36 Reasons Why You Are Awesome

You are just so incredible. I bet you don't believe me, so I am going to give you a list of reasons why you are so darn special. Just try to argue with me (I dare you).

Hugs are the best!

36 Reasons Why You Are Awesome:

1. You have a body. It breathes and sweats and has a beating heart. You are a miracle.

2. You have feelings. Feelings help you to experience life in 3D. Feelings are awesome.

3. You can touch things and interact with your environment. You can plant a tree, pick up rubbish, and give and receive hugs.

4. You have an imagination. Imagination lets you live in places where you are not. How special!

5. You have people who care about you. Sometimes your feelings get in the way of realising this fact, but you do anyway. I care about you (honestly, I do).

6. You have access to the internet. What a great resource you have at your fingertips that can help you learn and interact.

7. You have choices. You can choose what to wear. You can choose to make a phone call, apply for a job, be kind, or lie down on the ground.

8. You can sleep. Sleep helps you remember things and takes you to other worlds. You can live a million lives in your dreams.

9. You can do nice things for people, like smile at them, cook them dinner, or offer to help them carry their groceries.

10. You can make people feel good about themselves. Compliments are nice.

11. You can make someone's day. You could do a nice thing for them and say something to them that makes them feel good about themselves (you may even have the ability to change someone's whole life!)

12. You can show yourself love and speak to yourself with kindness. This can make a big difference in how you feel and how you experience life.

13. You can read. You are reading this right now. You are so clever!

14. You can learn from your mistakes. This is important for awesomeness.

15. You can forgive people and choose not to draw attention to their mistakes or embarrassments.

16. You can educate yourself. You can take a course, ask questions, scroll on the internet, or read a book.

17. You can choose to not say things. Often this will help to ensure that you don't offend or upset people, which is awesome.

18. You can play games. Like Trivial Pursuit, noughts and crosses, thumb wars, hookey, peek-a-boo, or Barbies.

19. You can make food appear! By either cooking it, going to pick some up, making a phone call, or sometimes even just by expressing your desire to have it.

20. You can give people gifts, like time, or presents. People like gifts.

21. You can listen, either by using your ears or reading people's words. You can then make people feel heard and understood.

22. You can pick your nose, cry, burp, poo, wee, and/or vomit. This keeps you healthy and is amusing to small children. Your body is an incredible thing (that is a bit funny sometimes).

23. You can slow down or speed up your breathing. This can help to calm you down or pump you up.

24. You can get outside in nature. Being outside in nature is amazeballs. You should totally do it all the time.

25. You can be creative. You can think creatively, decorate a cake, draw a picture, choose your own adventure, fingerpaint, knit, fold your clothes in a different way, or make a dress out of an old towel. Creativity is awesome.

26. You can nourish your body with good food and water, sunshine, body lotions, rest, and all of the things it needs.

27. You can blink. This stops your eyeballs from drying out. That would be bad.

28. You can feel music. For real.

29. You can set mini goals for yourself and then feel awesome when you do them. Like, today I will get out of bed, or tomorrow I will get dressed. Or maybe this afternoon I will eat a piece of fruit, or put away the washing.

30. You can set big goals for yourself and work towards them. It is always good to have something you can work towards.

31. You can organise something that you can look forward to. Maybe a dinner with friends, a family holiday, a movie night, or a house cleaner.

32. You can wear hats, scarves, and clothes. They can make you feel different ways. They can make you smile, draw attention, or help you blend in.

33. You can get around. It's cool that we aren't stuck in the same place.

34. You have grown and your body is changing. We're lucky to be alive and getting older.

35. You have free will and can choose what consequences you are willing to accept.

36. You have a fight or flight response that helps to keep you safe.

You are awesome. I love you.

We are so fearfully and wonderfully made. What an incredible mess of functions, feelings, and miracles we are!

I think you are awesome. Keep it up.

Love, Marley x

"What Are Your Books About?"

This is the most common question that people ask me. I mean, it makes sense. The problem is that I suck at answering the question. So, instead of blurbs, here are my on-the-spot inarticulate pitches, just for fun...

THE THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS SERIES

This whole series revolves around the internal thought life of women (hence the series title), and are only available as ebooks.

You Are Woman - Book 1 of the Thoughts and Feelings Series

You Are Woman

An unidentified woman talks about other women that she comes across - a bit like a social media scroll in real book life. It is easy for the unidentified woman to find things that make her feel inferior. It breaks each encounter up into three parts.

1. Unidentified woman talks about the other woman from her point of view (POV)

2. Outlines how the encounter makes a difference in the unidentified woman's life

3. Contrasts what the unidentified woman sees with reality (other woman's POV)

This is the most unconventional book that I have written. It is fairly short and parts of it are written in the third person. It's a bit weird, makes you think, and somewhat polarising.

You Are Viggy - Book 2 of the Thoughts and Feelings Series

You Are Viggy

This story is viewed through the same eyes as the unidentified woman and talks about her encounters with Viggy. The story follows Viggy as she deals with a lot of family crap in a healthy manner. Viggy contacts her cop ex-boyfriend, Bowie, for help with her druggy sister, which causes her to reevaluate her life on a drama-filled camping trip in the bush.

