About Notes on Serenity: An ABC of Addiction

About Notes on Serenity

I was seventeen when I started writing my feelings whenever I had paper and a writing utensil. Following my counter culture decade and the hard scrabble years, I had a teaching career devoted to literature and writing, and two degrees in English, the MA in English/Creative Writing. I express myself better in writing than in speaking. When I was stricken with the news from my son about his serious problem with drugs, it didn’t take long to determine that breaking the silence, both in prose stories and in poetry, would be part of the path to my own recovery. It’s an on-going process, yes, but writing is an act of discovery.

Notes on Serenity: An ABC of Addiction is a collection of poems and some prose, loosely linked by addiction and guided by the alphabet like a trellis for a climbing rose. When I first started with my Addict’s Mom stories (not yet related to the group), I knew I’d need a form to help me navigate the six-year project. Going backwards isn’t highly recommended in the healing community, but for an older poet, reflecting is the source of story and image. When the task of getting enough pieces for a book became overwhelming, I’d take breaks. Long ones. But I couldn’t quit. I couldn’t bury or burn the manuscript without putting it out there to break the silence. I gave my son veto power over any part, word, phrase, or the whole book. He took the loving path and even allowed me to add his own words at the end.

Bright flowers drawn by him will stand out on a book table or shelf. The cover art is his, as his wonderful treatment center in Farmington, NM, provided time, a place and materials for healing through art. In the working title of the book, scheduled to go live May 2018, I had removed any mention of the A word, addiction, as it’s such a scary, off-putting word to many. But then, remembering that one impetus of the writings was to break the silence, to confront the painful prejudice, I decided on the final title and sub-title: Notes on Serenity: An ABC of Addiction. The narrative poems and prose pieces tell our story, hopefully going from the personal to the universal.  Being the mother of a child, now a man, for several years critically ill with addiction illness but now in recovery, I explore my own recovery through the lens of observation and feelings about our individual battles to survive, to be the persons we are meant to be. His eloquent words, written in rehab as part of his healing process, comprise a prologue to my collection he hadn’t yet read.

The book will be for sale on many on-line  sites, but for signed copies cheaper than new on Amazon, go to my website, merimeemoffitt.com, click on Books by Merimee in the above menu bar, then click on Notes on Serenity.  $12 includes shipping.