For today's One True Thing, I am thrilled to welcome author Penny Blubaugh. Penny is the author of the ingenious and powerful novel Serendipity Market, which received a starred review from Kirkus and about which Booklist raved: "This beautiful novel will be a delight to those who enjoy spin-offs of fairy tales and folktales. Readers will find themselves flipping back and forth to figure out how all the different stories hidden in the fold come together to form the greater whole of this charming book."
Penny is also the author of Blood and Flowers. She is an inspired word-crafter who is represented by Erin Murphy at the Erin Murphy Literary Agency. Penny is a teen librarian in Chicago in addition to her work as a writer. For more about Penny, check out her website at www.pennyblubaugh.com.
Staying Power
By Penny Blubaugh
One true thing I’ve learned about life is that there are things that I know that I might have lived very happily not knowing. This is because most of what I know in the category of “important” deals with life lessons. Life lessons can be hard to take.
Life lessons are usually learned because of a bad situation that climbed up the cliff. The climb made the situation go from bad to worse. And then the situation jumped.
Once I recover from the fall, once the bruising and battering have gone, the lesson stays. It might make me smart. It might make me careful -- I don’t want that to ever happen again. It might makes me reckless -- I survived and I can do anything. Who knows? It might even make me sexy.
Mostly, the lesson makes me realize that I’m a survivor, that I have staying power. The next time something jumps, I’ll remember the last time. Even though I’ll still feel like I’ve been gut-punched, I know that I’ll eventually get through this, whatever this happens to be.
It’s the eventually that’s hard to take. But if I let myself remember, I’ll know that I have resiliency.
