Linda Appleman Shapiro's Blog

About Shirley: 


Shirley Melis is a longtime business writer, travel writer, and newspaper columnist who traveled the world interviewing everyone from busboys to heads of international organizations before launching a career in public relations in Washington, D.C.

With Banged-Up Heart, she now takes her writing in a new direction, delving deeply into her own personal story of finding love late, losing it early, and discovering the strength to choose to love again. It is a fascinating odyssey, a journey both creative and erotic, as Shirley and John work lovingly together to blend their dreams—until a mysterious bump on his forehead starts them on a tragic struggle against the dark hand of fate.

A graduate of Vassar, Shirley Melis has created an intimate memoir bearing eloquent witness to the kind of wild trust that can grow in the heart of an ordinary woman thrust into circumstances that few others must face. Now retired, she lives in Galisteo, New Mexico.

LINDA
I’m delighted to welcome you to my blog site, Shirley. Writing reviews and interviewing authors for W.O.W. (Women on Writing Blog Tours) is always such a pleasure.

In a recent interview you said that as you were about to retire you had planned to write a book documenting the lives of those who were in their 60’s, 70s, and 80s and thriving emotionally, mentally and physically. Your goal was to create a book that would offer readers new role models for older people. Yet, life interrupted that plan.

After mourning the unexpected deaths of your first husband and father, and then your second husband, you wrote this memoir, Banged Up Heart. I find it fascinating that your personal story does exactly what you originally set out to do, only it’s you who are the role model. In the end, you are able to dance after experiencing great loves, perhaps even greater losses, but still finding the strength to be resilient, moving on to yet another marriage and new experiences. Do you see yourself as one of the role models you would have enjoyed interviewing?

SHIRLEY
Linda, I’m somewhat taken aback by your question, largely because it never occurred to me that I might be such a role model. But now, as I read and ponder your analysis of me and my story, I’m persuaded that I just might pass muster as someone I would have enjoyed interviewing.

LINDA
As we learn about your first marriage to Joe, you write…. “I grew up, becoming someone better than I had been–more accomplished, more self-confident and kinder. Joe had always been there for me. . .he shaped me in many ways.” You conclude that with his death and the death shortly afterwards of your father, you “lost your cheering section.”

Then, too, when we get to know John, you admit that, “he showed me how to live life with more courage than fear, to tame adversity with one’s mind and heart. More than anything, he showed me that I could open my heart to love again.” I suppose what I’m saying is that I got to know you best through how you perceived the roles that each of these men played in your life. I’m curious to know if you could tell us what role you feel you played in each of their lives?

SHIRLEY
This is a tough question for me to answer quickly.

I think my first husband, Joe, who was much older than I, relished my ability and inclination to learn from him the workings of PR and public affairs in Washington, D.C. He himself was a PR ace. He enjoyed my professional successes and hurt as much, if not more than I did, when things didn’t go smoothly. He liked my energy, curiosity and perseverance. I think I helped him feel younger than his years. We were teammates from the get-go.

With John, my second husband, I think I was someone with whom he felt he could share aspects of life that perhaps he had never shared with anyone else before.

LINDA
On the one hand, we see you as an independent woman with a career. Yet, when you refer (briefly) to your early years, you say that, “often to save myself physically and emotionally, I had fled.” But with only alluding to your mother who suffered from schizophrenia, we don’t really know much about your formative years or why you were fearful, since you seem so assertive and courageous throughout most of the book. Was your mother’s illness one of the reasons why you were fearful and why you chose not to write much about your early life?

SHIRLEY
During my first meeting with editor Morgan Farley, after she’d read my manuscript, she announced, “For starters, you have three books in one. I’ve noted how many pages you’ve devoted to each and I would advise you to go with the one that has the most pages because that appears to be where your strongest energy is.”

More of my early life was in one of the other two “books.” Once my focus narrowed, my early life didn’t seem that relevant to my story. The moment you refer to–when I’m reminded of my mother–bore on my fear in that instance. However, her illness had no bearing on my omitting more of my early life.

