Heading to a rental house in Eastham, MA on Friday for a very estrogen rich weekend with some of my favorite ladies!
Not to spoil the full post that will follow the weekend, I will leave you with some teaser photos.
My Guest today Blogger is Persephone Vandegrift, a writer, who is in pre-production of a short film entitled, All Things Hidden. Here, she explains her personal history behind the story.
I remember it was Fall, and the high school football season was coming to an end. I was over the moon at the possibility of having a date to the last game of the season. As someone who was classified as an outcast, dating in high school was impossible for me. That’s the way it was, no matter how hard or how not hard I tried.
Not sure how it came about, but I was to meet a boy from another high school. I thought that surely, if people actually saw me holding hands with someone, especially a boy from a totally different high school, I would no longer be classified as unworthy.
I left the house, determined that my life was going to change that very night. I had a spring
in my step, mascara on, lip gloss, tight-ish jeans, hair fluffed. And I waited by the ticket concession where he said to meet. And I waited and waited, and didn’t see much of the game. I left at half-time, walked home to see if he had called. He hadn’t. Fearing he had shown up while I wasn’t there, I went back down to the same spot. He never showed.
When I returned home after the game with my head bowed as low as it could go and sighing like an abandoned Lady of Shallot, it was with a heavy heart that I entered the porch to the front door.
Turning the handle in defeat, I was surprised to find the handle turned for me and the door opened.
There, in the doorway, stood my mother covered head to toe in bruises. I had never seen 
anything like it. My mouth was agape. All I could do was stare at her, confused, angry, and ready for revenge. Then the next words out of her mouth were ‘Don’t say anything to him.’ I felt my heart drop down below the house in that moment.
My parents had argued for years. I would hear them through the vent in my bedroom. It was awful. My father was not a nice man at all, never really knew why but he still is, to this day, a bitter unhappy man. But this was the first time I had seen evidence of it. Of course I think back and wonder what I missed. I was in a teenage haze, worrying about self-esteem, getting passing grades, trying to figure out what was wrong with me, why I never seemed to fit in. I never noticed if she had had a black eye previously or bruises around her neck under a turtle-neck. I wish I had.
I wish I had not been so selfish that night. I wish I had just stayed home at half-time instead
of keeping some ridiculous hope that the boy would show up. I should have known better. Had I been home, my mom would not have had to experience the horror of knowing whether or not she was going to die. Obviously it still affects me to this day. It’s not the kind of thing anyone should have to be exposed to, yet, every day around the world someone dies from a result of domestic violence – a child, a wife, husband, father, mother, grandmother, grandfather, or intimate partner.
In my 40’s now and the memory is still there, a permanent Polaroid in my brain. And every now and then I a pressure in my stomach, a bubble of guilt, anger, unfairness, resentment, and confusion until it culminates in tears.
So, I turned to my only tried and true outlet – writing. It has taken me years to feel confident about writing as my career choice. That’s one of the downsides of growing up with domestic violence, no matter how hard or how bravely one tries to ‘deal with it’, it takes a swipe and a chunk out of you in every way.
Luckily my mother made it out safely, but thinking back on what she went through, it could have ended very badly. It took all her strength to make that decision to leave, and despite the threats and the subsequent harassment by my father, she stayed the course. She’s my hero and she is where I get my own determination in life from. The worst could have happened, but after talking to her about it, she said if that was going to be her last decision ever, she was happy to have made it.
With that in mind, and because domestic violence is such a rampant worldwide epidemic, I decided to blend my mother’s and my own experience with the stories in the news and overhearing from others about families torn apart by the violence. The result was a feature script, but it was too ‘heavy’ and I didn’t want it to be another ‘why doesn’t she leave film’. I decided to test myself and shrink it down to a short film and take a different perspective, see if the elements of my feature could carry into a short. I managed to do it in 15 pages.
