FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

On the Bright Side… and other rose-coloured catastrophes
Castanet Columnist publishes book and donates a percentage of proceeds to charity

Kelowna, BC – April 23, 2008 – After two years as a Castanet weekly columnist, Kelowna’s favourite humour writer, Arlena de Bruin, is stepping out of the realm of freelancing and releasing her first book: a compilation of her columns titled On the Bright Side… and other rose-coloured catastrophes. A hysterical snapshot of Okanagan living, this publishing debut reveals the funniest and most inspirational of Arlena’s personal essays. Her insight and attitude towards life, love, and parenting clearly demonstrate an exceptional ability to both identify and celebrate the absurdity of the human condition.

“The idea for the book actually came from my readers,” says de Bruin. “After numerous requests to put my stories in print, I decided to put my fears aside and compile a piece of literature I hope will brighten, enlighten, and inspire. Humour has always been my way of coping if I can extend that gift to another, why wouldn’t I?”

de Bruin is not only the author of On the Bright Side… and other rose-coloured catastrophes, but also the publisher. “It’s been a labour of love,” she says jokingly, “Labour being the operative word, of course. Last week when my husband caught me bearing down, doing my Lamaze breathing with my feet up on the desk, I knew I had taken the birthing analogy to a whole new level.”

In addition to “brightening” people’s lives with her humour, this author has also committed to donating a dollar per book to Mercy House: a non-profit, community based organization that supports young women in crisis. Plans are underway to build the first house in Canada on the lower mainland where young women can stay free of charge and get support for life-controlling issues such as: eating disorders, self-harm, depression, anxiety, suicidal tendencies, the effects of sexual and physical abuse, unplanned pregnancy, and drug or alcohol addictions.

“There was a time in my life,” says de Bruin, “where I was a single mother of twin toddlers and without an incredible amount of support, I wouldn’t be where I am today. This amazing organization, their vision, and their commitment really spoke to my heart. As women, we need to come together and extend that hand of hope. I can see miracles happening for many young women touched by this charity’s generosity.”

To find out more or to purchase copies of On the Bright Side… and other rose-coloured catastrophes, please visit the website at www.redwagonservices.com or meet Arlena in person at the Kelowna Farmer’s Market (Wednesday and Saturdays: 8am-1pm) between April 26th and May 10th, 2008.
________________________________________________________________________
For further information:
Arlena de Bruin, Author/Publisher – redwagonservices@gmail.com
Tel: 250.864.4513
Website: www.redwagonservices.com

Ta-dah!

Let me introduce you to my bouncing, perfect-bound, bundle of joy… "On the Bright Side… and other rose-coloured catastrophes."

For those of you who are metaphorically-challenged or don’t have a clue what I’m talking about, I’ll say it slowly and in plain English: my…book…is…done! Hot off the press! On sale now! Read all about it! It’s enough to send this author/publisher over the proverbial, style-guide-touting edge.

Okay, so maybe I’m being a bit dramatic. (And I’ve changed, how?) But this has been a labour of love: labour being the operative word, of course. Anyone who’s ever given birth will get me on this… have you ever tried to push a 5 ¾” by 8 ¾” creation through a circle of uncertainty that’s only two inches wide? Exactly. It’s not as easy as it looks!

Birthing this book has been an exercise in patience, self-reflection, self-doubt, vulnerability, surrender, and pure, unadulterated panic. You can ask my husband. Heck, just the other day he caught me bearing down, doing my Lamaze breathing with my feet up on the desk.

“Just let it go, hun,” he said, “you’ve got to let this baby fly.”

And I, like any labouring mother would do, grit my teeth, growled like a possessed person, and screamed, “Don’t you dare tell me to let go can’t you see that you did this to me!”

“Ahuh.”

Logic aside, can you not see the parallels?

Anyways, it’s been an interesting journey. I’ve been writing a column for four years and have enjoyed every minute of it. That part’s been easy. Compiling a book and publishing it myself (copy edit, layout, design, everything) took balls I never knew I had. It also took a tremendous amount of support from friends and family who believed in me when I didn’t, who encouraged me when I didn’t, and who turned a blind eye when I opened that third bottle of wine. That’s the kind of support system every writer needs to have.

That being said, and now that the book’s bright and shiny pages are pulled out into the light, I really can feel nothing but pride. Ever since I was a child, I vowed to publish a book by the age of forty. Considering I’m in my fortieth year, I think that counts for something. Fortunately, the pre-birthing jitters can’t destroy thirty years of conscious visualization and positive thinking!

