Chapter 1

What makes us want to read about another person we don't know personally? Why do we become so involved with lives of those whose eyes we see mostly from a TV or Movie screen or just from the voice of a song over the radio? And now we wonder about those faces we wander upon that grace the net. We can now see and read the hearts of silent strangers. Rather it be the smile from someone in a nursing home, college or place of work. The net is the new Movie Screen offering the world a surplus of wonderful and evil things that all of us from around the globe can sort through and admire and retain. Every experience will be shared and every dream given out in hopes that one day our page might be the one that helps change the hearts of the world.

I have contemplated rather or not I should reveal who I am in real life and what makes me be Belladora. I have also wondered why I go on …why I can't seem to stop and what made me start. I am just a simple Indiana girl who one day found a place that exposed my soul to the universe.

In this book my goal is to share one woman's thoughts on love, pain and adventure. An adventure that has taken almost half a century for her to live yet has only just begun. For some reason I feel I have found exactly what I am suppose to do. We all search for that, we all want to know. Wouldn't it be easier if we discovered it when we were small and someone gave us a map and we just followed the path chosen for us? But like most of us, I too, have walked a long road in search of happiness and success; never achieving what I felt destined for. I do know my dreams started at a very early age and my hopes were the skirt between my fingertips.

I read so many letters and notes left for me from hurting people that for some blessed reason find comfort and healing in my words. I cannot express how intensely my heart is touched from hearts of strangers for I am just a mere heart of a stranger myself. But life is a colorful journey we must paint ourselves and pass through to get to the final glorious place God calls heaven. There was one song I wrote a long time ago that was called "Show them you through me" and was actually a prayer.

The Internet will bless us and curse us with the things we find. But blessings out weigh the bad and give hope to the lost and dreams to the ones who has forgotten how to dream. One thing I desire to see more of is the elders to use this media as a way of teaching us historical stories and wisdom that only they have learned within the walls of their own lives. There is no quick fix to a broken heart or to a hurting diseased body that has betrayed us by the kiss of life. Yet we tread forward and onward like a soldier in the heat of the night, still searching, hoping and needing others to understand and play roles in the hearts of strangers.

When I first came to the net I went to AOL, like so many us of. That was the freeway that everyone wanted to ride. Like an atlas of new freedom we jumped on every highway and ventured into territory that led to forests of friends. These friends sat in their own homes from areas of the world we would never sat foot in and sometimes we communicated with translators that were the threshold of understanding and sharing. I was like a little girl full of wonderment, trying to figure out how to get around, what this button did, or that one. I clicked them all and kept on my journey. Now the tiny town I lived in did not have Internet access so I had to use a long distance number, which limited my exploration heavily. I wanted to keep the journey going hour after hour but was cut short constantly. I found that frustrating and it left me feeling left out from the early stages of what the world was learning so freely. My bill would be too high for the month and I would feel guilty then but even with the haunting of those emotions I pushed forward. I was driven with a passion that here was something for me. I could feel it so strongly and I remembered something from Church. I know that I know that I know…. It was that feeling that brought me back over and over again.

One day I was clicking on icons. Most places I ended up would only hold my attention for few minutes. But this day was special for it took me to a new place where I would find the door to my heart's journey. One remarkable journey that would effect thousands of people that I would never meet yet many I would become friends with or have the chance to help along the way.

  At an early age I was taught to give and understand, not to make fun of those who hurt for any reason. My mother was the arm of compassion and my father was the hand of strength during my childhood. At the age of three my dad would sit me on top of an old chair and place a microphone in front of me to sing into but I didn't really sing in public until the age of ten. He was a very talented man who had a charisma that glowed when he would be on stage. He could play many instruments but the one he loved the most was a fiddle. He was a great bluegrass fiddle player in Indiana. There was something special about my dad that I don't think he ever discovered or maybe it was his mission in life he missed out on.

He was born in a southern poor family, the baby of sixteen children in the hills of Kentucky. A musical family, like so many there, that had little but determined to survive and conquer the life dealt to them. He only got to attend school to third grade for money was a luxury and school far to far to walk with no good shoes or warm clothes. I remember him telling me about the copperheads and rattlesnakes and him wondering how he ever survived playing in the creeks and the fields that surrounded that old log cabin. My memories are few from there for we didn't go often. To my young eyes and ears it was a place of great food, southern accents, guns and knives and lots of danger that came with the words "Don't go there or Watch out for snakes, etc." I would wonder how anyone could have fun if you couldn't do anything or explore. But my mother was very protective of her children so I would watch and listen. I knew when we would go visit my mom's family in a different part of Kentucky things were different. I could play with the kids and remember the countryside much better then my dad's. Same great food but not as much live music to enjoy. Chickens and dogs and cats abounded in both places and I loved when I was allowed to feed the chickens.

Every morning the rooster would crow and the house would get busy. I loved the feel and the warmth of the old feather bed and can still almost smell morning breakfast. Brown gravy, fried potatoes, ham, sausage, fresh biscuits, eggs and homemade jellies and jams. Mmmmmm No one held back at breakfast and tons of dishes left to be cleaned by the cook. Every porch had a rocker or a swing.

Those memories of good country folk still remain and I still smile when I think of them. Southern hospitality is something that sinks into the heart and I honestly believe stays with you a lifetime. I recall a moment at the age of three when my dad brought home a brown paper bag and placed it on the table. Now, we ate a lot of strange things being down home people. Such as squirrel soup, black-eyed gravy, rabbit, dandelion greens, quail, souse meat, pork brains and God knows what else. LOL But when you are little and fed foods such as those you learn a taste for them. Lots of things I still like but may never have again. I could not go out and pick the right greens or cook anywhere close to my mother. Her life revolved around taking care of me and my brother and praying she would live long enough to see us both grown.

But my dad would bring home little trinkets and I would jump at the chance to see them. Now this brown paper sack was sitting there on the table and I thought it was a surprise. But when I pulled away the wrapper I was confronted with a big hogs head staring back at me. My mom said my face grew pale and all I could say was "Damn you Dad!" This was my first encounter with saying a bad word and my mom fussed at my dad for laughing about the incident.

I was a child who loved to dance and sing and was always busy. I can still hear my dad saying "Be Still " but I would just go out of sight and continue the dream I was dreaming at the time or make up a new one. I always wanted to be "Roy Rogers" and even had a cat named "Hopalong Cassidy" We had black and white TV back then and I found the screen to be a marvelous place full of adventure and laughter with beautiful horses and smiling and laughing people. "Shirley Temple" was the child who did not live across the street but who seemed to be every little girls friend, even mine.

My mother was a beautiful, loving, kind, considerate lady and still is today.  She was the one I could run to with any problem and share any thoughts. Her dream was to be a teacher, that she never fulfilled, yet she was the best teacher of all to me. Unfortunately we lost my father about two years ago close to Christmas.  We watched him suffer from diabetes, strokes and before the end even lose both legs. :(

©belladora

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