In Truer Ink: Niki Turner

Thursday, November 21, 2019

Stop using Jesus as a quick fix

Sunday, August 11, 2019

Nine months is not so long

Friday, June 28, 2019

July 2 (today... I should be sleeping) marks nine months since you left us; the same amount of time I carried you in my body. I miss you. Maybe more now than in those early days following your departure. Then everything was colored by your absence. Now it sneaks up on me... I'll go to share something or send a picture and remember and it's like taking a sucker punch to the gut.

Your presence is still with us, I know. You come as a crow, either outside my office window or on a random image search for "searching." When I don't see a crow for a few days, suddenly one shows up on my news feed, or in my email. The crow snowboarding down a metal roof on a lid in Russia, the crow caught hitching a free ride on the back of a bald eagle. These are not things I ever saw or noticed before. They're visits, I choose to believe.
If you get to choose your reappearance, a crow is an apt representative, particularly when I spy one picking yummies out of the trash. Remember that time you brought us all those mushrooms from the dumpster?

You appear in music lists, unplanned. More for your siblings than for me, I think, but then you know music isn't my "thing." You'd be self-satisfied (proud isn't the right word) knowing how many days I've had music playing while getting ready for work. Not my norm, but yours.

I know you see our tears, feel our hurt, know our anger. Yes, we're still so very angry.
Why weren't you wearing your seatbelt? Why were you driving like an idiot? Why?
I like to think you were caught up in a good song that came on as you rounded that corner. More likely, you were snap chatting some random chick or texting while driving. Going too fast in the dark, pushing your limits, like always. Would you have made different choices if you knew the outcome? I honestly don't know. I know my first thought every morning is about you.
Part of me thinks you'd rather have opted to skip ahead of the rest of us in line. It would be par for the course. You were always trying to get things done early... from birth to graduation.

Nine months. Everything still hurts. Your loss is like a bone bruise...triggering pain although everything on the outside appears "normal."

One of the best/worst parts of this whole process has been connecting to other parents in the same hideous club. One of those parents, @jamietheveryworstmissionary, who I've never met in person but whose words about spirituality and the church have born witness with me, lost her son earlier this year. One thing I've come to understand, the "how" doesn't much matter.
Jamie is an incredible writer, and a few days ago she shared the following potent and powerful words that still resonate within me, so I'm sharing them here. I particularly like her words about the abyss. For years I've feared and avoided the abyss with everything in me.
Now I am the abyss.

Whatever you're facing today, whatever challenge is upon you, you're stronger than you think and braver than you know, and I'm sorry you had to find that out the hard way. But, really, is there any other way?

