Author: Betty Owens

Christian writer of historical fiction and general fiction.

Jim’s Story

On By Betty OwensIn Campaign, donations, Facebook, Leukemia, LLS, Lymphoma, MWOY

This week’s post is a little bit different. Linda Hillenbrand, a very dear friend of mine,  has been nominated for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society Man and Woman of the Year Campaign. She has given me permission to reprint this letter.

Linda with her husband Jim at U of L game
To My Friends and Family,

I hope you don’t mind me writing you about a cause VERY close to my heart.
My dear husband Jim has had a rare form of Leukemia for several years and has undergone maintenance treatment to keep that at bay. In early 2010, he had what an allergist, neurologist and Internist thought was simply allergies or a lazy eye. Luckily, we had a scheduled 6 month check up with his wonderful oncologist, Dr. Mike Kommor, who took one look at his eye when he walked in the room and noticed something was very wrong. After an MRI, PET scan, CT scan and a very painful surgical biopsy of the eye, he was diagnosed with a form of MALT Lymphoma of the orbital tissue.
The next two years became a battle for life with a variety of treatments, second opinions at the request of our doctor with a Neurooncologist at Vanderbilt Ingram Cancer Center and a multitude of different treatments. Through it all, he was noted for his amazing smile. Finally in December of 2012 he was considered in a sort of remission. It is something he will always battle but the prognosis is good.
Jim was privileged to have great insurance and to respond positively to the series of chemo treatments that are only available today thanks to the research funding of The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. It was amazing to learn that LLS is the #2 source of funding, next to the government, for blood cancer research. Many of the drugs funded by LLS are being used today as a treatment for breast, lung, and other cancers.
Because of this, I am honored to be nominated as one of 14 candidates in Louisville for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society Man and Woman of the Year Campaign. Our team is being called “Blood, Sweat and CHEERS” Our national campaign kicks off on March 28th (my precious Mom’s birthday) and runs through June 7th. We also honor our dear friend Meghan Steinberg who we have come to know and love during her journey, as well as Janice Goodman and Ray Pfeiffer’s wonderful grandson. All fighters and survivors!!
Now comes the question…………………how can you help?? In many ways!!! We will be hosting several events during this time, putting collection jars in local businesses, partnering with restaurants for charity nights, and collecting auction items. You can donate your time, send an email, buy tickets to the gala, send a donation, or just tell a friend that is going through cancer about the Leukemia and Lymphoma society!!

Join our team “Blood Sweat and Cheers”

Mar 29, 2013
by Linda Hillenbrand
We are excited to begin our fight for a cure with “Blood, Sweat and Cheers” 

Originally posted to MWOY.org Reprinted by permission from the author. For more information on the Man and Woman of the Year Campaign, please visit their website. If you are on facebook, you can help by liking Linda’s Facebook group, Blood, Sweat & Cheers. 

Here’s an excerpt from her facebook page.

A very important point…Donations are wonderful and appreciated, but I know not everyone is in a position to help or has a cause of their own. You can help just by emailing anyone you know who has had Leukemia or Lymphoma or any other cancer that has been touched by the research of LLS and giving them the link or an invite to the group. Ideas, thoughts, stories, replies are as important as well!!!

Every Cotton-Picking Day

On By Betty OwensIn children, Cotton, People, Southern, tenant farmers, Tennessee

Why is there a picture of people picking cotton on my blogpost?

My current work-in-progress is set in the rural south. One of the hardest jobs I have ever done (with the possible exception of giving birth) is picking cotton. Yes, I am old enough to have picked cotton.

My grandparents were tenant farmers and their main crop was cotton. Even as late as the mid-60’s, they were hand-picking the crop. They usually hired locals to help them. The days were long and hot, and the work was back-breaking.

If you’ve seen Places in the Heart (Sally Field)  or even Gone With the Wind, you have an idea what I’m talking about. The only thing worse was chopping the cotton earlier in the season. Same deal: long hours, hot, pesky insects, dirt in your shoes…


I’m not complaining, it was good for me. You know, what doesn’t kill you…right. How did they survive such a difficult life? The work was hard and constant, but they didn’t give up. Year after year, they planted the cotton. It is beautiful in full bloom, by the way. And the sound of the wind through the leaves is so peaceful. The green plants made a wonderful playground for energetic children. I spent many happy hours there.

I’m enjoying writing this book, because it is so close to my heart. I feel I know the characters. Many of them sprang from memories of long ago. People who passed through my life during the sunny days of my youth. I hope the end product will be something you’ll want to read. I hope you’ll love them as much as I do.

Thanks for reading!

Competition vs. Whatever

On By Betty OwensIn Competition, race, Writing

My sons gulped down their food so fast, I barely had time to sit down before they’d finished. With them, everything was a competition. Who finished first? I don’t remember, because it wasn’t important.

