I found your forum while looking for marketing advice for the e-books I am publishing. I'm a poet and photographer with two books on the market and zero sales, so morale is a little low right now.

I'm also an "empty nester," but my 24-year-old son is disabled (mental illness) and will probably always require my help.

My husband's career has moved us around a lot in the last 11 years so I haven't had much time to put down roots or make friends. We've lived in Massachusetts, Georgia, Florida, and Indiana - where I hope we'll stay until we retire.

Hoping to meet some folks here so I feel less alone.

[ November 04, 2005, 12:53 PM: Message edited by: Late Bloomer ]

Hi Valerie, my best friends are pastoring at First Church of the Nazarene. You've come to the right place for love and support.

Welcome, Late Bloomer! You will never feel alone here. Sometimes the posts fly so fast, it's hard to keep up! I've been here less than 2 months but I've already gotten more loving support and edification than I could even have imagined...and from women whose faces I've never seen. It's like a group hug in here!

Welcome Late Bloomer...

I'm so thrilled when others find their way to this site, God just leads them right along without them even noticing!

So settle in, put down your roots and expect to find friends galore.

Would love to know more of your books, poems and photographs.

Welome Late Bloomer,
Glad to have you.

hello Valerie, you will love this site, these women are wonderful !! a nephew of mine was also disabled with mental illness, i can appreciate at least in a small way some things which you may have been handling. Bluebird is right, it is like receiving a group hug here, a warm wonderful hug...

Late Bloomer,
I do not drive, so the internet is my friend and I just found these wonderful ladies about hum....2 months ago. You will love it!

Hi Late Bloomer,

Welcome to a great group of women. I've only been here a short time myself, but I love it.

I'm "late" in welcoming you, late bloomer. So glad you've joined us. Look forward to learning more about you.

Hi Val, I just came aboard here too. I'm a paramedic and I've seen many women struggle with mentally challenged children(no matter how old they are). I could see the strain and heartache in their eyes. You need support and you came to the right place. Here you will find a soft place to fall.......welcome

Hi late bloomer. With a screen anme like that you need to meet Prill Boyle. She wrote a book on late blooming women. Check the Featured Author forum and you will see when she was the featured author.

One of my reasons for launching this site was so we wouldn't have to feel alone with our stories. Welcome aboard. I'd also like to hear aobut your books.

Add my name to the long list of caring women Late Bloomer. We want you here, we welcome you, and we hope you stay. One thing... you will never be alone here, of this I can promise.

JJ

Glad to meet you Late Bloomer!

Late Bloomer,

It's never over til' it's over, right? We have all the time we have.....Welcome.

Welcome, Late Bloomer! You now have a lot of new friends!

Dreamer

Welcome Aboard Late Bloomer! If support and caring is what you need - you've come to the right place. So happy you found us.....we're all looking forward to getting to know you!

Late bloomer it is a pleasure to have you here with us. In no time your day will be filled with all your new long didtance friends. My friends here in town wonder where I am most of the time and its here chatting with my best friends...WELCOME, oh and the Hoosiers are a friendly bunch so making friends there should be easy. I was born in Indiana.

Thanks, everybody, for the warm welcome! For those who are interested in knowing more about my books, they are collections of my poetry illustrated with photographs I have taken over the years. They are in Adobe PDF format, which will "play" on any multimedia-capable computer with the free Adobe Acrobat program installed, so that you can page through them in order, or use bookmarks to jump around.

I am selling them on CD through Amazon.com, and also in downloadable format through EbookAd.com -- big downloads, though. If anyone wants to order one, there are links on my website to both of these. I also have a review posted, contents listings, and an "experimental" audio file (myself, reading one of the poems), and miscellaneous info "about the author."

The first book, Intervals of Light, contains poems on various subjects, and most of the photos were taken in the southeastern U.S. either nearby where I lived, or on trips taken while based in that area.

The second book, So This Is Love, is about ... well ... the many forms and stages of love. Most of these photos were taken on a recent trip to the southwest (Texas and New Mexico).

I am an avid amateur naturalist, and love to photograph plants, animals, and scenery wherever I go. I am also a great lover of cats, so there are a couple of cats in there too -- my own domestic pets plus at least one of the big cats I was in the habit of visiting on a regular basis.

(There is a big cat sanctuary near us in Indiana, and I have been bugging my husband to plan a trip soon - I understand they now have the three young leopards that were seized from some guy in New York and were all over the tabloids!)

