I love my local public libraries. They kicked off the summer reading program with a husband-and-wife traveling bee show for kids. I brought all my little ones there. Only the littlest one did not get a sample of the honey sticks. Between wildflower honey and blackberry honey, I definitely liked the blackberry more! Blackberry tasted lighter and sweeter, a bit more pure--it melted in my mouth faster and cleaner than the wildflower.

Wildflower honey has pollen from different kinds of wildflowers. If you're a pollen person and you like variety, then wildflower honey is for you. I learned so much in this show that I learned to look for raw or natural honey. Doesn't matter if the container says USDA organic, if the container doesn't sport the raw or natural label. Why?

Apparently, even "pure" honey can be diluted with 10% water and heated up to destroy its natural recurring enzymes and tunneled through to be bottled up really quickly in assembly line format. How modern for a process so ancient that it dates back to at least 80 million years old, according to carbon dating of a bee trapped in fossilized resin (amber).

Then of course I went to another event hosted by the library to kick off their summer reading program--West African drumming by someone born and raised in Ghana. Isn't a library supposed to be quiet for books? Well, for the rare occasion of such a guest, we welcome the rhythms and beats that are closest to our ancestral DNA. I bet you that drums, clave, or some other rhythmic instrument was the first to be "discovered" or used by our ancestors! 

What a delight it was to see all the children playing drums, learning dance moves, and some in costume--including my oldest two children! The event was educational and entertaining enough for me to capture a few snippets via video, which is rare for me since I usually opt for still pictures. No, I won't be posting the videos. However, you can go to the drummer's website for more information.

One more thing I love about drums is being able to drum my applause instead of clapping it. I can "clap" much faster on a drum than I can with only hands! :-)

"Hear" the applause? It's for the libraries, the first lending library in America apparently dating back to Benjamin Franklin...  So glad that between him and Carnegie we have more public libraries.

Then, the day after we went to see a comedy show hosted--guess where?--at the library. My kids came home saying the cheer, "Go Goofball!" Imagine a room full of kids, tiny tots to toddler age and all the way up to middle school ages all screaming those "magic words" for the clown show. 

Yes, I love libraries... and so do the kids. Where else could I escape to--any place and anywhere around the world--but still be in the same spot, in the comfort of a chair sheltered from the elements encompassed by shelves upon shelves of books all in one building? Don't even get me started on Overdrive, the electronic book database accessible to library patrons!

I've been writing the first draft of a book to honor home births and was in the midst of writing about a lesson I learned from Pam England's book, Birthing from Within. Then I thought why not write a blog post about it?

So here I am writing this up.

As you know, art is powerful beyond measure. Art stirs our imaginations and go beyond three dimensions. How art touches each individual is deeper than sight, sound, taste, touch, etc. 

Yes, I appreciate art. However, I appreciate art that comes from within even more. Each of us has art within us that is only up to us to bring forth. Yes, each of us has many masterpieces to actualize into being. How sacred that within space is in each of us. That within space is beyond three dimensions. That within space is exactly what art can touch that nothing else seems to be able to touch. 

So I appreciate art that I can draw. I also appreciate learning from this process and applying it to other processes within my life. Now that I have successfully given birth to three children through vaginal birth, I am certain I can apply the lessons I have learned to my writing career. So the first thing I want to do is to create a piece of art for my writing career. 

So I send this intention out to my Dream Fairies and await the perfect vision to arise. 

On another note, I was contacted by one of my fellow co-authors about formatting a chapter from the New Moms, New Families book I edited in 2012, so that the pdf file could be distributed to other new families.

What a joy to go through the information again and be able to contribute to the welfare of a new mother! Looking back, I can't believe how much work I put into putting the anthology together and how fast everything fell into place to make it exist!

Enjoying a mellow Father's Day weekend, I am once again immensely grateful for all the co-authors who contributed their wisdom to the anthology. I hope that one day, more families will benefit from our collective knowledge!

