Healing Through Writing

In retrospect, my learning of my mother’s unexpected death played like a scene out of a Lifetime movie. Torn from sleep by someone banging on my front door, I threw on my robe and rushed downstairs. I saw a police car parked outside and a uniformed officer on my porch. Groggy and confused, I opened the door.

The cop asked if Anne Bradshaw was my mother and when I replied in the affirmative, he stated that she had passed from natural causes. I was too stunned to cry. From that point forward, my life became a whirlwind of planning my mother’s memorial service, settling her estate, and putting her house up for sale. I didn’t even think about writing. It was only after my mother’s house was sold that I returned to editing my novel, BACKSTRETCH GIRLS. The heart of the story had been completed before my mother’s passing, all I had to do was correct grammar and punctuation errors and time line discrepancies. No emotion required. Six months after that book was published, I sat down to write another. And failed. 

Although I had been writing monthly articles for the PastTheWire website, RACETRACK ROGUES was the first original fiction that I attempted to write after the death of my mother. I blew through the first draft rather quickly. It was written in the third person and told the story of Deanne, a young woman with a dark past who heals troubled racehorses. I loved my premise, secondary characters and horses but I couldn’t identify with my main character, Deanne. She had no passion, no spark. Plus her mysterious past backstory just wasn’t working. Without her, I had no novel. I was back to square one.

While wrestling with my own emotions over my mother’s death I had created a main character with no heart. I realized that in order to write again I had to embrace my feelings, not hide from them. During one frustrating, non-productive writing session, I started thinking about my mother. Try as I might, I have no memory of my last conversation with her. I had been so wrapped up in my own life that our relationship had deteriorated into an obligatory once a week visitation.

I grabbed my notebook and wrote, “I don’t remember my last conversation with my mother.” I thought back to when mom would stand out in the rain just to watch my 99-1 shot run last in a cheap claiming race. Likewise, she never failed to embarrass me when one of my horses did find the winner’s circle – screaming and cheering like a maniac. And yet, she’d died alone. Tormented by guilt, I wrote, “Yup, I’m a terrible daughter.” And there she was – Dahlia, my main character. After that, the words kept coming. I gave Dahlia all my emotions – the disbelief and numbness upon hearing of her mother’s sudden death, the anger, the guilt and the grief. I let her feel what I’d been too afraid to feel myself. RACETRACK ROGUES evolved into more than just a horse book, it became a mother-daughter story. Now I just needed a mother. 

One day while I was going through boxes of my mother’s belongings, I stumbled across her horse racing memorabilia. She had photo albums, newspaper clippings, magazines, and VHS tapes of every American champion Thoroughbred racehorse from the 1970’s up until the year she died. It was my mother’s horse racing obsession that had led me to become a Thoroughbred racehorse trainer and now all I had left of her was in those boxes in my basement.

So I shared my pain with Dahlia. I made her mom a horse racing super fan like my own but her relationship with her daughter is more volatile. After a nasty argument, the two of them become estranged then Dahlia goes off to college and never has the change to reconcile with her mother before she dies. I wrote Dahlia a pivotal scene where she goes through her mother’s possessions in a desperate attempt to reconnect with her. What she discovers drives her obsession to make amends to the mother that she’d taken for granted. It was only after writing about Dahlia’s search for closure that I was finally able to forgive myself and find peace. For me, RACETRACK ROGUES will always be more than just a story about Dahlia’s journey, it is about mine as well.

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Dawn LeFevre is the author of the horse racing novels BACKSTRETCH GIRLS and RACETRACK ROGUES (release date November 5, 2021). She began working on the backstretch of Atlantic City Racecourse at the age of sixteen. After graduating from Cook College of Rutgers University with a B.S. in Animal Science, she spent the next thirteen years training and racing horses in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware. Currently, she works as a contributor for PastTheWire.com and lives in South Jersey with her husband Mark, Australian Shepherd Domino and their cat Tribble. You can catch her latest news and read her Tales From The Wine Trails blog at www.dawnlefevre.com. 

Racetrack Rogues: One Woman’s Story of Family, Love, and Loss in the Horse Racing World 

What if you never had the chance to say I’m sorry?

Nineteen-year-old Dahlia Leggett is a brilliant student but a lousy daughter. Her mother, pioneer female jockey Marilyn Matteo, was once the star of the local sports pages but their relationship is far from stellar. After a nasty confrontation with her headstrong mother, Dahlia vows never to set foot on the racetrack again.

Then Marilyn dies and Dahlia is left with only a guilty conscience, boxes of her mother’s memorabilia, and a cottage on her grandparents’ horse farm. When her grandparents take on a dangerous horse that responds only to her, Dahlia is pulled back into the life she tried so hard to escape.

Before she knows it, Dahlia has a rag-tag stable of neurotic Thoroughbreds, a bulimic jockey, a party-girl BFF, and an unexpected romance with Steve, the sexy son of her nemesis – legendary trainer Bill Bassett. When Dahlia stumbles upon a forgotten videotape among Marilyn’s possessions, it threatens her precarious relationship with Steve but reveals a way that she can make amends to her mother.
Can Dahlia achieve her mother’s dream without losing the man she loves?

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