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A Particular Friendship

Viewing comments for Chapter 33 "Not Enough Sugar"
We meet Lizzy who has just come out of the convent

14 total reviews 
Comment from Aiona
Excellent
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I loved reading this little bit of memoir. Yes, there's a lot of little humor, and also sadness in this bit of the story. It seems there are some chronological jumps forward and back, but they are prefaced with an explanation of where we are in time.

 Comment Written 20-Mar-2024


reply by the author on 20-Mar-2024
    Thank you for your review I'm glad you are getting my system. I don't know if you read any other previous chapters but they run the same way and if you want to go check them out you are free to do that without having to do anything with any reviews.
Comment from BethShelby
Excellent
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I always enjoy reading about your life when you were young. I like sweet to and I remember seeing picture of me at ten. I was very chubby. By the time I reached my teens I was taller and didn't look so chubby. It came back in my fifties. Your story is funny an brings back memories for me.

 Comment Written 13-Mar-2024


reply by the author on 13-Mar-2024
    Thank you for your delightful review. I'm glad people are able to identify with some of my adventures. I hope it's a bit healing for them.
Comment from Marilyn Hamilton
Excellent
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OK I am having flashbacks! Wonderfully nostalgic story that I could relate to in so many ways. The store several miles up a hill where I could spend a nickle and get a plethora of goodies. Shopping for my mother and buying everything but what she asked for. And yes, a woman from my church who embarrassed me about my weight at a tender age and a mother who counted every calorie I consumed after that. As a woman I had to ask myself, what must my mother and women her age have gone through as children to make them so weigh phobic and judgemental. I have tried hard not to pass it on to my own daughter but I feel it engrained in me and it is something I constantly have to struggle with. Very well written. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.

 Comment Written 12-Mar-2024


reply by the author on 12-Mar-2024
    Hello to you. Thank you for your intense review and for becoming vulnerable. You are welcome to read any of the previous chapters in my portfolio. You do not have to do any review just enjoy it. I wrote this autobiography 20 + years ago. I'm looking at what I wrote & I say,"I don't remember that." As far as judging people who are overweight, as my therapist said, "People add inches to protect themselves and when I see extremely large women, I wonder what severe trauma they must have been through.
Comment from Karen Cherry Threadgill
Excellent
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I love nostalgia. I also was a brownie and a girl scout. I had lots of badges. I have always been competitive. You can get free pictures from Bing, google, and interest among others. Just mention them in your author's notes. Good work. Karen

 Comment Written 11-Mar-2024


reply by the author on 11-Mar-2024
    Thank you for your fun review. Wasn't getting badges of great activity. It certainly did bring out the competitiveness in us.
Comment from Carol Hillebrenner
Exceptional
This work has reached the exceptional level

You write interesting stories about your life. Did you get to be a girl scout. My experience with girl scouts was a reverse of yours. When I showed up as school began to join the girl scouts, the leader put me with the little girls in brown. I told her I was in seventh grade, and she said I shouldn't tell lies. Even my pastor's daughter vouched for me, but the leader thought we were trying to trick her. I was only about 47 lbs when I entered seventh grade. Needless to say, I was not a girl scout after all.

 Comment Written 11-Mar-2024


reply by the author on 11-Mar-2024
    How humiliating to have to be with the little kids and you are in seventh grade. I don't remember much about when I was in 7th grade. I don't think we did much, but when I was an adult our seventh graders did a lot. We had the most wonderful leade. I was her assistant. We went on fascinating trips with the girls. We saved our Girl Scout cookie money and we were able to go to New York City, Savannah Georgia, and a couple other places I never would have been able to go if we hadn't gone as Girl Scouts.
Comment from LateBloomer
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Hi Liz, I could feel your woe and excitement as you trekked to the store to buy some candy. I did feel that you would lose money along the way, not because of your ADD, but because I am a Mom.

Of special note:

--At another time these sticks were used for switches by my grandmother from hell.

(Sadly, it doesn't seem like your formative years were filled with loving and supportive role models to develop a strong self-esteem, but everything goes back to childhood and things that were experienced by people like your Grandmother. History has a way of repeating itself.)

--To add injury to insult, on the way out, Mother hissed, "Oh, I'd like to cut your tastebuds out."

(Oh, No. How harsh and hurtful.)

--at the age of 10, I was put on a 900-calorie diet by the doctor.

(I just checked now, and according to the AMA, a 10-year-old girl should have 1600 calories a day. A 900-calorie diet was setting you up for failure, and not empowering you.)

-- candy was for sale at recess.

(WOW! Now that's a good one! We never had candy for sale at our school unless it was a fundraiser, but my brother and I used to go home for lunch. My mom was at work, and we (I) would make our own lunch at the ripe age of 8 years old, but on the way back to school, we stopped at the Candy store. Pennies we always had. I used to like to the jelly
rolls--dark chocolate with jelly in the middle--two for three cents.)