The Voice Within

Wednesday, June 12, 2019

181 Days

Tuesday, April 02, 2019

Emotional Crack-the-Whip

Tuesday, January 29, 2019

9,478 days

Wednesday, December 12, 2018

This too shall pass

Sunday, November 04, 2018

Walking through grief

Thursday, October 25, 2018

It's been four weeks today since I last saw my oldest son alive.
I hugged him, told him I loved him.
He looked odd to me, through my maternal view. I asked him if he was sick. He said no, he was fine, but to my eye, he looked "faded." Something was wrong, but I couldn't put my finger on it. That was a Thursday. He ran the delivery route, then returned to his college classes and retail job. Sometime around midnight the following Monday, he died in a single vehicle accident on top of a mountain some 70 miles away from me.
One day I won't remember in weeks or months, I hope. One day I'll just remember my son without remorse. Honestly, I've been grieving him—a piercing and a tattoo and an over-the-road job at a time—for a decade.
I want to remember Ethan with joy, not with the mind-boggling, gut-wrenching message the county coroner brought to my office midday on an autumn Tuesday. I always thought my husband would be the one to get "the call" I've always feared. (yeah, you crazy cult religious peeps, "that which I have greatly feared has come upon me." Here's your lovely justification and way to consider yourselves immune to destruction. I feared, and so I suffer, and you can count your blessings.) But, back to reality, everyone knows where to find me, so I got the notification. We go to the same church and chat at commissioners' meetings. When she asked for a private meeting I was expecting a juicy county news scoop. My adult daughter left the office to give us privacy. The coroner, seated in my cheap folding chair, asked if my legal name is Samantha Turner, and if my husband's legal name is John Turner, and if we have a son named Ethan Alexander Turner. That's when I knew something was seriously wrong.
Jail? I thought. He's been arrested for doing something stupid.
And then I remembered to whom I was speaking.
He'd been in an accident sometime the night before, on a high mountain road with which my husband and I are intimately familiar. It was our high school party road some 30 years ago. Ethan's body was found early Tuesday morning, ejected from his vehicle in a rollover some 113 feet from the road. He'd only owned the SUV he was driving for 24 hours, his third car in as many months.
Oddly, I slept soundly through the night that night. I'd always thought if something happened to my children I'd KNOW. I'd wake up. I'd have a panic attack. I didn't. Someone else had to tell me my child had died.
Initial reactions? Thank God his little brother wasn't with him. Thank God no one else was with him. (If someone had been with him, he probably wouldn't have wrecked... he was responsible for everyone, just never responsible for himself). Why wasn't he wearing his seatbelt? DUMBASS.
For the first few days, I felt like I had a bad case of Tourettes Syndrome combined with the stomach flu. Both reappear periodically.
Now, some weeks later, when I can't escape the feeling I've fallen into an ugly parallel universe, I scour the initial accident report from the state patrol. They have a little diagram of the accident in which the location of the body is shown as a tiny burrito-shaped bundle, like a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes. Somehow the accident report makes it real and practical and is oddly comforting. Maybe that's my journalistic nature coming forward. Just the facts, please. I can deal with facts.
In the early days after the accident, a telephone call from the coroner told me the cause of death was "aortic laceration." There are comprehensive YouTube videos about aortic laceration for the morbid among us. I know because I've watched them all. I haven't decided if I'll request the full autopsy report. I can't decide if knowing all the details will be less traumatic than the horrific things my writer-brain imagination has conjured about his demise.
Meanwhile, thank God for my husband, who called all our family members and took care of all the other dirty work. I'd had to call him and that was bad enough. I couldn't say "Ethan's dead." I said, "Ethan's gone, and I need you to come to the office." He took care of all the hard things, the things I couldn't have endured, while I continued working, and for that I'm grateful. When you own your own business, and it's a weekly newspaper, there is no such thing as "bereavement leave." There's just being bereaved and going to work anyway. Suck it up, peeps.
People have been wonderful and kind and supportive. It really does help, the way stanching arterial blood flow helps an accident victim. Just when we think we'll bleed out, someone steps up with soft words and comforting food and physical hugs and encouragement.
We made it through the memorial, held on what would have been Ethan's 26th birthday, Oct. 20, 2018.
And now we return home, and we continue to deal with the "detritus of death," words that came to me the morning after the news. Death is messy.
My daughter took on the responsibility of memorializing her brother's online accounts, my husband and son went through his personal effects, and we're still stumbling across the random reminders that hit like a sucker punch to the gut: the CD of his wretched thrash metal music left in my car CD player; his phone number in my "favorites" list; is ashes in a temporary container in my living room because I can't bring myself to move them and I twistedly enjoy having my adventurer safely under my supervision. (I took the container with me to the memorial service, safely buckled into the backseat of my car. Poetic justice.)
We will never be the same. This I know.
There is a word for a person who loses his or her parents: orphan. There is a word for the person who loses a spouse: widow/widower. There is no word for the parent who loses a child, or the sibling who loses a sister or brother, or the grandparent who loses a grandchild. There literally are no words. I'm still a mother. I still birthed four children. One of those children is no longer with us. There's no easy way to explain that in casual conversation.
We will always love him. But we refuse to allow his loss to define us, individually or as a family. He's in us, and we love him, but his loss will not be the fulcrum of our lives. He would not have wanted it that way. If Ethan wished anything, it would be that we would, as his knuckle tattoos reminded us, "LIVE FREE," and that includes not allowing his untimely death to define the rest of our lives on this planet.

