Why I wrote Shifting Shorelines

My upcoming book Shifting Shorelines: Messages from a Wiser Self is dedicated to my sister Nancy, who will never have a chance to read it. Still, I picture her clasping my book to her heart—not solely because I wrote it, but also because she would resonate with my ode to nature, the passage of time, and the ripening of wisdom, for she shared my longing for a kinder, gentler world. Her hunger matched mine for moments of inspiration and rays of hope to penetrate some of life’s darker corners. 

No doubt, one of our family’s darkest corners was Nancy’s diagnosis of stage 4 pancreatic cancer. After hearing her prognosis, all six of us sisters came on a moment’s notice, from four states, to be with Nancy and to have at least one more of our famous sister reunions—complete with playing umpteen games of cards, savoring Nancy’s famous baked beans, and piling like a litter of kittens onto someone’s bed as we laughed, cried, and reminisced in our cauldron of sisterhood.

We chose the perfect rental. We realized this when we stood, transfixed, looking down through a plexiglass insert in the middle of the kitchen floor. Two stories below us a stream bubbled over river-rocks between the banks of lush ferns. In essence, the house had a river flowing through it.

Nancy has become like that river—flowing beneath our sisterhood—here but not here. She has touched the banks of this life as well as the next. I felt her presence as I wrote this book, especially the chapter about her. No doubt, losing her caused me to reflect on my own life, the lessons I have garnered along the seashore where I live, and what legacy I might pass on to my own daughter. 

I also thought of the many trials my sisters and I endured (some of which I wrote about in my memoir Moonlight on Linoleum). Now that I am older, and purportedly wiser, I pondered what I would tell my twenty to thirty-something-year-old self, if given an opportunity to walk arm in arm with her along life’s shore. The mosaic of thoughts, feelings, and experiences that poured forth from that idea helped shaped Shifting Shorelines.

While writing, I wished Nancy could have realized her own dream of writing. She had a way with words, a way of burrowing down into the bone of a matter. I remember how her eyes danced with delight when she had shown me a picture of the writing desk she hoped to buy. Partial to indigenous décor, she had chosen a striped-top desk with carved legs and hooves that resembled a zebra. I could picture Nancy sitting there, in her large, red-rimmed glasses, writing a novel about a female character who had taken up residence in her imagination, one who boarded a bus with no destination in mind. Nancy wanted to explore her protagonist’s journey and where she might eventually alight. A provocative storyline that, alas, never made it onto paper.

How many creative ideas lie unmined on this side of the river?

When we sisters gathered at the river house, I didn’t know, then, the genre or theme of my next book. I knew only that I wanted to give birth to another book—a book that would likely take me longer to write than Nancy had left to live. That thought saddened me greatly. But there was something Nancy could know, right then, something that might underline how deeply I cared. During a game of cards, I leaned in close and whispered, “Just so you know, I’m dedicating my next book to you.”

Nancy flashed me one of her mischievous grins, squeezed my arm, and scrunched her nose. “I had a feeling you might do that,” she said, in that sweet voice she used when all seemed right with the world.

I like to think I wrote Shifting Shorelines for the both of us.

—
Terry Helwig lives in Southwest Florida and is the author of award-winning Moonlight on Linoleum: A Daughter’s Memoir. Her new non-fiction book, Shifting Shorelines: Messages from a Wiser Self, (available October 12, 2021) is an ode to nature, the passage of time, and the ripening of wisdom. If you would like to connect with Terry you can visit her website terryhelwig.com,  follow her on Instagram @terryhelwigauthor, or follow her page on Facebook: Books by Terry Helwig.

SHIFTING SHORELINES: MESSAGES FROM A WISER SELF

If only you could meet your younger, greener self, along life’s shore, what might you say?

Terry Helwig explores this perennial question and how the human heart, tested by time and adversity, broken open by love and beauty, ripens and bears fruit. Her lyrical and compelling reflections awaken us to our place in the vast universe, to the currents of joy and loss, and to the sacred treasure of being alive.

Inspired by her beloved Florida barrier island, Helwig discovers a landscape of fierce beauty within as well as without. She uncovers the solace of following the phases of the moon, the curve of a shell, and the solstice path of the sun. Nature reconnects us to our true center—that place where wisdom blooms.

In the end, the sea’s tides mirror the ebb and flow of life. The dance of these perpetual tides changes the contour of our lives—continually shifting the shoreline of who we are and, more importantly, who we will become.

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Category: On Writing