Post by Sharon
It's interesting to take your life and spread it out in front of you and come to the conclusion that talents, interests, influences, idols, mentors, opportunities, and so much more make you the person you are today.
Here's some of my content -
The late-in-life fifth child (others born in `49, `55, `56, `57 and me in `62), I was the baby. That automatically gave me a few influences. One - elders would assume I'm too young and not tell me things, explain things, watch kid movies with me, read me kid books, show me how to read or write, play with me, and find it easier to just do stuff for me instead of trying to teach me how to do it. Two - because my parents were already tired of the child business, I was left to run with the wolves and very lax rules.
This allowed my curiosity and creativity to expand wildly.
My parents provided two homes for us - an estate in Northern Virginia that was an historic Civil War hospital at one time and very well-known to be haunted (my award-winning book "Growing Up With Ghosts" details my family's experience), and a very cool Victorian style home on a quiet inlet of the Chesapeake Bay in Southern Virginia where we had a boat, no TV, no radio, and a wonderful summer getaway.
Both homes had vast orchards, gardens, water, forests, and lots of places to get lost, catch crabs, grow food, pick nuts, and spend endless hours outdoors instead of inside.
My mother was from a long line of Appalachian healers who had tea gardens and natural remedies, so I picked up her recipes, fashioned them anew with ingredients they didn't have in Appalachia that enhanced them, and became very focused on nutrition and healthy living.
Having a garden has always been standard for me, even during the years I lived in an apartment and patio gardened.
Mother was also an historian and art teacher. And, today I am an oil painter.
Father worked in DC for the government and he was a public speaker and writer, amazing with words. I developed his entrepreneural tendencies, writing talents, speaking talents, and quick mind.
From the combination of exploring and living with history, I gained my interest in writing and communicating, growing a garden, getting vigorous exercise, building tree houses, playing in water, and enjoying a zen-connection with the earth and changing seasons. Eventually, this led to gardening, nature loving, water obsessed, and photographing and painting nature.
Because I had an older brother who tolerated my presence, he taught me just about every sport, which I competitively beat him in - basketball, tennis, diving... and I went on to add my own skills that I took to quickly, proving my viking stamina and hand-eye coordination were beneficial. I took up skateboarding, freestyle rollerskating, gymnastics, long jump, high jump, gymnastics, dance...
And because I adored Cher and fashion, I also was deeply involved in creating my own paper dolls with their own fashions, drawing fashion designs, and making gowns for my Barbies out of fashioned bits of cloth. That extended into a love of Hollywood and acting, modeling, playacting. I put on shows all the time for my family.
As a teen, this took me into modeling and dance, as well as beauty pageants.
Having grown up with ghostly phenomena and in the time period of things like "In Search Of" and "Kolchak: The Night Stalker," I had an insatiable curiosity about all things unexplained, leading to a lifetime of research, eventually a ghost investigation team, a Bigfoot research team, and my top paranormal blog, "Ghost Hunting Theories."
In fact, it was when Julie and I were blogging about ghostly things that we met here in the Phoenix area and remained best friend/sisters since!
Growing up, I was always the accepted leader, delegating, plotting adventures and goals and working hard toward them. My enthusiasm about what I envision was a great daydream, but I also wanted it to become real, so I did whatever I could to reach that end.
We had a broken down car in the field near my house and I would sit in the driver's seat and pretend to drive me and my firends to California where I would be a surfer like Gidget, go to Beach Boys concerts, and be an actress.
To that end, I played Beach Boys in the background. I got repair books on cars, studied driving rules, practiced surfing on a board I placed perpindicular to another board, worked on my skateboarding tricks, and took six years of acting classes.
As an adult, I did the traditional route as wife and mother, but I was oil painting, writing books, and daydreaming about adventures on the road. When Julie and I met, we took off on road trips and each time we came back, I felt like I knew myself better and what I wanted in life.
When I left the marriage a decade ago, I published two dozen books, built my blog Ghost Hunting Theories and my reputation in researching the unknown, painted many paintings, learned stock trading and started trading, entered the oil and gas industry, left a dead-end job, and so much more.
I am inspired by light and promise, dreams, and goals, art and nature, laughter and kindness. If I were a color, I'd be half aquamarine and half daffodil yellow.
My inspirations are photography, water, autumn, positivity, nature, manifesting, gardening, health, art, love and compassion, travel, the unexplained, and humor.
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