I'm glad I went to church today

Sunday, January 14, 2018

In the company of women

Wednesday, September 20, 2017

Women's lives are made up of circles. (Men's lives might be, too, but I'm not a man so I can't testify.) We have a family circle, a close friends circle, a church circle, a work circle, maybe a gym circle or a hobby circle. With the advent of the internet, we now have email circles and Facebook circles and blogging circles and LinkedIn circles, too. Those circles are precious and important to our mental, emotional, and spiritual health.

“I think that is one reason why women live longer than men. Friendship between women is different than friendship between men. We talk about different things. We delve deep. We go under, even if we haven’t seen each other for years. There are hormones that are released from women to other women that are healthy and do away with the stress hormones … It’s my women friends that keep starch in my spine and without them, I don’t know where I would be. We have to just hang together and help each other.” —Jane Fonda, Vanity Fair, January 2015

Eight years ago I was invited to join a circle of women who blogged together, focused on our mutual goal of becoming published inspirational authors. Through email and blogging, those women became my friends and my sisters in spirit. They were (are) my prayer partners, my encouragers, and sometimes my commiserators. I love them.
Shortly after my hysterectomy, which followed close on the heels of an uncomfortable move and a dramatic change in lifestyle, I was welcomed into a circle of women who gathered weekly to practice Reiki. We were all from different backgrounds, religions, generations, and every other socio-political-economic-educational difference you can imagine. And those women became my friends, my sisters in spirit. Healing came to me through their hands, physically and emotionally and spiritually. They offered love unconditionally, and I needed that. I love them.

“Women understand. We may share experiences, make jokes, paint pictures, and describe humiliations that mean nothing to men, but women understand. The odd thing about these deep and personal connections of women is that they often ignore barriers of age, economics, worldly experience, race, culture — all the barriers that, in male or mixed society, had seemed so difficult to cross.” —Gloria Steinem, New York Magazine, December 1971

Tonight I had the privilege (and I count it a privilege) of being included in a women's new moon circle. Coming together on the new moon, creating a sacred space of trust and inclusion, setting aside those things that are holding us back and establishing positive intentions for the month ahead, was both uncomfortable and strangely familiar. Again, I found myself in a room of women from all different backgrounds and stories and beliefs. And again, I found myself in a circle of women with each other's best interests at heart.
Women in modern culture spend a great majority of their lives in comparison and judgment and competition with one another, and we are weakened because of it. The circles we build together (no matter how awkward and uncomfortable the building process is... I always feel like an oversharing dork afterward) are building blocks for the future. Not just for ourselves, but for our children, for our society, and for civilization.
Our ancestors understood this. Despite living in eras when women were more oppressed and endangered and vulnerable than we can imagine, women came together to encourage and support and strengthen one another. They did it in new moon rituals, in prayer groups, in quilting bees, and in a thousand other ways. We need to continue doing that. We need to hold one another up, not tear each other down. We are stronger together than we are apart.

"Anytime women come together with a collective intention, it's a powerful thing. Whether it's sitting down making a quilt, in a kitchen preparing a meal, in a club reading the same book, or around the table playing cards, or planning a birthday party, when women come together with a collective intention, magic happens."~Phylicia Rashad

Whose flag are you flying?

Friday, August 18, 2017

(I keep beating myself for not blogging, and then I remember I write an editorial column every week in the newspaper and should probably give myself a tiny bit of credit for work accomplished.)

Here's this week's editorial, as originally published in the Rio Blanco Herald Times.

I said the Pledge of Allegiance twice this week. Both times I couldn’t help pondering the Nazi and Confederate flags brazenly displayed at the protests in Virginia. Here’s my question: how does one declare allegiance to the flag of the United States of America—one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all—and then turn around and flap some other flag in the name of your personal biases? I’m pretty darn proud of my ancestry, but I’m not going to hang an Irish, German or British flag on my porch. Why? Because those flags don’t represent my identity as an American. Just a thought.

