I love to give, it makes my heart happy. For myself, I find doing something for others very rewarding. Sometimes I even feel I have been blessed far more than the person I am helping or serving.
As a writer, everything I write has a purpose, or some takeaway for the reader. Scenes and the dialogue are strategically written to encourage the reader, offering hope and positive life lessons.
I believe in my projects, they are important to me. Because I am dedicated to the lessons I hope to teach, I try to practice what my message hopefully teaches. For example, in Liberty Lane and the One-Girl Rebelution, Liberty Lane goes on a mission to provide shoes for a homeless shelter through a shoe protest she instigates. She convinces all the students at her school to donate the shoes they were wearing to her cause. Here is an excerpt from the book where Liberty Lane’s mom reminds her of the very incident…
“Liberty Lane O’Shea, you are stronger than you believe yourself to be right now. Where is the girl who had her friends duct tape her to a redwood tree out at Mt. Gilead the last day of summer camp so she could stay longer? Or the girl who organized that shoe protest—the one where you got all of the kids at school to take off their shoes at the end of the day and go home barefoot? “Somebody” donated their shoes to the local women and children’s shelters, and that same “somebody” cleverly convinced many of them to participate by telling them it was a good way to get a new pair of shoes out of their parents. Do you remember how many parents we had standing out on our lawn, protesting your shoe protest? Where is that girl? Where is your fight?”
“I think she ran off with my confidence,” I bellowed in between wiping the snot-er-falls that continued to run down my face.[
It was time to walk the walk, not just walk the talk. I researched many different organizations and found Buckner International. It was there I discovered Shoes for the Orphaned Soul, a ministry that provides new shoes for orphans in third world countries. What a great way to give back.
The second book of my Liberty Layne series, Liberty Layne and the Battle of the Couture Clique Club, Liberty and her best friends face off against a group of girl bullies (The Couture Clique Club) at summer camp. The core message in this book is confronting girl bullies…a serious issue among teen girls today!
Check out The Mean Girl Extinction Project as well and find how you can get involved in our anti-bully campaign, or look for information on how to organize a shoe drive in your community through Shoes for the Orphaned Soul.