Being Our Own Heroes: Our Stories and Other Myths

Edited by Linda Egenes

By the Timeless and Trancendental (TNT) Bunch:

Margaret Ashelman, Dorothy M. Beal, Fern Fairiebell Flesner, Harriet Glubka, Paul Godsman, Cielle Kollander, Hoshea Love, John Ong, Inez Valentine, Susan R. Wilk

How to capture a life in words? Is there a higher purpose underlying the turning points, sorrows, and triumphs? Can heroism be found in everyday life? These are the questions an avid group of mature writers, aged 65-89, explore in this sprightly collection of memoirs. From a childhood in 1920's Shanghai to escaping Nazi Germany to rounding up cows on a South Dakota homestead, you'll experience the sounds, tastes, smells, sights and textures of a time long past. And by expressing the full range of human experience—from childhood innocence to teenage epiphany to adult musing on the value of memoir writing—the writers deftly lead you to a discovery of the heroic in your own life.

Introduction

What started as a meeting of minds quickly became a melting of hearts. What did I expect at our first gathering, a continuing education class in memoir writing?

I knew, of course, that these students would be seekers, though not of my own 60's generation. These were people of my parents' age, who had families and careers and a whole lifetime of friends—and then somewhere in midlife started over in this community of meditators in Fairfield, Iowa, to help create world peace.

I didn't anticipate how deeply they would connect to writing. Each of their stories, so simple, so honest, revealed deep truths of life...