Jamieson Wolf
Number-one bestselling author
Tunnel of Light and Shadow – A Poem
There is a twin inside of me,
one that rarely sees the light
of day, or feels the light inside
of me. He doesn’t stop to ask,
to comprehend, to contemplate.
All he knows is emotion, pure
and unadulterated. However,
whereas I try to live my life
holding light, within the light,
he knows only darkness.
As he is my twin, the yin to
the yang to my light self,
his emotions are mine.
When he takes over,
I can see myself through his eyes.
I can contemplate his actions,
try and stop him, try to hold him
back from doing something he
will regret. But there must be
darkness to appreciate the light
just as there must be light
to appreciate the darkness.
I’ve struggled with him,
with who he is and have
a terrible time convincing myself
that he is myself at my most
dark moments. After the whirlwind
of his emotions, I spend a day or two
taking myself to task for giving in,
for entertaining such thoughts and actions.
I get mad at myself for letting him take over
and then I get angry with myself for being angry.
It is an almost unending cycle
of self abuse and self loathing. However,
there is light at the end of the tunnel.
It shines bright amongst the shadows
that linger within me. Within that light
is my salvation, my relief, my breath.
I often see myself walking down
a tunnel, one hand holding shadows
and one hand holding light.
He’s walking beside me.
Eventually, he sees how tired I am,
how weary, and he reaches out to take
the shadow. But there’s light at the edges,
twinkling like stars. Just as there is
darkness within my light, adding depth
to the brightness that shines forth.
I walk to the exit of the tunnel,
the light glorious on my skin.
As I walk into the light, I look back
only once. He is standing there,
watching me go and I wonder,
fleetingly, when I will see him again.
Climbing Downward – A Poem
* For Rachael, with thanks and gratitude.
When the siren sounded,
we ran to the cliffs.
I would have to
scale the rock face
to find safety.
I didn’t think I
would be able to find
my way to safety.
Looking downward, it seemed
to be an infinity of space
between where I was
and where I would be safe.
“Want some help?”
I turned and saw a
mystic woman. She was
dressed in a flowing garment
of silver and black;
it flowed around her in the breeze
that flowed so strongly
on the top of the mountain.
“I don’t know if I can do it.”
I said to her. I was so afraid,
terrified, really, when each step
could mean disaster.
She smiled at me,
and she spoke kind words
that lit a fire inside of me:
“You can do whatever you set your mind to. Come on, I’ll help you.”
Slowly, so very slowly,
I made my way down the mountain
with her assistance. She watched
my every step to be sure that
it was true and stable.
She helped me to find
the footholds in the rock face,
the depressions in the rock
that I could hold on to.
She kept checking on my
to make sure that I was
all right and kept up a
constant chatter to take my
mind off of the task
we currently found ourselves in.
I just told myself to take it
one step at a time,
and tried not to think about
tumbling down the mountain,
landing in the water.
I focused on taking
one small step after another,
and part way down, I knew
that I could to this.
We passed through a veil
of mist as we finished our journey,
and it blinded me temporarily.
When we got to the bottom,
I looked back at
how far we had come,
how high we had been.
I saw flights of stairs
rising up sixteen flights.
People were still climbing
downward, milling around us.
What had seemed like a mountain
at first was now revealed
to be merely one more
obstacle that I’ve conquered.
One more mountain that
I’ve climbed down from.
I looked at the mystic
that had climbed downward
with me and could only
give her my thanks.
The Gateway – A Poem
I was inside of
a house. There was
no way to know
how many floors there
were; from the outside
it seemed to stretch
right into the clouds.
From the inside, it
seemed just as big,
just as tower like.
I stood at the bottom
of the staircase and
you were beside me.
“It’s okay, you can do this.”
I looked at the
stairs with some trepidation.
“I don’t know that I can. You know I can’t do stairs very well.”
You smiled at me
and took my hand,
just for a moment.
“It’s okay, I’ll be right behind you.”
I nodded, knowing that
there was no other
choice. I started up the
steps, holding onto the
railing. I wondered at
what the woman outside
the house had said.
“If you enter and are brave enough, you will discover a gateway at the top.”
I looked at her, with
skin that seemed translucent,
as if the light would
pass right through her
if it caught her in
a certain way. I
moved closer to her.
“A gateway to what?”