This is another short read, but very different from You Are Woman. It's a simple story that doesn't require any thought.

You Are You (living with dementia) - Book 3 of the Thoughts and Feelings Series

You Are You (living with dementia)

Jaclyn's mother starts behaving strangely and ends up getting diagnosed with dementia. Later, Jaclyn ends up with the same diagnosis. The book contrasts a painful, confusing, and frustrating dementia walk with the mother, against the kind and compassionate dementia walk with Jaclyn as a result of education and understanding.

I have been told that this is a very sad read. It wasn't my intention to write a very sad story, but I guess it is nearly impossible to write a happy story about dementia.

You Are Here - Book 4 of the Thoughts and Feelings Series

You Are Here

There are two main themes in this story:

1. Faith vs religion - Renee is raised in a cult and has expectations placed on her that are explained as being from God. Renee ends up being cast out of her church and family, and then has to try to get on with life while still carrying large amounts of guilt and shame. She then has to work out what having a faith in God really means.

2. The reach of a person and the impact that they have, without ever knowing it (and even after death, which also adds a 'dealing with mortality' theme).

Each of the characters in this story has some sort of connection with a person who dies. The death ends up bringing them together and helps them deal with issues that they have in their own lives.

THE EARTH LEGACY SERIES

The Silver Maid - Novella - Earth Legacy Series

The Silver Maid

Fern is a live-in housekeeper for a wealthy family, but her mother has a stroke and she has to go back to the tiny country town that she grew up in and face a bunch of skeletons that fall out of her closet.

This book is available for free. It is a short and easy read that is 'set in the same universe' as The Silver Sheep and The Silver Shepherd. Fern is housekeeper for the Silverson family, and Cleo Silverson is the main character in the other two Earth Legacy books.

The Silver Sheep - Book 1 of the Earth Legacy Series

The Silver Sheep

Rich people don't want the public to find out that they discovered how people can heal themselves and stay healthy. Cleo has an extremely dysfunctional family and finds out the secret. The rich people need to keep Cleo and her family quiet.

The Silver Shepherd - Book 2 of the Earth Legacy Series

The Silver Shepherd

Cleo can't live with the burden of the secret, but the rich people won't let her live if she doesn't keep it.

-

Do you have an on-the-spot inarticulate pitch for a book that you'd like to share? What about the last book that you read? Try answering the question: What is this book about?

I bet you'll do a better job than me! haha

Much love,

Marley x

Turning 40 - Happy Birthday! Now, time for a mid-life crisis (not)

It's hard to feel good about your life when your body is sagging and you know that one day, nobody will even remember you existed. Is it time for a mid-life crisis now? How about a mid-life reassessment instead.

Hello, grey hair

I must confess to being one of those people who is always looking forward. You know,

"When the twins are at school,"

"When I can write full-time,"

"When our mortgage is paid off,"

"When {fill-in-the-blank}"...

It's not like I'm an "I'll be happy when..." sort of person, but I never felt comfortable just settling into wherever I'm at.

Sometime last year, it struck me that I am no longer young. I am turning 40. I have grey hairs and wrinkles. I no longer get mistaken for being in my 20s or asked for ID on the super rare occasion that I buy alcohol.

I got a sense that my time was running out, my body could no longer do the things that it used to be able to do, and I was not where I wanted to be.

I will not be alive forever, and people will not always remember who I am.

One day I will die and some years down the track, nobody will even know that I existed.

Bummer.

What a downer.

First, there was a sense of panic. Then a sense of hopelessness.

But... I have spent a lot of time thinking, and a book that I read recently* prompted me to ask myself: What would 14-year-old me think of where I am at right now?

Where I live, my family, my job. How I spend my time, my friendships, my personality, my routines.

Think about it honestly. If 14-year-old you was meeting you right now, what would they think about you? Don't bring 30-40-50/whatever-year-old you into your thinking. 14-year-old you doesn't know about your missed opportunities, your heartaches, your goals, your struggles. 14-year-old you is just sitting down to meet you with no other knowledge of your life between now and then. And you tell you about your life right now.

I am married.

Wow! Someone loves you?

Yep, I know, crazy, right? And guess what? I love them, too.

So you're happy?

Absolutely. And we have 5 children.

5! What the?!

Yep. 3 girls, 2 boys.

I'm a mum!

I can imagine that I would blow my own mind just with that information. But if I keep thinking about it, 14-year-old me would be so happy to hear about my life right now.

You write books! Does anyone actually read them?

Some people do, yeah. People all over the world.

14-year-old mind blown again.

This is 40

Honestly, this exercise makes me so happy. I would be so chuffed to know that this is what is in store for me. I know that I would quite happily take this life again, even if I were offered others.

To 14-year-old me, my dreams have already come true.

I mean, I have even shaken Taylor Hanson's hand!

14-year-old me: *dies*

I don't know if this exercise will help you. Maybe it will, maybe not, but it has certainly helped me.

Maybe young you has some tips for older you?

What does 14-year-old you think about you right now?

Love, at 40 - Marley x

*I think the book that spoke about this exercise was Present Over Perfect by Shauna Niequist, but I cannot be 100% certain. I borrowed it from the library, so I couldn't mark it. This is why I started keeping a reading journal. Might have to find it again...