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    The Women in Me: How They Helped Me Survive and Thrive
    The Women in Me: How They Helped Me Survive and Thrive
    The Women in Me: How They Helped Me Survive and Thrive
    Ebook157 pages2 hours

    The Women in Me: How They Helped Me Survive and Thrive

    By Nancy Maloney-Mercado and Jackie O'Donnell

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    About this ebook

    Are you caring for your chronically ill husband? Did you grow up with suicidal, alcoholic parents? Are you searching for a loving relationship? Have your efforts at starting a fulfilling career been thwarted by someone determined to hold you back? Maybe you've postponed your own dreams in order to keep from making waves

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSunflower Press
    Release dateDec 7, 2022
    ISBN9781088051436
    The Women in Me: How They Helped Me Survive and Thrive

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    • 5/5
      Really helpful! Nancy went through bad stuff like I did. Book gave me a new way to handle things but doesn't give me rules to follow. Parts are sad & parts are funny.

    Book preview

    The Women in Me - Nancy Maloney-Mercado

    The Women in Me

    The Women in Me

    The Women in Me

    How They Helped Me Survive and Thrive

    Nancy Maloney-Mercado

    Jackie O’Donnell

    Sunflower Press

    Copyright © 2022 by Nancy Maloney-Mercado and Jackie O’Donnell

    All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the publisher.

    Sunflower Press—San Jose, CA

    Title: The Women Within Me: How They Helped Me Survive and Thrive

    Author: Nancy Mercado and Jackie O’Donnell

    Digital distribution | 2022

    Paperback | 2022

    Title page illustration by Nancy Maloney-Mercado

    For all women who can trace the roots of their courage and fortitude

    to other women who influenced them.

    Behind every successful woman is a tribe of other successful women, who have her back.

    Unknown

    Contents

    Dedication

    chapter

    Preface

    Introduction

    1 Meet the Influencers

    2 Child Predator

    3 Brushes with Death

    4 Schooled in Becoming Me

    5 Romantic Interlude

    6 Collage Chaos

    7 Stumbling Toward A New Life

    8 Looking For Love (In All the Wrong Places)

    9 A Firm Foothold

    10 Shaping A Marriage

    11 Captured by Art

    12 That Powerful 5-Letter Word

    13 Two Tattered Hats

    14 Disbelief, Doubt, and Guilt

    15 Chief Executive Officer

    16 Butter-Ing Me Up

    17 Pop-Up Influencers

    18 Into the Future

    19 An Invitation

    Afterword

    About the Authors

    Photo Gallery

    Preface

    When my good friend Nancy started talking about writing a book to help others deal with the stress that life smashes our faces into, I thought…well, I wasn’t excited. There are so many books like that already available. Even so, I was willing to help my friend create the book. It would be very personal, dredging up memories of experiences that weren’t all happy. That makes it difficult to transfer thoughts into words describing those thoughts, which is why she asked for my help, as a more seasoned writer.

    It took at least a year before the idea was fully formed in our heads. We’d talk from time to time about experiences we came to see that we shared. The conversations got more and more personal as we bared our souls to each other. The more we talked, the more energized we became to create this project together. What Nancy really wanted to do was use herself as an example of how much can be accomplished or endured if we don’t try to go it alone. Looking back, she recognized that there was an army of women behind her, throughout her life, whose influence gave her the tools to butt heads with life and come out the victor. Starting as a child, she learned enduring lessons from her four main influencers — her mother, grandmother, and two aunts. Later, other women appeared when she needed them, offering help, teaching her coping skills, or helping her decide which path to take as she walked into her future. She wonders who she’d be if it weren’t for these women, along with the strong faith that was passed on to her by her four main influencers.

    We know you’ll identify with many of the situations and emotions that Nancy encountered, especially if you’re currently a spouse/caregiver, a survivor of a recently deceased spouse you cared for during a long illness, or a divorced mother struggling to rediscover who you are while maintaining a home for your family. We hope that, as you read these pages, you’ll be reminded of the people who influenced you in ways that helped form you into the good person you are today.

    May you embrace what the poet John Donne wrote 400 years ago: No (wo)man is an island.

    —Jackie O’Donnell

    Introduction

    Are you a woman who is the primary caregiver of your chronically ill husband? An adult who grew up with abusive, alcoholic parents? Someone who has searched for acceptance, a loving relationship, a happy marriage? Have your efforts at starting a fulfilling career been thwarted by someone trying to hold you back? Maybe you’ve had to put off your own dreams in order to keep from making waves with a significant other. Do you find yourself in situations because of unwise decisions you’ve made? In short, does your life seem to be uncertain or heading a long way from where you’d wish it to be?

    Any one of these is enough to steal your happiness, keep you from achieving your potential, prevent you from using your abilities and talents, or crush your hopes and dreams. Any combination of these brings on that perfect storm that can drown you.