She shrugged, a small
smile on her lips.
“You’ll have to find out yourself.”
And now we were
here, inside the house,
going up the steps
to an unknown miracle.
“What kind of gateway to you think it is?”
I asked you. I
heard your voice speaking
behind me and the
sound of it helped
calm me. When you
spoke, it was as if
you spoke to the
centre of my being.
“Who know? There’s only one way to find out.”
We continued to go
higher. Every time, I
stumbled, you caught me.
Every time I tripped
on a stair, you steadied me.
Every time I didn’t
think I would make it,
you kept me going.
Every time I felt
like giving up,
you encouraged me and
told me that I
could do anything.
We neared the top of
the staircase and I
could feel the wind
on my face. I turned
and looked at you.
“How high have we come?”
You took my hand and
helped me up onto
the very last step.
“Let’s take a look, shall we?”
There was only light
when we stepped forward
and out onto a balcony.
It looked over everything
and I saw that we
had just done what I
thought was impossible.
The house was built into the
face of a mountain and we
had just scaled its heights.
We stood there, looking
out at the land below us.
You put your arm around me
and we took in the
brightness and warmth of
the sun. Something had
changed within me. We
had done what I thought
to be impossible. We
accomplished it by looking
at it in a different way.
“You can do anything you set your mind to.”
You said to me.
I could only turn
to you and put
my lips to yours,
hoping that the kiss
would speak what my
words had thus far
failed to express.
As I kissed you,
I thought of the woman’s
words again:
“If you enter and are brave enough, you will discover a gateway at the top.”
I could feel my heart
opening further, filling me
with light. What locks
there were inside me
fell away at your
touch, opening the gate
wide so that only
light could shine through.
When your own gate
opened, the two hearts
beating as one, shone
brighter than the sun.
Why I Walk the Walk
The MS Society of Ottawa sent out an email a little while ago suggesting to team captains that they should tell their story. Why do I walk the MS Walk? I walk because, for a while, I had forgotten how.
On December 31st, 2012, I woke to find that my world had changed. I was unable to walk very well. In fact, I could barely stand upright. I felt as if I was walking in an upside down world where nothing made sense. From that moment until August 21st, I had no idea what was wrong with me.
I had been diagnosed with Labyrinthitis, a disorder that affects the balance that is cause by trauma to the inner ear. It was supposed to go away in two weeks. I spent most of my time sitting on my couch when I could get to it or sleeping.
As the two weeks neared its end, I thought I would go out to dinner with an ex-boyfriend. We had take out Chinese food. I admit I over indulged quite a bit, but it was a treat to have food that wasn’t rice, saltines or chocolate pudding; those had been the only things I could keep down for two weeks.
The Chinese food turned out to be a horrible mistake. I woke up in the night and was horribly sick. I just remember vomiting everything up. It just kept coming and when I thought I was done, it would continue. In the morning, the imbalance had returned with a vengeance and I could barely lift my head upright. My dad came to get me to bring me home and for the next three weeks, I slept.
The left side of my face went completely numb as did my left hand. I felt like Two-Face from Batman. Though I could have thought of a few more super heroes’ I would have rather been. I had also lost all the hearing in my left ear and I had gone partially blind.
I could see, but only just. It was as if someone had placed several layers of plastic over my eyes. Everything was blurry and I had a hard time reading. Bathing with no balance was a chore. Someone would come every day to make sure I didn’t fall or hurt myself as I had no balance. I had to be helped in and out of the bath.
I remember trying to go back to work after a month and a half pretty much housebound. I had to learn to walk again with the help of a cane. I could see, but only just. Taking a bus was a frightening. I had no balance on a moving vehicle and kept falling into people. Thankfully they were very nice about it.
It was when I lost the power of speech and the ability to type that my boss sent me to the hospital where my mother was waiting to meet me. The words were there, waiting in my mouth to be spoken, but I could only get one out of every five out. Likewise, my brain knew the words that it wanted my hands to type, but I couldn’t get my fingers to go where I wanted them to. There was a blockage somewhere.
I had known that something was wrong. We all know our own bodies, right? Since December 31st, I knew it wasn’t just the Cerebral Palsy I was born with. It was something deeper. We were lucky that there was a neurologist on staff in the emergency room that night. He said he had an idea of what it was, but they would have to run some test to be sure.