Liz, your stories are real and relatable, and after reading some of your stories, my own memories are resurfacing. Your stories have encouraged me to write about my own experiences which will be quite different from yours because I grew up in the heart of NYC ... when it was what I refer to as Old New York.

Thank you for sharing your life. Between your childhood and the convent, you've had your share of meanness. Well done; well told.
Margaret


 Comment Written 10-Mar-2024


reply by the author on 10-Mar-2024
    Thank you for your supportive review. My therapist told me I didn't have much to draw on for nurturing or any kind of self-esteem. So he worked very hard to build that up for me and did a wonderful job. He used Transactional Analysis which a lot of people would say is just like popcorn therapy. That'll be so cool if you begin writing your own story.
reply by LateBloomer on 11-Mar-2024
    Liz, I don't know when your life turned around, but you seem to be happy and living a peaceful life. M
reply by the author on 11-Mar-2024
    My life turned around when I got into therapy in 1980 and began saying my affirmations until I finally believed them. I can give you a copy of him if you'd be interested.
reply by LateBloomer on 11-Mar-2024
    So, I'm not the only one who talks to herself. Big-teeth smile. M
reply by the author on 11-Mar-2024
    ***Happy grin***
Comment from patcelaw
Excellent
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I enjoyed your story very much and it brought back memories of my own. We used to walk 2 1/2 miles to school in 2 1/2 miles home along a major highway. We would pick up bottles on the road coming back home in the evening and we would trade the bottles in at the grocery store for money to buy Candy and things like that which we didn't have at home. So your story is very delightful to me. Patricia .

 Comment Written 10-Mar-2024


reply by the author on 10-Mar-2024
    Thank you for your delightful review. Finding those bottles and then being able to trade them in made two and a half miles walk worth it, I guess. That's a long walk, We had maybe two or three tenth of a mile to walk.
Comment from lyenochka
Excellent
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Sorry that you were forced into such an experience. I can't imagine putting a child on a diet. You can always add more healthy foods but a growing child needs more calories! I've never heard such a thing as Korean moms are always trying to feed their kids!

 Comment Written 10-Mar-2024


reply by the author on 10-Mar-2024
    Thank you for your interesting review. They may not try to be as controlling as American mothers are. It was such an irony of the whole issue anyway. And somehow it must have been a knee-jerk reaction to that incident in the Girl Scout department.
Comment from jim vecchio
Excellent
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I was very overweight as a kid, but finally straightened out in High School. My mom always reminded me that I couldn't have Gene Autry or Hopalong Cassidy dungarees because I was too fat.
I just finished a short poem for Shelley's Potlatch Club about nickel soda. I wondered where that ides came from. Then I read this!

 Comment Written 10-Mar-2024


reply by the author on 10-Mar-2024
    Thank you for your identifying review. The things our mothers say. Nickel soda yay I want to read it that poem.
reply by jim vecchio on 10-Mar-2024
    The poem is not that good. I just did it to try s new form that Shelley kaye pointed out for us.
reply by the author on 10-Mar-2024
    Let me make that judgement...lol
reply by jim vecchio on 11-Mar-2024
    I posted two things today. The poem that was just so-so, but I think I followed Shelley's rules, and another old west tale which was a bit better.
reply by the author on 11-Mar-2024
    I will check them out
reply by jim vecchio on 11-Mar-2024
    Thanks! God Bless!
Comment from Esther Brown
Excellent
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Your childhood sounds interesting. Were you in a convent? Read that in your profile. Also saw you were a dowser....my hubby can do that. I was amazed at how it works.
Is this part of your life story?
Esther

 Comment Written 10-Mar-2024


reply by the author on 10-Mar-2024
    Thank you for your delightful review .Yes I was in the Convent for 28 years and I am a dowser. My grandfather was the first one to introduce me to the concept of dowsing when I was 3 years old. It was kind of fun. I held on to the willow stick and it went down toward the ground. He said that's where the water was. I am more of an energy dowser rather than a water finder I find other things and I heal. My stories of the Convent weave in and out of the the previous chapters. If you want to go to look at the previous chapters you are welcome to do that in my portfolio. There is no need for any review just enjoy it.
reply by Esther Brown on 10-Mar-2024
    Thanks, I will.
reply by Esther Brown on 10-Mar-2024
reply by the author on 10-Mar-2024
    Great. Remember you do not need to take time to write a review just go from chapter to chapter like you're reading a regular book.
reply by Esther Brown on 10-Mar-2024
    Thanks for above guidance. I am only a week old on this site. Felt I had to put a review on everything or I was cheating. Smile. I don't read directions very carefully....impulsive ADD type and plunged right in to the site. Esther
reply by the author on 10-Mar-2024
    Welcome...I'd be happy to pay it forward. I had some wonderful help. Feel free to ask any question One thing that one of my friends on here told me was how to get big money I call it. There is a section where people pay sometimes a dollar if you review their post. If you don't know where that is I can help you find it.