BUHUB A MOTHER’S LOVE CONTEST
Emy Asked Me To Write This
About my experience with A Mother’s Love Contest
Emy asked me to write about my experience with the BUHUB A Mother’s Love contest for May. Yet now that I have the time, I find I’ve been avoiding it all morning: I hadn’t taken a good walk for days, it’s a lovely morning and I could get so much done in my garden instead of writing, and well, what to say?
I’ve never entered a writing contest. When I saw the title, A Mother’s Love, it didn’t really speak to me.
But a few days later, I remembered my friend, Gayle, and I’d been thinking about her stories and though I’d started writing, I wasn’t making any progress. There were so many experiences and I was too close.
Ah, but the big one was really her stroke and the effect it had on her son, Nate. Now that would make a good entry for A Mother’s Love!
Still, I dragged my feet but something kept nagging me. It was like the sore tooth your tongue can’t stay away from. The story wanted to be written but the couple of times I’d sat down with it, all I was getting was blah blah blah. It wasn’t working, I couldn’t find the structure. I couldn’t bring to life how it affected me.
So, I gave up.
I told myself before I went to sleep that night that if the story was to be written, show me how.
When I woke up, it was pretty clear. And it only took a couple of hours from start to finish to submission for publication.
A wrap. Relief.
Over the next couple of weeks, I went back to the submission guidelines a couple of times looking for the date that the announcement would be made. There was none.
I was hosting a Memorial Day gathering when I looked at my Medium email account and saw a message:
Emy Knazovic mentioned you in “Winners, New $100 Contest, Announcements You Want to Know.”
I know, rude with guests around, but I scrolled through and saw:
Now, let’s look at the lucky winners of “The Mother’s Love” contest:
🏆Third Place and Winner of $10:
🌈LIFE LESSON
Hey Mom, You Helped Me Broke The Generational Trauma Unknowingly
🏆💃Second Place and Winner of $25:
LC Lynch
You Love Me Unconditionally
🏆💃🎶First Place and Winner of $50:
JonesPJ
Gayle’s Sacrifice — Did She Know?
💃🎶🥳Huge Congratulations Lovelies! 🥳🎶💃
On one level, it surprised me. On another, it didn’t. It is a powerful story and it still makes me cry. If it hadn’t won, I knew that it wasn’t the story but my telling of it that had failed.
I have a friend, Dianne, who is quite psychic. She channels and through her, I get that those who’ve passed on are never more than a thought away. Our spiritual guides: same. They’re always close.
I asked Dianne about the story — was it Gayle who wanted it told? Was it Gayle who had been nagging me?
Dianne said, “they’re laughing. So you could feel them working on you?”
And she affirmed that “yes, they were prodding you. They’re here to help you.”
She never said that it was Gayle, though.
No matter. The story wanted to be told and now it is.
At least the short version.