My third and final celebration goes to the existence of cloud servers, particularly document organizers such as Microsoft OneNote. I may be an absolute beginner in using such technology, but at least now I can use something else besides my Google Calendar to input notes that inspire me all in one day. With a document organizer app, instead of filing everything into one day, I can now input notes in specific and separate tabs/files of info! Yay!

Being a mother of three young ones, I really appreciate the constructive feedback I get from other adults who care about my child as much as I do. I really appreciate the people who are passionate about their jobs and passionate about the people whose lives they touch. I am humbled by their generosity and willingness to work with parents. 

One other thing my child gave me on that last day of pre-K before summer break began was a piece of paper about the summer reading program. He handed the paper to me, saying that the teachers told him that it was for me. Looking at the brochure, I am also grateful for the amount of fun educational programming the local libraries invest upon to keep children entertained while school is out. 

My kids also had their first exposure to the game Uno. I have not played that game in over twenty years! To be honest, it's close to thirty years ago. I couldn't believe that I had forgotten so many rules! 

Then again, I haven't read the rules that came in the box. Why read the small print when I could rely upon the reporting of a seven-year-old to reinforce the rules? 

Apparently, the rules shift between two players and three-plus players...

Over the weekend, I was also very pleased to take a rare trip to a Chinese language bookstore and have my eldest child pick up a VCD, pictured at left. Although the store insisted upon no refunds or exchanges and I had no clue if I could play the VCD on my computer, I decided to purchase it. 

Well, impulse buys rarely work out! I went online to find a picture of this VCD set and found the list price (shipping included) at about half the price I paid for at the store! I could say that I made a mistake not to check resources online. However, I think the trip was a good thing, though, because I exposed all of my kids to the bookstore environment--one that has a lot of Chinese language books, games, CDs, VCDs, and more. 

On top of that, I came home inspired to complete minor edits for my short memoir, Well Water Woman. Rereading certain portions of the text, I'm still blown away by it at times and found myself reading it again just for the heck of it. Also, as I revised, plans for the next short memoir in the Grandmothers series started trickling. Although I already knew that this next book would be about my maternal grandmother, I didn't realize exactly what I would put into it until later. The title just came to me today and so I will be working on it very soon...

For now, I am looking forward to the day when I complete the current work I am writing on home births. Check out my Goodreads exclusive giveaway for a signed paperback copy of my bestselling ebook, Mama Gloria's Sunflower Garden. Click below to enter!

This week, I'd like to celebrate ratings--both good and "bad."

On the good side, I got my first five-star review on my first independent book that isn't a children's book on Well Water Woman. In fact, it is on the Kobo Top 100 at #83 in Nonfiction, Religion & Spirituality, New Age, Reincarnation!*

Another thing I'd like to celebrate is receiving the lowest review on one of the books I've written under one of my pen names. Having received an average of four-star ratings under another pen name, receiving such a low-star rating for this one pen name allowed me to feel immunity. If I hadn't received the higher ratings I did from the prior pen name, then I'd for certain feel crushed. However, reading the low-star reviews by authors outside of my genre made me see that these fellow writers had little experience with my genre. One of the authors I truly appreciate, whose name I cannot recall at the moment, said it this way: If you get a one-star rating, that means the wrong reader found your book. I'm inclined to agree, because a fellow author in my pen name's genre raved about my book and said it was some of the best stuff she's read in our genre.

The contrast tells me I'm on track toward growth in skill, readership and eventual sales numbers. If you run, you feel the wind--you feel resistance. So of course, I'd see the other end of a five-star review. I'm glad I can see that now--both the up side and the down side and feel equanimity instead of the roller coaster of emotions I used to feel before. 