    If you think back, though, there are almost certainly women in your past who have taught you important lessons that can be, first, a lifesaver buoy, then a raft that brings you to a safe, sunny shore. There you’ll find the strength to take your life into the direction you want it to go. Their influence will help you break free of the anchors weighing you down. You’ll be able to act on the knowledge that you really do have the tools to build a satisfying life.

    This book is about one woman who came to appreciate other women who influenced her from her childhood and throughout her life. It tells about her journey from growing up in a dysfunctional family, to being trapped and stifled in an abusive marriage, to grappling with the challenges of being a single mother, to finding her soulmate but struggling with a blended family, to juggling the two incompatible roles of wife and caregiver, to maintaining her faith through it all. It tells, too, about how some special women supported her in ways she didn’t recognize until she unconsciously drew upon their influence.

    We share her story in the hopes that you’ll recognize the Influencers in your life. You may need to draw upon them now. Possibly you’ve drawn on them in your past and can now appreciate their impact on you. Probably you’re being an Influencer right now and don’t know it. That’s a very good thing.

    1

    Meet the Influencers

    Give thanks, O heart, for the high souls..: Brave souls that took the perilous trail

    and felt the vision could not fail. – Edwin Markham

    We are born with no past, the twinkling of a present, and a limitless future. We are a book of empty pages waiting for life to write our story. That story will be a mixture of drama and comedy, joy and sadness, dreams fulfilled and dreams smashed, wonderfully right decisions and ones that lead us into darkness – in short, the whole spectrum of what it is to be human. The great mystery on that birth-day is who we will become. The direction we grow towards depends largely on how we react to what we encounter.

    Those reactions are far from pre-set; they are learned. Each of us has instructors in our lives who give us either active or passive advice on how to live. The active advice, of course, ranges from Don’t do that! yelled by an anxious parent, to opinions we’ve asked for (or not), to self-help books, to a priest’s homilies. The advice that sticks, though, is passive. It’s the attitudes and actions we observe from people who are important to us.

    We grow up unconsciously picking and choosing advice of both sorts. In doing so, we internalize what is good or helpful for us, setting aside everything else, to be picked up later (maybe). Eventually, we grow into what we can call Me.

    This is the story of the women who helped form me into who I became. I’ll explain how they helped me grow, learn, adapt, love, and survive in a world that can be simultaneously unkind and beautiful.

    Briefly, then, I’d like to introduce you to the four Nancy-shaping women whose spirits live within me: Aunt Irene, Aunt Louise, my mother Helen, and my grandmother Ella. Keep them in mind as you read my story.

    Aunt Irene

    Irene’s severe Kyphosis (the old, but derogatory, term is hunchback) kept her at no more than 5’ tall, but a mighty 5’ she was. She spoke four languages. Her high IQ, tested at 160, and her musical ability – she played piano and wrote music – became apparent after she left the orphanage where she and her five siblings grew up. After her mother died, she took responsibility for her two brothers and three sisters, including my mother, and kept house for the family. Eventually, when her father realized he couldn’t run his tailor shop and care for his children by himself, he turned them over to St. Hedwick’s Orphanage in Chicago. There, Irene continued to keep careful watch over her siblings.

    She was, indeed, a forceful whirlwind. Instead of self-pity over her deformity, she lived her faith in God, becoming a lay Carmelite. She might have become a full Carmelite nun, if it weren’t for the fact that she couldn’t keep from speaking her mind. If you didn’t want a direct answer, you shouldn’t ask her a question.

    Still, she put her faith and strong will to work as an organizer and unifier, channeling her endless energy into social work causes as well as educational programs to improve the lives of community members, especially children.

    Her passion was nature. She treasured it, never missing a chance to drench herself in it. In fact, she loved beautiful landscapes so much that when she spotted one while driving us, she would stop right there, in the middle of the road, not pulling over, so she could point out the beauty to us and let us enjoy it along with her.

    Aunt Louise

    The first thing you would notice were Louise’s kind, soft, calm, blue-grey eyes. Then, if she were out in the neighborhood, you’d see all the kids following her around, Pied Piper-like. They responded to her gentle touch when they showed her their boo-boos, and to all the color she surrounded herself with, including the box of crayons and coloring books she always carried with her.

    You’d never know that her adult life was spent banishing the drabness from the lives of others. As a WAC, she cared for the wounded in WWII. After the war, she joined the St. Mary of Providence order and nursed children with Down Syndrome (known then as Mongolism). Then she moved onto the Mother House, where she worked closely with Downs patients, even sharing a room with them. Finally, she cared for and brightened the lives of seniors in Pennsylvania. When she died of breast cancer, she was surrounded by the sisters of the order and with echoes of the song she frequently sang, Jesus loves me, this I know.

    My aunts Louise and Irene were good friends although very different people with dissimilar interests and experiences. My brother Bobby describes Irene as the most intelligent, knowledgeable woman he’s known, Louise as the kindest and most gentle. Growing up with them exposed me to two important understandings: 1) God

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