On August 21st, 2013, eight months after the whole ordeal had started, I found out what I was carrying inside of me. The neurologist gave it a name. He said I had Multiple Sclerosis. This news came the day before my birthday.
Some people said that that was a horrible thing to happen right before my birthday but I didn’t think so. It had a name now. I knew the name of what I would be fighting against.
It’s been a long haul to get to where I am now and many dark times where I almost gave up. When I did the MS Walk in 2014, I almost didn’t think I would be able to do it. By the end of 3KM, I was shaky and spent. But I had done it.
So I went back in 2015 and will go back on Sunday April 24th to do it again. I walked 5KM last year and will do so again this year. And the year after that…
I walk for everyone that can’t. I walk so that, one day, there will be a cure. I walk to show myself I can. I walk to prove that miracles can and do happen. I walk because I had forgotten how.
So this year, on Sunday April 24th, won’t you come and walk with me? Click below to walk with The Wolf Pack. It’s guaranteed to be a fun day (though last year was a little too cold for my taste!)
Or, if you can’t walk with us, consider donating to my team. Every penny helps fund research to help end MS and find a cure.
Click below to learn more
http://mssoc.convio.net/site/TR/Walk/OntarioDivision?team_id=86808&pg=team&fr_id=5086
And in the meantime, keep on walking.
Savage: London Mob Book One by Michelle St. James – A Book Review
Jenna Carver is a woman with secrets.
It’s been five years and she’s still trying to mend her heart. She still loves Ferrell Black even though she chose to leave. When she found out she was pregnant with his child, she knew that he couldn’t give her and their unborn child the safety she needed and wanted. She chose to leave.
For five years, she’s hidden in New York, working for Nico Vitale. When working for the mob became too much, she left. Now her only focus is on taking care of her daughter Lily. She still carries a secret torch for Ferrell Black, though she’d be loathe to admit it.
When her father dies suddenly, killed in a random mugging, she flies back to London and her family…and the man that still occupies her heart: Ferrell Black. She does what she can to stay out of sight and to keep her heart in check. However, when Jenna sees Ferrell at her father’s funeral, all of the old emotions are still there and seeing Ferrell only brings them to the surface once again.
Jenna knows that she can’t let Ferrell find out about Lily. While trying to decide what to do she starts going through her father’s belongings and finds a key card and a passport sewn into the lining of her fathers jacket. She flicks through the passport and sees there are stamps for Amsterdam; but her father never wen to Amsterdam, did he?
She knows that Ferrell Black, head of the London Syndicate of the mob, may be her only choice for answers. What he finds will send them both fleeing for their lives. At the same time, Jenna has to decide whether she can forgive Ferrell and forgive herself…
I flat out loved this book. Michelle Zink writing as Michelle St. James has written a sure fire winner that somehow tops her previous romances, though I didn’t think that was possible. She writes so well that the characters come alive on the page.
What drew me in was the characters. Jenna is a strong woman with a definite idea of how she wants to raise her daughter. Her sister, Kate, is the perfect balance to Jenna. Ferrell is the perfect hero. However, what surprised me was the sheer amount of heart in this book.
Take Ferrell. Early on in the novel, we meet his brother, Evan. His severely autistic and Ferrell keeps him in a home so that he can get the best care possible. Then there’s Jenna. She and her sister Kate have had to deal with an alcoholic mother all their lives and Kate is still taking care of her when she can.
It takes a talented writer to deal with subjects that wouldn’t normally be found in romance novels and to do it so well that it’s believable. It takes a deft hand to accomplish this, but thankfully, the author possesses that in spades. The subjects of alcoholism and Autism would have made the book awkward in someone else’s hands, but in St. James’, they only deepen the affection we feel for the characters.
What held everything together was the love and the passion that Ferrell and Jenna have for each other. The passionate fire between Jenna and Ferrell just burns up the page and the love between them is so real that you can’t help but be pulled in.
I can’t wait to see what happens in book two: Primal!
Buy Little Yellow Magnet from Amazon and Kobo!
Jamieson Wolf has written a compelling story about navigating multiple sclerosis and cerebral palsy. His story will touch your heart, make you cry, then laugh, and inspire you. A touching memoir with a bit of magic…and tarot! ~ Theresa Reed, author of The Tarot Coloring Book
Jamieson Wolf 