Wow, guess I ran on - I do "talk" a lot. Anyhow, pleased to meet you-all!

ALate Bloomer

Welcome! Just how late are you? I'm 58 and wondering if there's a bloom left? Seems as tho' you have many , many blooms as well as buds...

Searcher

Hi Late Bloomer, 2 books? and one about Love? That is so wonderful!! I am always awed by creative women...who or what inspired you to write them? Don't worry about sales...they will come...I have a friend who started a line of baby clothes...she sent some of them to the Oprah Show and soon she had orders a plenty...I suggest you send them to Oprah also...maybe she will read them and add them to her reading list..there is nothing she loves more than a good book...and she is all about women succeeding...plus...she is a Boomer Lady as well...lots of good luck

searcher, don't doubt it for a second! Onward girlfriend!

It doesn't matter if you're a late bloomer, searcher, you ARE still blooming!! Now if you've gone to seed, that's different!!

Just turned 50. I have been writing since age 10 but my parents always discouraged me. They wanted me to be a teacher so I could keep busy until I met the right man to support me. I studied psychology instead, but never went to work in the field; instead I got married and then ended up working in offices while raising my difficult son. Now that he's out of the house, and I can afford some time off from work, I am pursuing the dream.

Bravo, Late Bloomer! I wanted to study psychology in high school, but didn't want to go to college

Psychology has been very helpful to me in dealing with my son. I think someone should offer me an honorary Ph.D. for all the hours of work I have put in raising him - school meetings, participation in treatment teams, medication management, one-on-one support and counseling ...

It is ironic that I started college as a Special Ed major but switched to Psychology because I decided I didn't want to work with kids with special needs (it tore me up emotionally) and here I have spent all these years as a parent of one, more intensely involved than any teacher would ever be. (Teachers, after all, go home at night and leave the kids they work with, and they get vacations, and they get to retire.)

"Life is what happens to you while you're making other plans."

Late Bloomer, I am enjoying reading your posts, and wanted to take time to say Welcome. Would you own a leopard, if you had the chance?
chick

I would own any kind of cat that wouldn't eat me! We were pretty friendly with a couple that had a "big cat" sanctuary in FL, and their animals were my surrogate pets. Their golden jungle cats had given birth to kittens, and they were keeping one of them as a house pet to see how well she could be domesticated. The husband brought us inside to see her. She was a lovely little thing. He had warned us that she was pretty wild, but when I got down on the floor to talk to her, she approached me and started batting at the string on my sun hat, and soon we were friends. I completely forgot that she was supposed to be fierce and soon she was purring on my shoulder. When the wife came in, she was completely amazed. I hated to put the cat down.

When my son was a toddler, we went to an animal park in NH and I had one of the best experiences of my life there. Their tigers had produced four cubs, and they were allowing the mother to rear two of them, and bottle-feeding the other two. It was late fall, we were almost the only visitors to the park that day, and the keeper took the cubs out to romp in the park -- and we got to play with them. They were about the size of large puppies, with big blue eyes and enormous paws, and I took photographs of my son with them. They played just like kittens, rolling on their backs and biting our hands as we rubbed their tummies. When my son decided to walk away from one, the cub wasn't ready to let go, so he put one of his great big paws on the back of his overalls and kept him from leaving. I will never forget it!

I know big cats don't make good pets, as a rule, because when they reach adolescence they start asserting territorial and dominance instincts -- but I would love to have a job where I could take care of them and get to handle the young ones.

I am new here and am somewhat of a cyber-idiot. I have enjoyed reading all of the posts, especially those related to hot flashes in menopause. I am inspired by all of you who write. I hope to be able to contribute something of interest sometime and to get to know the remarkable women here. I am a retired school counselor with my own counseling/life coaching business. I live in KY with my husband, two golden retrievers and 3 cats. I hope to hear from some of you soon.

Welcome Scoutfinch! I'm a Kentucky girl myself. Was born in Louisville WAY WAY WAY WAY (haha) back in 1947. Interestingly enough I've never seen the city - my Dad was in the Air Force and we were just "passing through" when I was born.

We're happy to have you here - as you already know from looking around in the forum, there are a LOT of interesting ladies populating this place and you are going to love coming here and visiting with all of them. Glad you found us!

Hi to all the newbies since I last dropped in on Monday!

Hi Scoutfinch,

I'm a retired school teacher, also, who is about to start a volunteer job at a hospital.

Glad to have you with us. Your house sounds interesting.