Continuing my celebration of National Women's History Month and the theme of Women Weaving Stories of Women's Lives, I want to introduce the women of LADIES IN WAITING. First up are Liv and Andi.
Hi, this is Liv. When I found the women's retreat in Cape May, New Jersey, I confess I didn't much care about the topic. I saw it as a refuge. I needed an escape, space to just breath, to find out who Liv Zacharias was now. She wasn't the woman hiding under the disguise of hair color and a semi-fictional story. She wasn't the woman the papers made her out to be, either. Of course I fit the profile for the retreat: Embracing the New You: Reinventing Yourself After Fifty. I needed a new you and a reinvention more than anyone I knew. So here I was, sitting in the driveway at Siochain (which I'd learned was a Gaelic word that translated to Peace) and staring at the other women seated on the expansive wrap-around porch of the old Victorian house. I wanted to turn tail and run back to Long Island. What if they recognized me? What if they believed the newspapers? What if my antianxiety meds stopped working? Well, there was only one way to find out.
Andi Ryan here. You know, if you're having a group of menopausal women meet for a retreat on the shore in summer, you should warn them that there's no central air conditioning? When Liv, the newest retreatant to arrive, informed me of that little tidbit, I wanted to get into the car, turn the AC on high, and head straight back to Tom's River. But, damn, I needed this time away. I needed to sort out my feelings about being a young widow (shut up--young is a relative term), being at odds with my almost adult daughter, and finding myself in a very hot relationship with a much younger man. Now this was heat I could tolerate. The Andi I always knew was still in there under all that mess--somewhere. I was sure of that. I just needed to find her again. Sometimes you have to step away from the familiar to see what's right under your nose in the first place. It can be like taking a step back from the mirror and the vision becomes clearer. This was my step back. If the damned hot flashes didn't kill me first. I liked the other women here, at least until I met Julia. You'll see what I mean when you meet her. Now Liv looks so familiar to me, but I just can't place her. Menopause brain, I suppose.
Meet the ladies of LADIES IN WAITING (published by Turquoise Morning Press), available in ebook and trade paperback at Amazon.com.
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