Writing ‘Sisters At War’: my personal journey by Jina Bacarr
December 11, 2023 by Jina Bacarr in category Jina’s Book Chat, sexual violence, Writing tagged as historcal, Paris, sexual violence, sisters, women, World War 2
For a date night back in graduate school when my life took a sharp right turn, I slipped on a pair of new red high heels, never dreaming I’d break them in by jumping out of a Mercedes and running away from the man who kidnapped me. I was the victim of sexual assault. For years afterward I blamed myself. Relived the night, asking, what did I do wrong to make him take advantage of me? What should I have done… why didn’t I fight back harder? I couldn’t, the man I dated was drinking heavily and bigger and stronger than me.
Questions and more questions, but no answers.
I kept the details of that night to myself, afraid to share my experience with anyone. Afraid I’d be judged. As if it were my fault.
I left the university and went off the grid for a year. I traveled throughout the US in a job that let me get lost… never staying for more than two days to two weeks in one town. I glammed myself up in a blonde wig and fashionable clothes to forget and pushed the old me into hiding. Then something cool happened. I found purpose in my cosmetics work, bringing a smile to ladies’ faces young and old when I did makeovers for them, traveling from the Big Apple to Amarillo. It was the era when the grande dame department stores ruled the downtowns. I was a language major in college, but I also studied art and costume design and I enjoyed creating color palettes and showing ladies how to look their best.
Until the old fear reared its ugly head.
I’d freeze if I saw someone who reminded me of him.
I couldn’t get into a car without checking to make sure the doors were unlocked.
I didn’t feel safe alone with a man.
To gain confidence in myself, I took self-defense classes, but it took me years before I could talk about what happened. The strange thing is, that came about because of my writing.
I’ve written four books about Occupied Paris and Berlin during World War 2. I’ve covered the concentrations camps, the Resistance, dealing with life under the Nazis, saving Jewish children. It wasn’t until I wrote Sisters At War that I attempted to write about the sexual violence women faced from the Nazis and the Gestapo… the horror and humiliation, not to mention the physical pain and degrading of their bodies.
War crimes against women.
I was appalled and shocked by the inhumane and horrific treatment I unearthed in my research against French and Jewish women.
I was even more disheartened when I discovered that rape wasn’t prosecuted as a war crime at the Nuremberg Trials. That haunted me and set me into motion to tell the story about the two Beaufort Sisters in Paris in 1940 when one of them is raped by an SS officer and the effect it has on both sisters.
Sisters At War is the hardest book I’ve ever written, reliving my own experience through the eyes of the Beaufort Sisters… but writing the sequel Sisters of the Resistance is just as hard because I’m dealing with the aftermath of sexual violence and how it affects the rest of their lives.
I went on with my life, but the mental and emotional anguish stayed with me until I started writing about it. Then I couldn’t type fast enough. I find there’s power in sharing, a healing of the soul and mind. And most of all—
I’m not afraid to talk about it anymore.
Who are the Beaufort Sisters?
They’re beautiful
They’re smart
They’re dangerous
They’re at war with the Nazis… and each other.
3 Steps to Planning Your Year by Kitty Bucholtz
December 9, 2023 by Kitty Bucholtz in category It's Worth It by Kitty Bucholtz, Writing tagged as Goal Setting, It's Worth It, Kitty Bucholtz, writing
There are a lot of ways to plan out your year. I’ve spent most of the last two decades doing very detailed planning that got right into what I’d end up doing each week. I decided on the big tasks and goals, and then broke them down into quarters, then months, then weeks. Then each week I would work on those smaller tasks on whatever days seemed to work best in the moment.
But sometimes you need to walk away from the granular so you can stay focused on the big picture. If that’s what you’re looking for, I can help you get your year planned in three easy steps.
- Do a brain dump of every single thing you can think of that you’d like to do this year. Add to it every single thing you can think of that you know is already going to be on your calendar. (Weddings, babies, vacations, writers conferences, everything.) Also, write down the things you need to do for yourself in order to make it through the year in a mentally and physically healthy way. (Yup, talking self-care here. Mental health day each month? Lunch with a friend on a regular basis? Exercise?)
