The World Needs Elvina's Words
Donation protected
The writing residency at Playa Summerlake in Oregon that Elvina was awarded is officially pushed back to 2022. She would like to honor the two weeks she had planned for intensive writing. She needs a quiet place in Vermont or Maine in February-March for two weeks. She can do rustic and is looking for simple, cozy place with a desk.
The book is about Elvina's life with her daughter Colby. Her heart's goal is that it is helpful to others.
If she finds a free place to stay the money will go to childcare, transportation, supplies (paper, printer) and food.
Her words need to be out there folks! They touch and teach even in simple facebook posts (below)! Can you imagine a whole book?!
"This day last year was so hard. Colby was still descending into a critical state and had not started the long recovery. We were so scared. And we also knew every minute of every day that we were held in so much love. The spiritual love of the universe and all of you, the friends and family who kept showing up, kept praying, kept helping. You literally saved us. Body, mind and spirit. This season, home and well, every thought and conversation comes back to this: we are so grateful. We are so lucky. The love is boundless."
"This girl arrests my heart, I feel it stop a little every time I look at her. The sheer beauty. Her survival, what her young body has been through, goes through. I try and imagine how she thinks about the world and I see spirals, spirals of time and interconnection. She is not linear, she does not obey beginning, middle, end. She is an ending that begins again, she is the very middle of mystery, the center of a star. Her voice, which is not to say language, extends in all directions, simultaneously saying suffering and joy in the same breath. She is everything, which stands in contrast to how she is perceived: sick, broken, unable, disabled, lacking, delayed, incontinent. The Light Warriors know, her wholeness is her heart. Compared to her heart, we are the broken and the sick ones. Look at her, feel her presence: infinite love made manifest."
Book Jacket:
At 35, Elvina Scott had the life of her dreams; a good job and a new baby with her Grammy award
winning partner, living in the city they loved, New York City. Then, their beloved and long awaited first
born baby began having violent seizures at six months old.
Elvina watched as everything she had worked for and pinned her hopes on began to fall away as caring
for her daughter became her life.
In her prose, she gives voice to the guilt of a parent who feels crushed by their child and the toll
caregiving puts on a body, a career, and a marriage.
Elvina writes with luminous candor about her depression and her mental and physical breakdown when
her daughter was 10. She reveals how she coped, coming to depend on alcohol, her eventual sobriety, and
her love of running that eventually led to ultramarathons.
Here she finds gratitude for the life she is living, with the children she has, and delivers us to a surprise
conclusion, that it is never too late to become who you were meant to be. It is never too late to be happy.
In rich metaphor, Elvina invites us to imagine a world where her daughter’s life is of value, challenging
our ableism and assumptions about people living with disabilities.
Opening
We don’t often choose to radically alter the trajectory of our lives, usually we have an
idea of happiness, success, security, and we muddle along aiming in that general direction.
Humans change when something breaks us. The brokenness is painful and hurts for way longer
than we think it should. But if you begin to mend, you might find this: a feeling of a wholeness
emerging from your guts, one you don’t remember ever having and your body hasn’t known
since you were a single cell, multiplying and dividing. It’s as if in breaking, we open to our
purpose.
I have surrendered over and over again to the fact that caring for my daughter Colby is
the purpose of my life, my one unalterable requirement.
Her purity of spirit, the labor of her care, the anguish of her suffering, the joy of her
forever innocence, it brought me to my knees so often that one day I stayed there, on my knees in
prayer, in devotion to a plan not of my making. I had to surrender to a life I did not construct to
find ease in my body, peace in my heart.
Once I thought my life was broken because my child was broken. Now I know, I am the
lucky one. If you are lucky, you get a challenge in your life, an event, a relationship, that strips
you bare of your pretense, your guile, your habit of manipulating outcomes. And once stripped,
you see a new way forward: you become free.
The book is about Elvina's life with her daughter Colby. Her heart's goal is that it is helpful to others.
If she finds a free place to stay the money will go to childcare, transportation, supplies (paper, printer) and food.
Her words need to be out there folks! They touch and teach even in simple facebook posts (below)! Can you imagine a whole book?!
"This day last year was so hard. Colby was still descending into a critical state and had not started the long recovery. We were so scared. And we also knew every minute of every day that we were held in so much love. The spiritual love of the universe and all of you, the friends and family who kept showing up, kept praying, kept helping. You literally saved us. Body, mind and spirit. This season, home and well, every thought and conversation comes back to this: we are so grateful. We are so lucky. The love is boundless."
"This girl arrests my heart, I feel it stop a little every time I look at her. The sheer beauty. Her survival, what her young body has been through, goes through. I try and imagine how she thinks about the world and I see spirals, spirals of time and interconnection. She is not linear, she does not obey beginning, middle, end. She is an ending that begins again, she is the very middle of mystery, the center of a star. Her voice, which is not to say language, extends in all directions, simultaneously saying suffering and joy in the same breath. She is everything, which stands in contrast to how she is perceived: sick, broken, unable, disabled, lacking, delayed, incontinent. The Light Warriors know, her wholeness is her heart. Compared to her heart, we are the broken and the sick ones. Look at her, feel her presence: infinite love made manifest."
Book Jacket:
At 35, Elvina Scott had the life of her dreams; a good job and a new baby with her Grammy award
winning partner, living in the city they loved, New York City. Then, their beloved and long awaited first
born baby began having violent seizures at six months old.
Elvina watched as everything she had worked for and pinned her hopes on began to fall away as caring
for her daughter became her life.
In her prose, she gives voice to the guilt of a parent who feels crushed by their child and the toll
caregiving puts on a body, a career, and a marriage.
Elvina writes with luminous candor about her depression and her mental and physical breakdown when
her daughter was 10. She reveals how she coped, coming to depend on alcohol, her eventual sobriety, and
her love of running that eventually led to ultramarathons.
Here she finds gratitude for the life she is living, with the children she has, and delivers us to a surprise
conclusion, that it is never too late to become who you were meant to be. It is never too late to be happy.
In rich metaphor, Elvina invites us to imagine a world where her daughter’s life is of value, challenging
our ableism and assumptions about people living with disabilities.
Opening
We don’t often choose to radically alter the trajectory of our lives, usually we have an
idea of happiness, success, security, and we muddle along aiming in that general direction.
Humans change when something breaks us. The brokenness is painful and hurts for way longer
than we think it should. But if you begin to mend, you might find this: a feeling of a wholeness
emerging from your guts, one you don’t remember ever having and your body hasn’t known
since you were a single cell, multiplying and dividing. It’s as if in breaking, we open to our
purpose.
I have surrendered over and over again to the fact that caring for my daughter Colby is
the purpose of my life, my one unalterable requirement.
Her purity of spirit, the labor of her care, the anguish of her suffering, the joy of her
forever innocence, it brought me to my knees so often that one day I stayed there, on my knees in
prayer, in devotion to a plan not of my making. I had to surrender to a life I did not construct to
find ease in my body, peace in my heart.
Once I thought my life was broken because my child was broken. Now I know, I am the
lucky one. If you are lucky, you get a challenge in your life, an event, a relationship, that strips
you bare of your pretense, your guile, your habit of manipulating outcomes. And once stripped,
you see a new way forward: you become free.
Organizer and beneficiary
Dev O'Neill
Organizer
Willits, CA
Elvina Scott
Beneficiary