This went on in every phase of their lives. To this day, as grown men, they still feel compelled to compete. Yet, in most ways, all three are completely different. 
Competition definitely holds a place in most every walk of life. It pushes you forward to achieve more, run faster, think better, gain more stuff, lose more weight, etc. I could go on and on. The competitive person is never satisfied. Tell them “no,” or rate them second-best, and they’ll rush to prove you wrong.
On the other hand, the “whatever” person could care less (so they say) whether they finish a race. It’s too much work. They didn’t get a promotion, but it would’ve been too much stress anyway. Shrug a shoulder and say, “Whatever.”
There’s an overabundance of competition and rivalry everywhere you turn these days, and at times it’s so tempting to say “whatever,” sit in your chair and dose off. 
But the painter paints, the composer composes, the singer sings, the writer writes. No matter how big the challenge, and believe me, the competition’s heavy right now. In the face of so much opposition, we 
keep plugging away, day after day. Hope rises and sets like the sun. One day we’re inching forward, the next, we’re flat on our faces, humiliated and spent.
I can’t really say where I am in that race, I’ve completely lost sight of my opponents. Are they so far ahead of me? Should I just give up? No matter how much I’d love to, I can’t. What if I can’t see my fellows because they’re that far behind me?
Whatever I accomplish in this world, whether good or bad, even if no one remembers my name, I know one thing for certain and it is this: I tried. I ran. I wrote. 
Thanks for reading. See you out there!

I hear you fine, I just can’t understand…

On By Betty OwensIn ebooks, hearing, Kindle, letter, phone, Writing2 Comments

It’s possible no one will ever read this. I am happy to say, it doesn’t matter. I am going to write even if no one reads what I write. 

If you’re a writer and you want to guarantee someone reads what you write, then write letters to loved ones. I still have a few family members who don’t have computers. They love getting letters, especially handwritten ones. They read mine, then they send me an answer. Instead of seconds or minutes, the whole process takes a week or two at a combined cost of nearly a dollar. 
I could just pick up the phone and call them, but I have trouble hearing on the phone and some of them have the same problem. Our conversations tend toward hilarity. “I hear you fine, I just can’t understand what you’re saying…” 

And in the end, I find I must write a letter to be sure they understood what I told them on the phone. So it saves time, if not money, to write a letter.
One dear friend who calls me a youngster was wondering when I’d publish another book. I told her I have an ebook in progress. “You should get a Kindle reader, I think you’d like it,” I said.
“I’ve seen those for sale,” she said. “I don’t reckon I could figure out how to use it.”
“Oh it’s easy to use,” I told her. “You could get your son to set it up and after that, it’s a breeze.”
“Yeah, well, it’d just be another thing I’d have to remember where I set it. Then I’d spend half the day looking for it, and another half of the day trying to remember what I was looking for.”
I couldn’t argue with that. 

Sorry it’s been so long since I’ve written. I’ll try to do better here on out. Hope you’re having a wonderful day. 
Thanks for stopping by!

A Cherished Christmas Memory

On By Betty OwensIn California, Christmas, Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, San Diego4 Comments

Mike, Eddie & Me (Betty)
We all have a favorite Christmas memory. This is mine. The picture was taken on my first day of school in San Diego, California. The story takes place on Christmas Eve of the same year.

San Diego, California, 1959 -The house we lived in was just blocks away from the San Diego Zoo and the mission at Balboa, so our yard was often filled with exotic sounds like the roar of a lion, the call of the peacock, the trumpet of elephants.

We didn’t have much money, but my mother could always find a way to make Christmas special for us. She made many of our gifts and baked lots of cookies.
Dad had been looking for another place to live, further out from town, so we’d spend the weekend looking at houses. I liked one particular house very much because it had an upper story which fascinated me. There was even a life-sized cardboard cutout of Shirley Temple in one upstairs bedroom. 

The former owners had left a pile of trash in the yard. On that pile, I found a handmade doll cradle. It was broken and dirty, full of leaves and rainwater, but to me it was a treasure. Only rich kids had such things. I knelt down beside it as children often do, to get a better look. In my heart was a deep longing, too innocent to be described as covetous. I wanted a doll cradle like that one.
On Christmas Eve, my older brother and I were begging to stay up. “Just a little bit longer, please.” To no avail, for I’m sure my mother had a million things to do to get ready for the big day. She stubbornly resisted our pleas. Then she received a little unexpected help by way of a stiff breeze outside. The front door blew open about six inches or so. Mike and I stopped our pleading to gaze at the door, then at each other. His eyes were large and his mouth formed an “o”. Chills tickled my spine.
“See there?” Mom said, always quick on the uptake. “Santa is trying to come, but you two are still up. He can’t come in while you’re awake.” There was no more argument. We ran as fast as we could and jumped into our beds. 
Early on Christmas morning, we tiptoed out of our rooms to see what treasures Santa had left for us overnight. Oh, there seemed to be so much stuff beneath that tree. My brothers dived in at once, grabbing toys and showing them off to each other. I stood in awe, for there to my great surprise and joy, was the same little doll cradle I had seen on the trash pile. I knew it was the very same one, even though it had received a fresh coat of powder blue paint and was no longer broken.
Mom had made a small mattress and pillow, complete with embroidered sheet, pillowcase, and quilt. A brand new doll lay on top of it all. The doll could cry real tears and wet her diaper, but I barely noticed. I was enraptured with the refurbished cradle, even though I knew its last home had been a trash pile. 
Long after I outgrew playing with dolls, that cradle sat in my room. When I was finished with it, Mom (who seldom threw anything away) used it as a planter. Every time I saw it, I remembered that special Christmas. It became one of my most cherished memories. 
It’s not always necessary to spend a lot of money to make Christmas special. Sometimes a little imagination and a whole lot of love can bring the most joy to someone’s heart. Isn’t that what Christmas is all about? 

Originally posted December, 2009