LINDA
When writing a memoir or a novel, there are always choices the author has to make about what to omit and what to include. Can you tell us what propelled you to include very intimate details of your life with John? I ask because at first I found it to be a distraction. I later appreciated your honesty and applauded you for having the courage to share it all.

SHIRLEY
I must admit that initially I had qualms about revealing the intimate details. In fact, it was my editor’s questioning that led to my revelations. That said, memoir by definition (in my mind, at least) is unvarnished truth. As long as I wasn’t hurting anyone, I couldn’t justify not telling my truth.

LINDA
Although both husbands were terrible losses in your life, how would you describe the difference in the way you mourned for Joe and the way you mourned for John. . . . and do you have any advice for others who are in the process of mourning the loss of a loved one?

SHIRLEY
Allow yourself to grieve. Whether unexpected or anticipated, the loss is real. The absence of that person can be almost palpable, as though a part of you has been cut away and you’re left bleeding. Your ability to think clearly may be distorted by the pain of loss. If you have a good friend who offers to help you–drive you to appointments, take you to dinner–accept.

If you’re working when your partner dies, take some time off to do what needs to be done, but go back to work if you can. The structure of a job will give you something other than your loss on which to focus. You may find yourself tearing up at unexpected moments, but that’s understandable.

If you can, join a grief group, and see a therapist. In a grief group, you learn empathy; hearing other people’s stories is affecting, and you realize you’re not alone. With a therapist, you can explore the roots of your anguish, something you might not be able to do alone, and perhaps shouldn’t try to do with good friends since the burden of grief can be overwhelming for others.

LINDA
Rumor has it that you’re planning to write another memoir. If that is true, can you give us a hint as to what it’s about so that we can look forward to it?

SHIRLEY
It will have something to do with that early life you alluded to earlier.

LINDA
I was hoping you’d say that! Thanks so much for stopping by. . . and I hope that writing continues to allow you–in your own words–“to find joy in just being alive.”



BANGED UP HEART: Dancing with Love and Loss
Genre
: Memoir/Non-Fiction
Publisher: Terra Nova Books (February 14, 2017)
ISBN-10: 193828870X, ISBAN-13:978-1938288708

After my first memoir, Four Rooms Upstairs, was self-published and named Finalist in the 2008 Indie Book Awards and before my current memoir, She’s Not Herself, is now (2016) celebrating its second anniversary, I wrote in my weekly blog, A Psychotherapist’s Journey, The Contagion of Mental Dis-ease.

I came across it this morning when I was flipping through a folder that holds all the blogs that I’ve published, and was struck by the similarity of situations seven years ago that led me to write what I did and noted that, if anything, the mental dis-ease about which I wrote has only become more prevalent. Hence, my choice to reprint it here (adding only one obvious/current event that affects our world and our mental dis-ease of this moment)

If only we could discover an anti-hate vaccine to prevent the hatred that seems to be mutating from country to country, from adults to children alike, not only in the far reaches of the world but here at home in the good, old United States of America!

Some argue that there is no increase in crimes on college campuses, that there’s no increase in crimes against women, that there’s no increase in hatred toward any minority group, and these same folks also believe that there were always wars being fought and that we, in the 21st century, are experiencing all that those who have preceded us have experienced throughout the ages. Their favorite argument is that we just read more about it because of the easy access to the news via the internet and the media in general.

While I’m not unaware of the power of the media and of course it is true that it does make everything more accessible to us these days, I don’t believe that’s the whole story. Because I don’t, and because I believe it’s a subject we must address, I will also say that it saddens me to write a blog about hatred and what it says about us as a people, no matter what our racial, religious, or economic status may be.

Unfortunately, statistics do support my belief about the spread of this disease.

The number of incidents of documented hate crimes, religion/biased hate crimes bounce around but remain statistically high with hate crimes against Muslims currently the highest of all minorities.

I don’t take it lightly when I read about so-called “incidents” in schools where students attack other students. Case in point: In late October[2009] students from a suburban St. Louis middle school allegedly hit Jewish classmates during what they called hit a Jew day. Apparently, it began harmlessly enough with a hug a friend day. Then prior to hit a Jew day there was a high five day and a hit a tall person day.