- Now pick the #1 task/goal you really want to do even if nothing else gets accomplished. The very most important. After that one, pick one or two more that you really want to accomplish.
- Now break down those top 1-3 tasks into chunks. Look at your calendar to see where you have those other big life events, and plan around them. (Be sure to include “white space” for traveling, un/packing, planning, etc.) Write the first bits of what you need to do into your calendar for the first 1-3 months. As you get those smaller tasks done, add more as you go along. Now you won’t be overwhelmed with a year’s worth of stuff you want to do, but you can still stay on track to finish your top goals.
I hope this helps you get started on how you’d like to spend 2024. I’m getting more and more excited about the new year the closer it gets! See you on the other side! Happy New Year!
Some of Kitty’s Books
Detachment
November 30, 2023 by Dianna Sinovic in category Quill and Moss by Dianna Sinovic, Writing tagged as flash Fiction, grief, loss, recovery
Leaves, leaves, and more leaves—the fall chore overwhelmed Kelsie each year, ever since she’d lost Tanner. It wasn’t the yardwork that ate at her, but more the season, the slide from a glorious summer into an end-of-growing-things autumn, followed closely by the chill of winter, when everything was either dead or in a deep sleep. That inevitability reminded her she’d been powerless to stop Tanner’s death—once the cancer was diagnosed, he’d had exactly three months left, those three months falling during a turbulent autumn.
Her friends worried for her. “Five years out, you should be bouncing back,” they said. “He would want you to live your life, not stay buried in grief.”
But they didn’t know—hadn’t known—her brother. After their father, and then their mother had died, Tanner had been her lifeline. For that bittersweet decade after their deaths, he had served as her confidant when her personal relationships soured. He’d always, always led her toward the positive, even after he got sick.
“You’re a tough woman,” he’d said when she expressed doubt that she could carry on without him. “You’ll survive. That’s what we do. All of this loss makes you strong.”
But she knew different. Loss left holes. Large ones that couldn’t be filled, no matter how many days, weeks, or years passed. Couldn’t be filled, no matter how many dead leaves you stuffed into them.
And so Kelsie raked. The piles grew, and she allowed the ache in her arms and shoulders and back to counter the pain in her soul. Her thoughts butted up against the endless question: Why had she been spared? Tanner should have lived, not her; even after all this time, she was still not up to the task of facing her life alone.
When the sun sank below the trees, she put up the rake and went indoors for a hot mug of hard cider and a hearth fire. She dozed in her chair, hearing over the crackle of the flames the wind gusting. I should have moved the leaf piles into the woods. Now they’ll be scattered.
The following morning, Kelsie pulled on her jeans, boots, and sweater to tackle another round of yard work. Glancing out the bedroom window, she stepped closer to the glass, to better see.
The wind—or something—had indeed moved the leaves, but instead of scattering them, they were arranged on the grass in a pattern, one that spelled a name: hers.
“Tanner,” she whispered, feeling suddenly lighter. The darkness within her retreated with the day’s full sunlight. “Thank you.”
Books with more of Dianna’s stories
I was a Doughnut Dolly…another tale from my wayward youth for Veterans Day by Jina Bacarr
November 11, 2023 by Jina Bacarr in category Jina’s Book Chat, Writing tagged as Army, Soughnut Dolly, Veterans Day, womens fiction
I love this fabulous painting outside the Salvation Army Building in Tulare, CA re: the photographer © Karinoza – Dreamstime.com
.————–
I was a doughnut dolly.
Back in the day, I served with the U.S. Army Special Services in Livorno, Italy. My job was to make coffee and play pool with the troops, set up entertainment and gourmet restaurant tours.
And make cookies.
I whipped up hundreds and hundreds of cookies. Chocolate chip.
And doughnuts, too. I got help from the mess hall sergeant, a bespectacled guy from the Midwest who let me commandeer his big pots and huge ovens. Along with my Italian liaison, Maria, we’d cook up hot doughnuts and top them with powdered sugar we got from the PX, a sweet favorite with the boys.
Those were the days.
So on this Veterans Day I think about all the Doughnut Dollies who help bring our servicemen and women a touch of home.
Over the years, I’ve come to realize the amazing effect my time with the service affected me. I had some difficult times, like being assaulted on the street by a thug and my pants ripped, also in an elevator (story for another time), but I had some heartbreaking and soulful times, too.
