared—it means you’re not paying attention.”  Every time I drive under a tornadic supercell that hasn’t dropped a tornado yet, I’m scared, because I don’t know where it’s going to drop.  (It could be on me!)  And in May 2008, while chasing with Tempest, I popped a tire beneath a storm that was about to produce a tornado.  I was so scared then that I forgot to be scared—it was all about getting me and my passengers, fellow chaser chicks Marcia Perez and Kirstie Johnson, to safety.  The Tempest guides literally saved our lives—they turned their vans around, came back, changed our exploded tire, and got us back on the road just as the storm started to put down tornado after tornado after tornado.  My therapist says, of that experience, I’m the only person she knows who gave herself PTSD. The war stories are the anomalies, and every chaser has them.  I imagine every writer accumulates them too, in pursuit of the next story.

What keeps you grounded?

Do you believe in second chances?

I’m not sure I believe in second chances for interpersonal things.  Somebody recently posted on Facebook, “Never regret anything, because at one time it was exactly what you wanted.”  With writing, though, I believe writers give themselves second and third and fourteenth and hundredth chances every day because they keep going and going and going back to the drawing board to get it right.

What is one misconception people have about you and your truth?

People often think I’m older than I am, I think because they confuse me with the characters in my first novel, THOSE WHO SAVE US.  They’re surprised when I show up to find I’m not an 80-something German woman or a 50-something German history professor with an attitude problem.  I’m actually pretty smiley.

Your most difficult age?

Middle school.  I had Annie hair, a denim fisherman’s cap, braces, baby fat, a mad crush on my 7^th grade Social Studies teacher, whom I wrote my first novel about. All other boys were at their meanest.  Absolute hell.

Your best age?

Now.  I’ve done a lot of the things I’ve wanted to do; had an extraordinary life; been blessed by meeting extraordinary people—I am rich in experience, family, and friends.  And I’ve got a lot I want to do, much to look forward to.

The best and worst advice you’ve heard?

The best advice, from my mom via her dad:  “Keep sawing wood.” The worst advice a former boss ever gave me was to stop writing because it was such a long shot, and I was bound to fail and it would only depress me in the end.

Are you superstitious?

I’m of the “Better safe than sorry” school.  I don’t walk under ladders; I shoo away black cats.  I definitely wish on stars and at 11:11 every day/night when I catch it, though that may make me more of a romantic sap than superstitious.

The nicest thing anybody has ever said to you?

That I thought about the right things.

Who is your favorite woman?

My mom, Franny Ann Joerg Hanson Blum McCarthy.

What is your best advice for any woman who is struggling to become who she was meant to be?

What Winston Churchill said:  “Never give in; never give in; never give in.”

. In her new memoir Half in Love: Surviving the Legacy of Suicide, Linda talks candidly about her intense depression and how she managed to curb the cycle of suicide she seemed destined to inherit—and unlike her mother’s, hers is a story of triumph.

What is the nicest thing anybody has ever said to you? My previously lonely husband once said to me, “You think that I saved you, Linnie, but the truth is that you saved me.”

The most difficult age for you? When I turned forty-five, I tried to kill myself three times, even though I well understood the hurt I would cause my family.  Somehow I could not face this parallel, my life to hers.

The best age for you? My fifties.  I have come into my own and defeated my depression.  I am writing again, conversing with other writers again.  I have reclaimed my life.

The best advice your mother ever gave you? My mother gave me three pieces of great advice:   “Live to the hilt,” she said.  “And don’t let the bastards win.”  But my favorite piece of advice is: “Be your own woman.”

Your biggest obstacle? I have overcome suicidal depression with the help of a great therapist; modern medicine and all it now has to offer psychiatric patients; and the love of my family.  And then, despite the pain, I wrote about it on a personal level in a memoir that will be published for all to see.

Who is your favorite woman? My mother, even now and despite it all.

Your biggest epiphany? That life will be what it will be.

Your work? Someone commits suicide very seventeen minutes and worldwide a million people kill themselves every year. In addition to my mother’s suicide, there were two other suicides in the family. Half in Love is a personal and candid memoir that delves deeply into what I went through, as well as telling the story of how I triumphed over my family’s legacy of suicide. I hope it will help others who endure depression and thoughts of suicide, and their families, who are caught under the bell jar of their loved one’s illness and the aftermath of them taking their lives. You can learn more here:  www.lindagraysexton.com

One misconception people have about you and your truth? That I am a confident, outgoing, extroverted person. In fact, I am shy, and introverted.  I have a lot of trouble meeting new people.

Your favorite guilty pleasure? A big block of Parmesan, shaved thinly, with a glass of red wine at 5:00 every night.

Favorite song? “Imagine,” by John Lennon.

In your next life who do you want to come back as? A dog living at my house.

One wish for the world? That every person could come into their own and know fulfillment.

Your favorite word? Hope.

What is your best advice for any woman who is struggling to become who she was meant to be? Keep plugging away at it.  Never give up.  You can be anything you want to be, and this will be what you are meant to be.