Plus, what also helps is being proud of my own work. I got awesome feedback from an editor about a piece I adapted from Well Water Woman for a WaterAid anthology that is coming out in December 2014. The creative process excites me, and I'm so glad that I have finally learned that life is about moving forward, beating to your own drum and making a mark unique to you. We each come with our own mission to accomplish and I am in the midst of mine. I'm on the path, and that's what I'm most grateful for.

*Note to aspiring authors: One thing I learned early on from my Amazon Kindle bestseller, Mama Gloria's Sunflower Garden, is that just because our works earn the title credit of "bestseller" that it does not necessarily translate to amount of sales in that particular category. In other words, some categories sell faster or more than others. So even though I can rightfully claim "bestselling author of" on the front covers of any books I henceforth publish, the credit does not feel legitimate until I've actually achieved the sales numbers to match the title credit. In the meantime, this categorical spin makes a nice twist to the adage "fake it until you make it."


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Today, I attended my last celebration call with two awesome women. Together our experiences spanned several decades, the rural-urban divide, healing arts, motherhood, life and death, and so much more. Our ties--our calls--first began in 2011. 

In 2010, I participated in a self-paced online entrepreneurial coaching program designed to help other entrepreneurs launch a similar kind of program. The facilitator of the program often led calls that were upbeat and inspiring. Homework was clear and exciting. Participating in the Q&A calls helped me stay connected with my peers who were also moving forward with upgrading their services, making them web-friendly. So it was easy to stay motivated and hear about their successes. I often looked forward to those calls.

At the time, as a first-time stay-at-home mother of an infant who hadn't quite let go of the concept of working, I was interested in creating an online consultation adaptation of my on-site feng shui consultations. I thought I would create a video series, conduct Q&A group calls, and also have one-on-one clients. 

The factors I did not consider were related to the background noise. I realized soon enough that I could not successfully record my videos without interruption. Nor could I conduct any calls without disruption due to my child's unpredictable needs. Neither were my one-on-one client sessions professional in that the receiving party would have to cope with my child on the line. 

Because I could not progress fast enough (or quantitatively so) with crafting my own online program, I eventually abandoned offering the online version of my feng shui services and even offered a heavily discounted on-site consultation for a fellow mother just to test out how it would be if I brought and wore my infant for the session. Although the mother was very grateful and understanding and even reportedly benefited from my session, out of integrity for the professional provider-client relationship, I chose to close the door on offering any more feng shui services--online and on-site--for an indefinite amount of time.

Needless to say, I was feeling pretty depressed that somehow I was now limited to only my role of mother. Plus, I was already "behind" in my self-imposed, self-paced studies. I felt stuck and isolated, suffering from undiagnosed postpartum depression. Because I was also the first generation to ever stay at home as a mother, I had a huge learning curve. I was so used to being a Type A personality, constantly doing something, that I suddenly didn't know what to do with myself. Caring for a baby required a whole set of other skills, ones I had very little prior transferrable skills. Everything I had in my life prior to motherhood, everything that fed me or refreshed me, everything that was uniquely for me--everything was gone. 

Stripped to the bone was how I felt. No, I felt stripped to the bone marrow, recalibrating every cell of my existence in this journey forward in motherhood. 

As the weeks turned into months of stagnation and no one else seemed to be able to relate to my situation, I realized I was quickly spiraling into a nameless state of ever-mounting angst.

About a year into my self-paced studies, the facilitator of the program mentioned an opportunity--a weekly 30-minute celebration call that was optional for participants to sign up for. Each call would have four people present, each person to share their celebrations for five minutes. After each person shares their celebrations, other people on the call take about two minutes total to acknowledge the celebration. The premise of the call was to presence the importance of celebrating our accomplishments--no matter how small. When we celebrate, we raise our vibration. When we celebrate in a group, we raise our vibration by quantum. So I jumped at the chance to participate in this extracurricular activity.