Like the sisterly bond I developed with another American girl on base that lasted far beyound my time there, the wonderful Italians I worked with who took me in like I was family and taught me about music and photography and how to properly eat pizza.
I drew on these experiences when I started a series of historical novels set in Wartime Paris about the brave women who fought in the French Resistance.
An actress, a parfumier, a Philly debutante and my latest, SISTERS AT WAR.
On this Veteans Day, I want thank the brave servicemen and women who have served our country. If you were stationed in Livorno and dropped by the service club once up a time and saw a girl with long hair from California handing you a cup of coffee, it was me.
Jina
PS — For fun, I put on my old uniform with U.S. Army Service Clubs patch.
I lost the hat years ago somewhere in Italy.
Who are the Beaufort Sisters?
They’re beautiful
They’re smart
They’re dangerous
They’re at war with the Nazis… and each other.
How to Do a Year in Review by Kitty Bucholtz
November 9, 2023 by Kitty Bucholtz in category It's Worth It by Kitty Bucholtz, Writing tagged as business of writing, Goal Setting, It's Worth It, Kitty Bucholtz, PlanningOne thing we hear a lot of this time of year when we talk about annual planning is that we need to do a “year in review.” We’re told to make note of what worked this past year, what was more difficult than expected, and to decide what we’ll continue in the next year and what we’ll stop.
But what’s the best way to look at it?
If I sit here and think for a few seconds, I would say this past year has been tremendously difficult. (Just shy of “It sucked!”)
If I think about it for a minute, I remember than I got to travel three times this year – three times more than I have since the Covid pandemic began. That’s a win! But the rest of my life still sucked.
But if I get something to write with (pen and paper, computer file, phone note) and close my eyes and try to go through my whole year, looking at my calendar as well, I see something entirely different.
The root of my financial troubles was me not leaving any savings for slow months, but putting every dollar I earned against my credit card balance. Cash flow trouble. Something I can avoid in the future now that I understand it from first-hand experience. (It seemed like such a good idea to pay down my credit card as fast as possible…unless you get to a month where you don’t have enough for even the minimum payment. Oops.) While the short-term results were painful, the lesson learned for the future was invaluable.
My health was another big stressor this year. While I knew that I was learning how to heal from burnout the last few years, I hadn’t fully realized the impact of peri menopause in addition. I started out the year practically homicidal. But I was put on HRT (hormone replacement therapy) in mid-February and my symptoms quickly evened out. I wasn’t 100% back to myself, but at 80-95% (depending on the day), it was a huge relief!
Unfortunately, that 5-20% still bothered me with brain fog and fatigue, feeling like I couldn’t keep two thoughts in my head half the time. That doubled the amount of time it took me to do client work and my own work, which made me feel like I was getting further and further behind every month. Then after my half marathon, I caught a terrible respiratory infection that knocked me out for a couple weeks. A few weeks later, I caught Covid for the first time.
While between them it felt like I lost a good two months in trying to get healthy again, that time also made me think about how I’m living my life without much white space right now. That’s not what I want. I’ve had a half-finished puzzle on the table for a couple months because I keep telling myself I don’t have time to play right now. What’s that about? That’s something I want to actively plan to change next year.
These are only a few of things I came up with when I spent more than one minute thinking about the year. Turns out, there were a lot of good things in my business and personal life in 2023. In addition, of course, to a lot of lessons learned, and a lot of unfortunate things I couldn’t do much about. But once I could see these things written out, I could start seeing a much clearer picture of what the year truly was like.
That allowed me to start a list of what I wanted to change (quite a few things) in 2024, what I wanted to do more of, and a few things I needed to cut way back on. When I start my annual planning for the new year, I’m going to take this new, more complete, list and look at if from the standpoint of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT). I’ll also compare my bigger life goals against the year – am I living my life with purpose and loving everyone as much as I can?
So how about your year in review? Can you take longer than a few minutes and really think it all through, write it down and take a solid look at it? I think you’ll find some really helpful information to make next year better.
And I bet you see a bunch of things to remind you that this past year was even better than what you remember!
I hope you take the time. It’s worth it.
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