The story of All Things Hidden begins with a pregnant woman (Dannie) arriving at a barren field with a rusted For Sale sign. She begins examining the lot, and as she does, we see memories unfold – her memories – of her life there as a little girl. Through young Dannie’s eyes, we are privy to the events that lead up to a tragedy, the kind of tragedy that one does not easily forget. For Dannie, she is there to confront those ghosts that have kept her in their emotional vice for years to the point where Dannie can’t move forward in life. She’s about to give birth but how can she when she doubts her ability to do so?
The metamorphoses from her cocoon is painful, but she must do it in order to secure a confident future for herself. This transition happens to us all, no matter what our age or gender. Understanding and forgiving a tragic past is no easy feat, but not giving ourselves a chance at a happy future is not an option. Choices are never easy but they have to be made.
In All Things Hidden, difficult choices have to be made. And just like life, sometimes the choices work and sometimes they don’t, but having the power to make them is how we learn about ourselves as humans and offers us precious opportunities for emotional and spiritual growth that we can not refuse.
It has taken me 30 years to write this story and 3 years to get it to where it is now, in pre-production, getting ready to shoot in a few months. Last October, I entered it into a screenwriting contest and won a Certificate of Excellence. Upon receiving the email and certificate, I cried for hours. The fact that the story could reach someone’s heart, and that they felt it was written well, convinced me that I was on the right path. I had made the right choices. Some of them have been heart-breaking choices but I am still standing.
And I’m pretty sure it is a mid-life flourish I’m having right now.
For more information on All Things Hidden’s journey from script to screen, please visit http://allthingshiddenshortfilm.weebly.com/ and also check out the Facebook page for it https://www.facebook.com/pages/All-Things-Hidden/150593691644628
Persephone Vandegrift enjoys exploring all forms of creative writing outlets. Her short play @ PTSD, war, and suicide It’s Not Really Suicide, Is It? will debut May 3rd-6th 2012 in Seattle, WA. She is currently helping develop a TV series, editing an ancient civilization novella, and constantly writing or rewriting. She can be found on Twitter @persephwrites and also www.persephonevandegrift.webs.com and sometimes gathering flowers at the base of Olympus.
Realization sometimes comes with all the subtleness of a nuclear explosion.
A battle fought and won 4 years ago. The defeated troops did not retreat but regrouped, waiting.
They knew what she did not. That there would come a time when all things would be aligned, vulnerability offered and accepted.
Warrior Princess one day, twitching bundle of raw, exposed nerves the next. In control no longer. Even the simplest decisions are no longer an option, they are now insurmountable mountains and her arms and legs are paralyzed.
And so they feed. Little by little, she is lost from the inside out. She screams in a vacuous hole where no one can hear, but her.
The dark abyss that she had crawled out of has become her comfort zone once more. The light burns and she is not worthy.
Wasn’t it only yesterday that she was still so far up, that the abyss could not be seen?
She seems to remember being pushed slowly to the edge, but never did she think that she could be pushed back in.
She was right of course. They only got her to the edge. She jumped. If only to escape the constant fear of the; “what if?”
And now she knows.
Creature of the shadows once more. Outstretched hands and hearts of empathy are perceived as suspect.
There is no room for concern here. Only remorse, regret and a regurgitation of a cycle of pain.
©2007 Dawn Marie Kelly, all rights reserved.
By day, Dawn is a regular contributor to GrowWrite magazine & owns Not So Silent Partner Productions in NYC with her husband, Martin Kelly. By night, Dawn is writing a future, award winning, scripted, television, drama series.
I wrote this piece after I had traveled to Laguna Niguel, CA, to meet & stay with a fellow woman blogger, Teri, I had met online in 2006. It was a tremendously fun trip & I think back on it fondly every year around St Patricks Day. Without a doubt, this was the most fun St Patrick’s Day I have ever spent. I miss you ladies!!!
I am refusing to be a tourist in So Cal with every fiber of my being.
The Hubster asked me Wednesday night if I had been taking lots of pictures and I have not. Unless you count the ones for insurance purposes that I took when the back passenger tire on T’s BMW decided to spontaneously melt away.