The other thing I am most proud of is one dollar of every book sold will be donated to Mercy House: a charitable organization that helps young women in crisis. Plans are underway to build the first house in Canada down on the lower mainland. (There are already homes in the US, Britain, and Australia.) This was a cause that so spoke to my heart. I have been a young woman in crisis, and any opportunity to extend transformational hope to someone lost in life is worth embracing. I hope you will join me in supporting this movement of love and healing. I promise you, it will come back tenfold.

To find out more and purchase copies (great Mother’s Day gift idea!), please visit my website at www.redwagonservices.com or if you want to save on shipping and meet me in person (that would be cool!), then come see me at the Kelowna Farmer’s Market on Wednesdays or Saturdays between April 26th and May 10th. (Farmer’s Market is on the corner of Springfield and Dilworth and runs 8am-1pm.) I look forward to meeting you!

"On the Bright Side… and other rose-coloured catastrophes" is my gift to you. These are the stories that you, my readers, have expressed your joy and gratitude in reading. I hope they will further enlighten and brighten your days, and I hope they will be the impetus for a happier, healthier you! If so, then pass the word on!

Choice.

It’s not a big word, but it provides the single most fundamental influence on how our lives will unfold. By definition it means “to select from a number of possibilities.” It is the power, the right, or the liberty to pick by preference. Sometimes, we make choices from a place of awareness. Sometimes, we make choices completely unconsciously.

To me, exercising choice and then taking full responsibility for the consequence of that choice is the definition of personal empowerment. Owning my part in this process opens the doors to creating more of what I do want and less of what I don’t want. It reminds me that I am, indeed, in the driver seat.

Being a victim of life or circumstance is a highly overrated experience. Yet, it seems to fester in our world like a deep and angry sore. In my opinion, feeling victimized by anything outside of myself is a clear indication that I haven’t accepted the choices I’ve made that brought me to that particular juncture in my life. It has nothing to do with blame and everything to do with either maintaining, or giving away, my personal power. Nobody can do anything “to me” if I haven’t chosen to be there in the first place. Again, I’m not talking about guilt or blame. People can do horrible things to each other and I’m not suggesting we take responsibility for another person’s unkind or unloving actions. All I’m suggesting is that we take responsibility for our own.

About fifteen years ago, I took a workshop that provided a lesson in the Law of Attraction. The premise was that we attract to ourselves every situation, circumstance, or experience we have. Good or bad. At first, I had a hard time understanding that. One of the participants (a particularly miserable one) offered her own personal experience of being hit by a car that went through a red light. The other driver was one-hundred percent to blame and she wanted to know how anyone could say she had attracted or chosen that experience.

The beauty about taking responsibility for our choices is that it is exactly the same as taking responsibility for the truth. The teacher had the participant run through all the choices she had made the day of the accident, right up until the moment the accident occurred. She had chosen to drive to her mother’s house that day. She had chosen to stop for gas and linger for a few extra moments to talk to an acquaintance. She had chosen to take the back route that brought her to that particular intersection at that particular time. Had she chosen to be hit by the car? Absolutely not. That was an accumulation of the other driver’s choices. But, she had chosen to be there right at that moment. She was not a “victim” of circumstance she had been in the driver’s seat all along (literally and figuratively).

“So?” you ask, “What good does taking responsibility for being there do for me?” Well, on further discussion, this woman revealed that she had been angry and withdrawn in the month since the accident. She had nearly lost her job because of depression and was drinking heavily. She was spending every waking moment trying to find a lawyer who would sue this person for every penny he had. Her entire life had gone from a place of joy to one of complete upset. She was miserable.

After the exercise of taking responsibility for her choices, this woman had a miraculous turnaround. She dropped the lawsuit and the insurance company gave her a settlement that was beyond what she had expected. She chose to be grateful for not being hurt in the accident and sent a card to the other driver who had been hurt, wishing for a speedy recovery. She got excited about buying a new car. By the end of the week, she was a happy, positive person. It was a complete transformation.

So, what really does “taking responsibility for our choices” do for us? Did it take away the fact that this woman had been in the accident? No. What it did do was give her the opportunity to make a choice on how she wanted to feel about the accident. Getting out of the cycle of victim and blame put her on a platform to make a higher choice. The choice for peace. The choice to move on. I was privileged to be a witness to this woman’s experience and I choose to live by her example on a daily basis.