In other schools there was a kick a ginger day (referring to all red headed students), and the latest incident was in Naples, Florida, where yet another hit a Jew day occurred, injuring several Jewish students.

I don’t consider such acts to be merely childhood pranks, and I do fault the principals and schools that have decided to slap the hands of the perpetrators and do little else except, in some instances, to offer classes in tolerance or one-day of in-house suspension.

Tolerance? The message in such classes does not register with the perpetrators as they represent a societal symptom, a fast spreading disease, a hot hatred, and one that I believe is contagious. The offenders may be–for any combination of reasons–ripe for mischief and attracted to receiving negative attention, even at the expense of their peers.

They were not though, simple mischief makers or bullies. They may have had their ideas spurred on by the movies they watch, the video games they see which have graphic scenes of violence, or the endless media coverage of crimes, all of which give them the impetus to “play” copy-cat, but what they suffer from is not necessarily a genetically inherited disease or one due to a mob mentality which believes it’s simply committing an un-punishable prank. It’s hatred, outright hatred perpetrated against anyone or any group that’s different from them and whom they consciously decide to target and attack. The students in Naples, Florida are a symptom of a wider disease. Let’s not forget the Columbines of these past few years.

However few or many they may be in numbers, those who seek to commit acts of violence and even worse, murder, are in desperate need of attention, with no conscience and no thought or care of about possible consequences for their victims or themselves.

The good news though, is that the mental health of our children and the generations that will follow ours is still–though limited–in our hands. Just as it is currently every family’s right and responsibility to decide on choices for their children’s physical health, it is also every family’s responsibility to monitor their children’s mental health.

We can’t take on the world, but we can commit ourselves to being role models for those in our care, teaching them above all else respect for others as well as self-respect. And that starts from the very top, from the President of these United States to all those whom we wish our children to admire and feel cared by–the firemen, policemen, all their teachers, and all who are in visible and actual positions of authority.

Only then will our best and brightest devote their lives to the betterment of our world and to eradicating or at very least minimizing the numbers of people afflicted by the dis-ease of hatred.

I see that as being our only hope for lessening the power of the few over the many, the diseased over the healthy, the destructive over the productive.

Award winning novelist Michael French created Facebook and Twitter pages for the two protagonists in his 24th book, Once Upon A Lie. (See my review of the actual book on my website under book reviews www.applemanshapiro.com.

A brilliant idea which not only extends the life of his characters and gives more exposure to this book, but is the start of a 21st century phenomenon. A way to begin a sequel to any book and make us all aware of the fact that what he posts on Facebook presents them as real people with whom readers can communicate.

In this digital age, other authors may do likewise and thereby involve readers in an on-going virtual reality. What a creative and awesome idea!

I’m considering creating a page for my deceased mother who is so much a part of my memoir, She’s Not Herself: A Psychotherapist’s Journey Into and Beyond Her Mother’s Mental Illness. If folks post questions, I could easily have her be a wonderful advocate for mental health, given all that she suffered and all that she learned from her life.

She lived through WWI’s war-torn Russia, came to America at age 14, an immigrant and an orphan, doing house-work for distant relatives, while learning English and completing the 6th grade. She then lived in a stranger’s boarding house, worked in the garment district in NYC, and in her mid-twenties–still very much a survivor–she married my father, also an immigrant, eight years her senior, and a father figure.

She suffered her first mental break-down, what today is known as post-partum depression, and endured the awful terrors of electric shock treatments each time the darkness of depression descended. Fortunately, she did live to reap the benefits of anti-depressants discovered several years later.

Do let me know what you think about this, and after reading Once Upon A Lie, follow French’s characters Jaleel and Alex on their Face Book pages. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed!

Often referred to as “the poet laureate of medicine,” Oliver Sacks was born in London in 1933 and died at the age of 82 in NYC, August 30, 2015.

