Long Distance Love in Book Form

by Linda Abbott Trapp
(Puerto Vallarta, Mexico)

Letters to My Granddaughters

Everybody know that grandchildren are the reward for living long. Everybody also knows that grandchildren, like their parents, don't willingly listen to advice from the been-there-done-that generation, no matter how solid and well-meaning the advice, and no matter how lovingly it's presented. Further, we all know that children facing the break-up of their family structure are subject to stress, anxiety, confusion, guilt, poor sleep habits, difficulties in school, and possibly more severe reactions.

With all this common knowledge, plus the added self-imposed responsibility of a psychologist, I faced our upcoming retirement move out of the country with an unhealthy dose of guilt. My two oldest granddaughters were just entering the volatile pre-teen stage, and I was not going to be available to them, as a loving and stable figure in their lives, just at the time they might be most needy. Their parents had separated, but out of consideration for the girls, stayed in the same town and shuffled them back and forth from one home to another. Although I hadn't expected this break-up, had we been nearby, I would have gladly helped with their arrangements and the ancillary shuttle services.

Our decision to move was in thirds: one-third a rush to a relaxing environment for my husband, who had suffered a "cardiac incident"; one-third a financial decision to head for lower living costs in order to retire early; and one-third a fantasy that we'd live a life of ease and pleasure, entertaining all the stateside friends and relatives who would visit. It worked out a little differently, of course, and there were still those two wonderful girls so far away. I decided to use my newfound freedom from a work schedule to begin composing letters to the girls.

The process was both easier and harder than I'd ever imagined. Most of my prior writing was academic or business-oriented. This new form required opening up some fairly painful memories, searching my heart and my memory for the topics that would be of the most use to teenagers, and learning the requirements of publishing from a remote location in Mexico. I had the advantage of having led more than three thousand seminars over twenty years, and so knew which topics resonated with people, and which participants had told me privately were of great use to their families. I had the further advantage of a wonderfully quiet location, where most days the noisiest things are the birds outside my office window.

So, I began listing topics I wanted to share with them, drawing on the seminar experiences, my memories of the turbulent teen years, and the generativity that comes naturally in midlife, urging us to pass some wisdom on. The topics fell into a few natural categories, and I created a "Musings..." category for the leftovers, resulting in relatively cohesive chapters that made sense. Some topics made me angry, some made me laugh, some made me weep, but all felt useful, valuable, and real. When people asked how it was going, I simply said, "There's nothing to it. You just open a vein in your wrist and it pours out."

I submitted the book to a few publishers, waited, got rejected, and got misunderstood. One publisher insisted that it was a children's book, and could not be persuaded otherwise. This was after the book had passed their acceptance committee and then been lost for three or four months before they found it again and decided it wasn't simple enough for children! My intention for a wider audience has always been the parents and grandparents who want to open conversations about these important topics, and can use the book as a tool for doing that with the kids they love. People who buy one often return and buy several for all the young people in their lives.

After some heartache and frustration, I decided to self-publish, using a Korean printer that had done wonderful work on my Ornamental Plants and Flowers of Tropical Mexico book. I'm delighted with the result, and especially enjoyed going with the girls on a trip to the states to their schools and donating copies to the libraries. The pride on their faces as I indicated their names in the dedication was worth every ounce of frustration. And, as they received their own copies at a family retreat that Christmas, I loved noticing that their parents read it even more avidly than they did!

Visit Linda's website, Abbott Publications.