You have the infinite power to create your own life. Do you wish to embrace the truth of your experiences and open the doorway to move forward on a path of joy? Or not. That choice, my dear friends, is entirely up to you!

“Mom… can I say the word ‘crap’?”

I put my fork down and mentally prepare myself for this week’s dinner deliberation. I try to make myself look large. “Do we really need to go here? At dinner-time?” I give him my most femme-fatale frown. He doesn’t flinch.

“Absolutely not, Eden!” I clear my throat. “‘Crap’ is a vulgar word. Why would you need to use a word like that?”

He slurps up a spaghetti noodle with such intensity it resembles a flailing fire hose. There’s tomato splatter on his t-shirt, his cheeks, the wall, and the ceiling fan. I heave a sigh. Good grief, this could rival the “Why-Do-I-Have-to-Change-My-Underwear” Debate of 2006!

“Because…” he lowers his eyebrows and wipes his mouth on the inside of his shirt, “because Robin is allowed to say ‘crap’ and Jordan is allowed to say ‘crap’ and Trent is allowed to say ‘crap’ and Grayson is allowed to say ‘crap’ and Matthew is allowed to say ‘crap’…” He pauses for oxygen and I quickly interject. Does he think I just fell off the truck? He’s managed to say ‘crap’ five times in just the last sentence.

“Eden, first of all, if you say c-r-a-p one more time…” I can’t believe I’m actually spelling it, “you’re gonna be in more c-r-a-p than a sewer rat. Just because your friends use that dirty word, doesn’t mean their parents allow it.” I try to talk while maneuvering a forkful of spaghetti through gritted teeth. The noodles unravel and I have to start again. Who am I kidding? I’m as unraveled as the pasta. For me, dinner deliberations are merely foreplay for acid indigestion. I reach for the antacids and forge on.

“You never answered my question. Why do you need to use a vulgar word like that, anyways?”

“Because I’m ten!” He spits it out like I’ve forbidden some sacred rite of passage. His twin brother moves into the ring with a couple of snake eyes. They’re playing me like a game of “craps,” but apparently I don’t get to roll.

“Ya!” Indi hisses. “We’re ten! We should be allowed to say ‘crap.’ Robin is allowed to say ‘crap’ and Jordan is allowed to say ‘crap’ and Trent is allowed to say ‘crap’ and Grayson is allowed to say ‘crap’ and Matthew is allowed to say ‘crap!’ And some of them are even younger than us!”

“Enough! Both of you!” I stare at them blankly. And to think these children came from my womb. I’m about to say something totally unthinkable and then it happens: I do the one thing I’ve always said I would never do, the one thing I’ve committed ten years of my life to circumvent.

I sound just like my mother.

“Fiddlesticks!” I announce. I look around to make sure I’ve said it out loud. “If you’re frustrated and just have to say something, then say… ‘FIDDLESTICKS’!” I say it with vicious enthusiasm to demonstrate how effective an expletive it is. “See? Doesn’t that sound better? Awww, FIDDLESTICKS’!”

They look at me with the same twisted expression I had thirty years ago. The room is silent, save for the buzzing flies now conjugating on my pasta. Eden plops face down in his spaghetti and Indi slouches back in his chair, ready to catch the buzzing flies in his gaping maw.

I can’t believe I said it. I mean, really…? That, without a doubt, is the lamest curse I’ve ever heard. After all the years I put in to be a mom who’s cool, hip, sweet, and random, I’ve blown it in the time it took to say “fiddlesticks.” Mirror, mirror, on the wall, I am my mother after all!

It’s a weird phenomenon, isn’t it? We hated it when our parents said it. In fact, we hate it still. But catch us in a moment of weakness and “poof!” it spills out of our mouth like a truckload of manure. Things like: “Just because your friends jumped off a bridge, it doesn't mean you have to,” or “Just wait until your father gets home,” or “Because I said so, that's why!” I pick up my fork and start re-raveling noodles.

“Did you really say ‘fiddlesticks,’ Mom?” Eden looks up at me like he’s trying to give me the benefit of the doubt. I take a deep breath. I’ve got… to break… the cycle.

“Fiddlesticks? Er… No! I meant CHOPsticks. That’s it… CHOPSTICKS! It would be so much easier to eat this if I had a pair of chopsticks.” I give him a random smile. “Now eat your dinner. There’s children starving in Africa, you know.”