I looked at the list of people who had already signed up to moderate a group and quickly entered my name in one of the groups. Several things kept changing before the first call as the sign-up dust soon settled. When it came down to it, two people dropped and only the moderator and I were left in the group. So the moderator called a friend of hers, who was willing to join, and we proceeded as a group of three. Although another woman joined and participated in our group infrequently for awhile, she transitioned out when the year ended and another began. Then a man joined our calls infrequently as well. Throughout most of our calls, I made it to celebrate with the moderator and her friend.

At the beginning of our calls, I learned that the three of us shared our passion in the healing arts. Beyond that, I was uncertain how much I could contribute. I found the task of celebrating kind of like a muscle. Every week, I went to my celebration gym. Early on during the calls, I was unsure about just want to mention. I was also quite unsure about myself being in the group given that I was just over thirty and the two women on the call were going through menopause. As I grappled out of postpartum depression, each week I struggled to find one or two things to mention for our call.

As our calls moved forward though, we found many ways to connect with each other and many things to celebrate. We learned so much from each other. Every call required an unspoken commitment to make the call and celebrate our lives. Every call started with celebration--of both "good" things and "bad"--and ended with so much appreciation. The experience was profound and beyond words. 

Over the three years of our calls together, I have given birth to two children at home and travelled overseas to two other countries with young children under three. I awakened to my mission to take my writing seriously and proceeded to change my focus from entrepreneurship to indie authorship. Embracing my mission I expanded my writing portfolio, previously limited to personal narratives in several traditionally published nonfiction anthologies, to include indie published editorship, short memoir and novellas. I transformed from wayward soul to anchored citadel with the fortitude to forge onward with my vision to fill the world with my words and someday make a livelihood from sharing them.

I wrote this blog post in honor of these two women and the other two participants who were able to celebrate with us for a short while. Even writing love letters would be insufficient to describe the gratitude I have in participating in these calls. So I realize the best way to continue to honor our connection is to carry on the celebration at least on my end. 

Thus, I will do my best to celebrate and/or post a celebration every week. When my alarm goes off for the time that we shared for our call, I'll take that moment to think of a few things I would like to celebrate. For now, for this post, I will share my first online celebration in honor of our calls.

What I'd like to celebrate right now is having more writing projects than time to fulfill them. As I write every word, I feel as if I am accomplishing more and more of what I have been set here on earth to do. That feeling of single-minded devotion to one's unique mission is so rich that I desire every person to be able to experience that in his or her lifetime. 

I'd also like to celebrate that in one of my genres of fiction, which I write under a pen name (yes, I have more than one pen name for each genre I write), I received praise from a peer who said that as a reader and an author that my writing was the best she's seen in our genre. She wanted to know who edited my work, which I admitted I did because at this time I earn nothing under that pen name and couldn't afford a professional editor. Now if only praise like that actually translates into sales . . .  and no, I will not be sharing any of my pen names with anybody. (Even my husband does not know them.) I look forward to the day when each pen name earns its own deserved reputation. :-)

That being said, the final thing I want to celebrate is that in the past two months, I have been averaging ten dollars a month on my writing--most of which stems from my nonfiction. Prior to that, I have only earned about ten bucks for the entire quarter. I am very pleased with this result because I have done no little to no book promotions or advertising other than infrequent (biweekly/monthly) tweets about my work. I'd much rather be writing when I have time. So ten dollars per month is a good thing. Readers, if you are reading this post, I thank you for supporting my occasional delights. I was able to purchase grapes today and hope that one day my income from books will support my family's groceries.

Multi-published author Gloria Ng is an Oakland-based mother of three who writes on Owl Time. Her work has appeared in anthologies, including YELL-Oh Girls! Emerging Voices Explore Culture, Identity, and Growing Up Asian American. (HarperCollins, 2001)

The lack of bilingual books to read to her children propelled her to create the Amazon bestselling Mama Gloria Chinese-English Bilingual Books series.

Gloria enjoys hearing from readers, writers, and reviewers at GloriaNg.com. 
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