Questions That Made Me Look at My Journey Differently - Part 2
The stories behind the story: writing, love, travel, and transformation
In the first part of my conversation with Malvina, I shared what it felt like to burn my diaries on my 50th birthday and why some memories were difficult to put into words.
Her questions continued to take me back to places in my life that I hadn’t thought about for a long time.
Question 3 — Did you surprise yourself while writing?
Malvina asked:
“Was there a moment during the writing process where you surprised yourself, where something came out on the page that you didn’t expect to say, or hadn’t fully realized you felt until you wrote it down?”
The answer to this question is a little unusual.
I actually wrote this book twice.
The first time, I wrote about my 50th birthday, the burning of my diaries, and the journey that began afterward, taking me as far as the Congo.
I called that book 50 and After.
After the Congo, I wrote another book about everything that had happened to me during that period. I called it From Dream to Reality, because at 18 I had a dream that eventually became a reality when I was 52.
Then I left both books on a bookshelf for many years.
They were there, waiting.
I didn’t know that one day I would return to them.
Then everything changed
In 2020, I was in the Dominican Republic when COVID struck.
I wasn’t ready to return home, so I stayed on the island. What was supposed to be a temporary stay eventually lasted four years.
During that time, I met an English author named Andrew Clover.
While talking with him about my life and my writing, he convinced me that I had a story worth telling and that I should turn it into a book.
So I went back to those two old manuscripts and decided to bring them together into one story.
It took me nearly a year before everything finally came together and became The Courage To Dive Into My Fears.
And I think the biggest surprise was discovering, through the writing process, how much meaning those experiences had carried all along.
What I had once written as two separate stories suddenly came together as one journey about courage, transformation, and finding the strength to move forward.
Sometimes we live through experiences without understanding their meaning.
It is only when we look back that we realize how all the pieces fit together.
Question 4 — Was there someone you almost left out of the book?
Malvina’s final question was:
“And lastly, of everything that happened in that second half of your life, is there one experience you almost left out of the book, but decided to include anyway?”
I think the part about my partner at the time, Jean, was one of the things I almost left out.
He was an essential part of my journey.
I loved him very much, but he was a womanizer. Despite that, I continued to follow him from country to country.
I wanted him to love me, and because of that, I did things I never thought I was capable of doing.
Looking back, I realize that this relationship, with all its difficulties, also contributed to the person I became.
It pushed me out of my comfort zone and made me grow in ways I never expected.
Without Jean, there probably wouldn’t have been all those travels.
And without those travels, my life — and my book — would have been very different.
Sometimes the people who enter our lives don’t give us the story we expected.
But they can still become part of the journey that changes us.
What Malvina’s questions gave me
After answering all four questions, I realized how much the conversation had made me reflect on my own life.
Many people have read my book, but no one had ever asked me questions like these.
Her questions brought back things I hadn’t thought about in a long time.
They made me look at my own story from another perspective.
And perhaps that is one of the unexpected gifts of writing a memoir: you think you are telling your story to others, but sometimes the story teaches you something about yourself all over again.
Thank you, Malvina, for taking the time to read my book and for being curious enough to ask these questions.
Your questions made me pause, remember, and reflect.
Sometimes, it takes someone else asking a question for us to discover something new about our own story.
And perhaps that is what storytelling is really about.
Not simply remembering what happened, but discovering what it meant.
The Courage To Dive Into My Fears
My memoir is a story of courage, travel, self-discovery, and transformation — and a reminder that it is never too late to begin again.
Discover The Courage To Dive Into My Fears on Amazon.