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My favorite place to read...
I love to go to the beach on a brisk, cool day and sit down in a folding chair and wrap myself up in a blanket and read.  The sound of the crashing waves is calming, and the brisk cool air makes it easy to relax in a warm blanket and let my mind get lost in a good book.

Image: My escape to Padre Island a few months after my divorce was final.

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I was married to a writer for twenty years and sadly our marriage ended in divorce.  I have tried to make sense of the devastating lost mostly through reading and mostly through reading the Bible.  But of course, some things we will never completely understand.

Image: Me and my ex-husband - our last Easter together.

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I share my enthusiasm for reading with my own children, now ages 9, 13, and 19.  I read to them from the time they were babies.  We still enjoy reading together occasionally whether it is from the Bible or books of poetry.  I never hesitate to share with them something I have enjoyed from a book.  I will quote distinctive passages and share with them the special meaning or insight I find in them.  Opening a new book is like starting a treasure hunt. You never know what special trinkets of wisdom or humor you might find or even learn something new about yourself.  Sometimes writers have a knack for putting into words feelings that hang in the shadows but never had a voice.

Image: Me and my three children.

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As an adult I have enjoyed Latino writers like Isabel Allende, Sandra Cisneros, and Guadalupe Garcia McCall because of the colorful, truthful, and poignant portrayal of Hispanics in America.  I have also enjoyed non-fiction work by Suze Orman like The Courage to Be Rich and 9 Steps to Financial Freedom and a book by David Bach, Smart Women Finish Rich.  When I was married I enjoyed books on relationships like The Five Love Languages and His Needs, Her Needs.  Over the years I have read many Bible studies as well as the Bible itself (about three times all the way through).

Image: Me in front of what used to be Sandra Cisneros famous purple house in San Antonio.

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I often got lost in the supernatural world of magical realism and it became my favorite genre as a teen.  I immersed myself in books like Love in the Time of Cholera, Like Water for Chocolate, The House of the Spirits, and short stories like My Life with the Wave and The Man with Enormous Wings.

Image: Haikudeck.com

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Maya Angelou’s writing was an inspiration, once again because of the similar trauma she had experienced as a child but also because of her own love of literature.  A group of friends and I performed Still I Rise for different classrooms in our school as well as for a Kwanza festival in a recreation center in our community.  I felt very strongly that I was rising out of the darkness of my child hood and I would one day see success.

Image: buzzfeed.com

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I felt an intertwining connection to the sisters in the book The Color Purple, because my sister and I were also living many miles apart and had suffered similar abuse as those characters.  We wrote many letters during those years apart and I only got to see her once in eight long years.

Image: My strong and courageous sister, Endy.

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In Spanish class, I learned about the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo and soon after learning about her I read a fictional story based on her life and thoroughly enjoyed it.  I have seen her work in person on occasion and have purchased other artists depictions of her and her deep devotion to her Diego.

Image: Me with one of Frida's paintings at the Museum of Fine Art in Houston.

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I was introduced to Pablo Neruda in an English course in high school and recited Ode to My Socks both in English and then in Spanish while putting on a long pair of silly socks.  I have since read much more of his poetry and dedicated his poems about love to special men in my life.

Image: pinterest.com

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I experienced trauma during the early part of my childhood, so I do not have many memories before the age of nine.  However, I do remember that I have always loved books and reading in general.  My strongest memories of reading come from my high school years when I began to keep an in-depth journal of books and poetry that I was enjoying from school and also just for fun.  I enjoyed the library so much that I would go there instead of lunch.  Even during the summer, I would often visit the local library that was down the street from my home.

Image: Me on left with my brother and sister.