On Thursday, T and I drove down into Malibu to have lunch on the point outside at Geoffrey’s, (pronounced JAWF-frees if you please). It was gloriously sunny and we enjoyed the three-hour window where the skies were crisp and blue over the Pacific waters. I didn’t even mind that Carmen Electra was ruining my view. The woman is tiny but somehow still manages to suck up a lot of space.
I shifted in my seat to alter the view, but when I looked a little too my right a certain aging rock star thought I was lusting after him so I turned behind me to wave my empty martini glass at our waiter, Ernesto, (the second Ernesto in as many days), the ancient soap diva sitting there thought I was toasting her and excitedly raised her glass and reached into her purse for an ever-ready glossy to sign, and I wondered whether it was getting hot or was I having a seizure brought on by the constant noise of construction vehicles backing up below us. I escaped to the ladies loo, nearly being smacked by a gesticulating 50 something actress who was doing her best to convince the producer she was meeting with that with just the right lighting and soft lens she could indeed pass for 30-ish and no, I wasn’t buying it either.
You know… maybe if the rich and infamous spent less time getting in the way of us lesser beings, they’d have more patience for the paparazzi. Hey. I’m just saying.
Which takes us back to New York. When I perambulate the streets of New York City I shoot so many pictures that as I view them later, on my computer, I wonder what possessed me. I believe its love. I take pictures of New York in the same manner I took pictures of my tiny to grown son and now take pictures of my cats.
As if their every stirring is monumental and priceless.
I am smitten with New York from the grimy sidewalks on up to the old water tanks that are still sprinkled on top of the older buildings in the skyline. We don’t choose whom we fall in love with and apparently this applies to locations as well.
I had a conversation with a friend of my host on Friday morning – Yes, St Patrick’s Day and we were in a pub – why I would not care to ever live in California. She looked at me in a perplexed manner while I tried to explain that it wasn’t any one thing, it just doesn’t appeal to me, at all. “But what have you got back on the East Coast that’s so much better?” She asked still struggling to understand the apparent incomprehensible notion of anyone not loving California as she does.
Teri & Not Mr Connery
I didn’t have an answer for her. Not an answer wrapped up in nice succinct verbiage that she could make sense of. Try though I did, now at her house where our little group of happy revelers had moved on to and where her husband had been preparing our evening feast of Corned Beef, cabbage and all sorts.
Still I did not have an answer that was clearer than, “It just doesn’t appeal or speak to me in any way.” Or I think that’s what I said as the pub’s Guinness’ had given way to vodka when we arrived at her house. And that’s all I’m saying.
I’d like to tell you that we finally resolved the issue but alas, I can’t. Perhaps somewhere over the course of the evening we may have, but in the light of a sober Saturday afternoon, we couldn’t remember and it no longer seemed quite so important. All that mattered was that we could make each other laugh easily and that was more than enough of a common ground.
Despite my non-swaying stance on not living in California I was made an honorary member of the gated community they call home and I fly back east knowing that I look forward to future visits with a group of folk that became very fast friends indeed.
Dedicated to T, NJ & S who are no more desperate than I am ~ I tip my drink in your general direction, please keep in touch.
©2006 Dawn Marie Kelly, all rights reserved.
By day, Dawn is a regular contributor to GrowWrite magazine & owns Not So Silent Partner Productions in NYC with her husband, Martin Kelly. By night, Dawn is co-writing a future, award winning, scripted, television drama series.
This was written in January of 2006 as a reflection on a Solo Trip I took to Ireland in 2005. It was one of the most important and hardest things I had ever followed through with for myself. I have resisted the urge to edit/rewrite the piece and honor where I was in my writer’s journey at that time. Enjoy~
This time last year I was three days away from getting on a plane to Ireland for the entire month of February.
The first 3 weeks I was on my own and then The Hubster and The Boy Wonder were flying in to spend the last week there with me.
I was 43 years old and had never gone anywhere on my own since my son was born and aside from college had never spent anytime away with no one I knew. And lets just say I wasn’t one of those girls who cried themselves to sleep the first week. And yes, I was one of the girls pointing and laughing at the girls who cried themselves to sleep that first week.
