Be honest, had been Mallory’s wise advise–a woman who hadn’t felt safe enough to be honest about who she really was with anyone in their community, no matter how much she clearly wanted to belong in their world.
Safety, he’d learned from both his job and the last six months as a single father, wasn’t something you waited to come to you. You had to make your own safety happen…
~~ Pete Lombard, Christmas on Mimosa Lane
It’s an interesting paradox–the interplay between what makes us feel safe and what challenges us to step outside our comfortable lives.
No one in this country is really feeling comfortable today, I wager, so it seems like the perfect time to tackle this reader guide question for Christmas on Mimosa Lane. Because this book ( all my books, really) is about feeling safe and feeling like you belong and finding the community and family and personal confidence you need to keep that feeling, no matter what happens.
But here’s the thing. We are our own safety. How we see the world and the past and the danger we perceive and what’s really there, that’s a choice. We can be tied to what’s damaged in us, or we can focus on what we choose to become despite what’s broken. It’s entirely up to us. We can be afraid or we can be be fearless, regardless of any other variable, no matter how tragic.
Fearlessness isn’t stupidity or naivete, mind you. Pretending we don’t have a problem is another kind of fear. In fact, it’s the worst kind. It’s how we’re guaranteed never to move forward. So that’s another choice we make to say we only deserve the brokenness that scares us.
We are the only change we can control.
Not the outcome. Not the threats. Not the determined evil that will find us if it truly wants to, no matter how hard we fight or how much we prepare. But what we chose to make our future about–the next minute, day, week, year, decade of our lives–that’s our victory or our failure. It’s all that we are, a series of determined realities, a perspective that says we either hope or we fear.
Hope or fear?
Which will control you?
Which do you suppose ends up controlling my COML characters? ;o)
Tags: Amazon, Anna DeStefano, anna’s world, brainstorming, Christmas on Mimosa Lane, Contemporary Romance, creativity & inspiration, ebook, Emily Dickinson, Excerpts, inspiration, Kindle, Montlake Romance, reader guide, romance writer, Sandy Hook, Trifari, Women’s Fiction, writer
I am a woman who lives alone. Sometimes that can be a little scary, but I refuse to let it ruin my enjoyment of either my home or my solitude. Great post!