A Facebook friend posted something Tuesday that gave me pause: “32 million Americans have never been to a major U.S. city. One in four has never been to a national park or landmark. 25 million Americans have never seen the ocean. No wonder we have such significant divisions in our country; we have no idea what other’s lives look like.”
Spanish philosopher and writer Migeul de Unamuno put it this way: “Fascism is cured by reading, and racism is cured by traveling.”
For me, traveling is always a wake-up call. People are people, no matter their color, religion, gender or socio-economic status; our similarities far outweigh our differences. At the bare minimum, we all need food, water, shelter, and clothing. After that, it’s a crapshoot and none of it really matters. Our belief systems, our political philosophies, and our opinions become luxuries in the face of basic survival. Unfortunately, most of our travel experiences are so whitewashed and sanitized we rarely see how the “other side” actually lives.
Fascism, defined by Merriam-Webster, is “a political philosophy, movement, or regime … that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.”
If de Unamuno, who died in 1932, is right, it’s disturbing to consider that 26 percent of adult Americans have not read a book (in any form—print, electronic or audio) in the last year. Those with a high school diploma (or less), Americans ages 50 or older, men in general, rural residents and adults with an annual household income of less than $30,000 are most likely to report not having read a book in the last 12 months according to pewresearch.org.
We might not have the wherewithal to travel, but we can all (I hope) read. Go to the library. Check out a book, preferably in a genre and/or subject that doesn’t agree with your personal bias, and read it with an open mind. Then go get another one, and another one, and another after that, and keep reading. Read books that make you laugh, and cry, and yell, and don’t stop reading. Read old books and new books. No time to read? Me either. That’s what audiobooks are for. Listen while you drive, while you walk or when you lie down at night. Think of it as a vaccination for your brain—one without side effects, unless, of course, you’re a fascist.

First video interview!

Wednesday, March 08, 2017

Blog Tour Nov. 1-14 for Blue Ribbon Brides Collection!

Tuesday, November 01, 2016

The latest chapter in our adventure...

Friday, September 02, 2016

I've been silent for while on here, partly because I finished two novellas this summer in my "spare" time and partly because I've been keeping a YUUUGGEEE (I threw up a little in my mouth just typing that) secret for the last few weeks. I've learned a bit about myself during the process...

1. I can work a lot harder than I thought I could.

Whether it's exercise or writing or just plain hard work or parenting, we're all capable of doing a lot more than we think we are. I homeschooled four children and was a pastor's wife and worked two part-time jobs and kept my house mostly clean (no one turned us in to Hoarders) all at the same time for years. But I didn't count any of that as "working" because that's what we, as women and as mothers, do to ourselves. We don't COUNT all of the work we accomplish because we aren't getting a paycheck for most of it. Start counting, ladies. You are so much stronger than you think!

2. I'm terrible at keeping secrets.

It's not that I can't keep a secret, it's that keeping secrets causes me untold amounts of anxiety and stress. I'd rather just be OUT THERE. If I'm doing something, or even planning to do something, I want my friends and family to know and I want them cheering me on!

With that said, I can now publicly share the latest chapter in this adventure I call my life...

We bought a newspaper.

Not just any newspaper, we bought the weekly newspaper I've worked at for the last 16 years in various capacities. At 132 years of age, it's one of the oldest continuously operating newspapers in the state of Colorado, one of a handful that are still independently owned and operated, and it is the oldest business in the county. How's that for a whopper of responsibility?

I'll be taking on the role of editor, and co-publisher, and continuing my role as page designer and ad builder. I'm looking at a pile of work, and I'm excited!

In addition, my husband and I will be moving, leaving our #2 and #4 kids here (next door to my parents) to attend college and learn all those important "adulting" skills that we've been doing for them because it's easier than making them do it themselves. We'll be back in the same town as our grandchildren, which is wonderful, and for the first time in our lives we'll be empty-nesters. (I got pregnant two months after our marriage... we've never really lived alone. This should be interesting. Anybody have good recipes for two?)

After a four-year absence, we're returning to the town where we planted a church during our "zealot" years as young Christians. We've learned a lot in the last 18 years, and I believe we are kinder, more compassionate, and wiser now.

I'll still be writing, I hope. One thing this summer has taught me is that when I'm writing in a time crunch, I stop self-editing so much, and my writing becomes much more enjoyable and cathartic. I hope that trend will continue.

Prayers and good energy are appreciated as we navigate this new transition into a different season!

Blessings,

Niki