The trip was to get some much-needed perspective on my writing without having any responsibilities for anyone but myself.
Why would someone have to fly 3,000 miles to do this?
Because if I had driven somewhere, I would’ve driven myself back home by the third day.
It’s the truth. I was beside myself the first three days— a fish out of water. How would they manage without me? I didn’t know if my son was getting up and to school on time, the cats and dog being taken care of or if anyone was ingesting anything of nutritional value!
By the third day I had to get over it and told myself such. I needed to start using my time for what it was for and I did so with a vengeance.
And I had plenty of time to do this. I had no TV; In fact I actually had to feed pound coins into a meter in my cottage to have electricity, (no, I am NOT making this up) and no radio except when I was in the rental car.
OMG—the rental car. This calls for a side trip.
I landed at Shannon Airport at 6:30 AM GMT and it was still dark there. I picked up my rental car and with map in hand started my 3 ½ hour drive down to Ring in County Waterford. My first time driving on the wrong side of the road on the right hand side of the car and I choose to take ‘The Vee’ through the Knockmealdown Mountains because I had been that way before 2 years earlier, Hubster driving, and it would be familiar.
‘The Vee’ is named such because that’s exactly what it looks like on the map, a series of “v’s”. And it is by far the most narrow of all the narrow roads I’ve ever encountered in Ireland—I’m sure there are narrower still, I just haven’t met them.
I can never manage to sleep on the overnight flight so by now I have been awake for about 24 hours. Did I mention that I drove 3 ½ hours to The Hubster in NY and then he drove me on the 2-hour trip into JFK to catch the flight?
Sleep deprived is not too strong a description.
In the middle of my trek through The Vee, it is daylight by this time thankfully; I come around one particularly tight inside-out curve and have to jam on my brakes to avoid hitting a sheep.
Oh yeah, there are herds of them all through the mountains and they just wander around eating and occasionally they conspire to send sleep deprived tourists driving on the wrong side of the road on the left hand side of the car for the first time careening off the sides of mountains.
If I could put words to the look that sheep gave me it would be something akin to, “For F-sake! Get the bloody hell off my mountain you wanker!”
Uh-huh, sheep may look all warm and cuddly but they have a dark side that I saw that day and since there were no other witness’ it’s my word against the sheep and who are you going to believe????
Yep, poor innocent little fuzzy sheep that I almost turned into shepard’s pie on a mountainside.
Fine.
Side trip complete.
I read 14 books in those three weeks on my own and I lost track of how many magazines I went through.
And what about my writing?
After 37 pages of notes I realized that the book I thought I was going to write wasn’t anything like the book I ended up outlining. Not at all. It was going to be so much better.
I learned something else those three weeks alone as well. Life’s a lot clearer when there aren’t so many things, choices or stuff cluttering it up.
The grocery stores in Ireland would take up a quarter of the one’s you and I are use to shopping in here in the US. In fact the Lidl I shopped in wasn’t much bigger than the produce section of the store I shop in here at home. And yet they have house wares and the odd bits of clothing as well as groceries there.
At first it seemed it would be awful not being able to get whatever you wanted but I learned quickly to just make up my menus from what was available to me. It was actually less stressful having limited choices and I never once felt overwhelmed like I often do while grocery shopping here at home.
Did I revert back to my old ways upon arriving back in the states?
Yes and no. I still watch very little TV now and prefer the quiet. My eating habits were forever changed by that trip and little by little I am slowly letting go of stuff.
Letting go of the extra stuff stored away in boxes, in the closets, in the garage, in the basement and most importantly, the stuff that clutters up my mind and stops me from making my writing a priority.
And with the therapists help I am getting over my “irrational” fear of cute, cuddly little sheep.
©2006 Dawn Marie Kelly, all rights reserved.
By day, Dawn is a regular contributor to GrowWrite magazine & owns Not So Silent Partner Productions in NYC with her husband, Martin Kelly. By night, Dawn is co-writing a future award winning scripted television drama series.