I had known about his reputation for being an extraordinary neurologist who had devoted his professional life to studying and treating patients suffering from all varieties of perceptual impairments including color blindness, encephalitis, deafness, autism, Tourette syndrome, Parkinson’s disease and migraine headaches.

I was familiar with some of the the many books he authored discussing case studies of patients suffering from those impairments, and I was familiar – as many movie goers no doubt are –with the film “AWAKENINGS” (taken from his book), starring Robert DeNiro and Robin Williams. As with much of his innovative work, he had studied the life stories of his patients. In AWAKENINGS, they were all victims of the 1920s encephalitis epidemic. He concluded that their rigidity was related to a form of Parkinson’s disease and treated them with the drug used for Parkinson’s patients, L-Dopa. The film was as dramatic, controversial and memorable as were Sacks’ findings.

Upon hearing of his death, however, I felt the desire to read more about his life. I then learned that he had personal demons that undoubtedly influenced his need to study and better understand the mystery of the mind. His approach was always holistic and scientific, resulting in new insights and discoveries, often challenging the status quo in the medical community.

To better appreciate the man, I looked at the world into which he was born: the London of 1933, to Jewish parents who were both physicians. The youngest of four children, he and his brother were sent to a boarding school in the Midlands to escape the Blitz. Without his parents ever knowing, each of them suffered cruel punishments by a sadistic headmaster who also had them fed meager rations of food. His brother was later diagnosed with schizophrenia and Oliver suffered from migraines and prosopagnosia (face blindness). Clearly, if he hadn’t been a brilliant child, his interests in the sciences and in all aspects of the human mind would not have led him to spend his life studying every aspect of the brain and understanding, as well, the role that nutrition plays in the development of the brain and the body. However, he was brilliant, and I have to assume that his passion was fueled by his early traumatic experiences.

As a migraine sufferer myself, I found his book “MIGRAINE” to be of personal interest and found the writing to be profoundly engaging. In The New York Review of Books W.H Auden wrote of it: “I am sure that any layman who is at all interested in the relation between the body and mind will find the book as fascinating as I have.” Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times wrote: “Oliver Sacks’ commentary is so erudite, so gracefully written, that even those people fortunate enough never to have had a migraine in their lives should find it equally compelling.”

Of course, not every physician has to suffer from a disease to be compassionate with patients whose suffering is similar to his own, but with Oliver Sacks who described his severe shyness as “a disease and a lifetime impediment,” along with his struggle with prosopagnosia and migraine headaches, he did much more than simply offer compassion to the patients in his practice.

Throughout his career he recognized that whether patients struggled to cope with autism, Tourette syndrome or the multitude of neurological conditions he treated, he concluded that what they shared in common was an appreciation for the therapeutic effect of music –“its strange and surprising power over the human mind” is what fascinated him most. Fittingly, The Institute for Music and Neurological Function honors his support of music therapy and the effect of music on the brain

My reason for entitling this blog, A Mind Examined and an Examining Mind is that Sacks allowed his own brain to be studied to prove that the brain responds differently to music that one prefers to music that does not resonate with one’s sensibilities. As impressive was his firm and proven belief that “music can animate people with Parkinson’s disease who cannot otherwise move, give words to stroke patients who can’t otherwise speak and calm and organize people whose memories are ravaged by Alzheimer’s or amnesia.” This remains a contribution not only to science but to millions of people whose lives have been stolen from them.

I would feel remiss as a psychotherapist and as an author who has devoted many years to de-stigmatizing mental illness, if I did not also mention the non-profit organization –The Oliver Sacks Foundation—which is devoted to preserving/publishing his life’s work, “making them available for scholarly use, working to reduce the stigma of mental and neurological illness and supporting a humane approach to neurology and psychology.” As was his great gift, the organization is also “devoted to increasing understanding of the human brain and mind through the power of narrative non-fiction and case histories.” Anyone who feels so inclined and is able to do so will no doubt feel rewarded by supporting the work of this extraordinary foundation.

To further honor Sacks’ life, I’d like to share a part of a most remarkable letter that he wrote at the time when he knew death was imminent:

“I cannot pretend that I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers. Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.”

Surely, the privilege is ours, as well.