This is the most important update I have right now. Basically, the long and short of it is my mom is sick, we don’t know what it is except it’s likely cancer again, and we need help, so I’ve set up a fundraiser to that end.
If you want to read my initial blog post about this, and the terror and helplessness I’ve been feeling, you can see it at my writing blog. I’m pretty sure I’ve talked here before about how much my mom means to me, so it’s probably a no brainer that this news basically completely wrecked me.
If you don’t know anything about my mom, let me tell you how amazing she is. She used to live in Yukon with her wolf-dog Amaruq, and she survived a winter night in the woods with no supplies save the dog-walking clothes she’d put on and a warm wolf-dog to curl up next to. When an asshole southerner came up and started harassing her (including attempted sexual assault, not just against her but against many other women in Dawson) and letting his dog harass Amaruq, Mom used her words until the guy crossed the line, and then she beat the shit out of him in the center of town while denizens of Dawson City cheered her on.
She’s had a million different careers, including educator and lawyer. She was the Bride of the Devil and survived the Marriage (and Divorce) from Hell. She raised me singlehandedly in the wilds of Vancouver and then Maui, resorting to the food bank and begging on the street to feed me when we were out of options. Despite the injury that broke her leg and destroyed her back, making her too sick to work or do much else, she fought like hell to keep my safe from my abusive bio-sire, and continued to work her ass off to keep us afloat once we finally won custody from the bastard.
She continued to support me after I moved out and went to college, financially, emotionally, and artistically. If it weren’t for her I wouldn’t have published Bellica in 2011 nor come out with 2 more books since. She has always had my back when it comes to my passions, my art, and my career dreams — even if there’s no promise of any financial return from my chosen career of being an artist.
She raised me Buddhist, singing the 21 Praises of Tara, and when I announced I was converting to Wicca she was thrilled. She helped me bake cakes and bought “ale” (Martinelli’s) for my first big ritual, and drove me to the beach at dawn so I could perform it. Throughout my religious life she’s continued to support my journey, even if her approach to Buddhism is decidedly non-religious, and she has been non-religious since she left her childhood religion of Protestantism.
She’s the person I can call up and talk to about my spells, my attempts at witchcraft, the weird shit that happens to me when I worship the gods. She’s the person I first told about my plan to open a witchcraft shop, and she was 100% supportive. When I talk about maybe writing a book on witchcraft someday, she urges me to do it, saying the world needs my voice.
Not only has she supported my artistic and creative endeavours my entire life, she had the courage to pick up her own artistic passions again after escaping my bio-sire. After years in a marriage where she would throw away her writing, lest he find it and read it, she was finally able to pick up her pen again and has written 9 books to date — fiction, non-fiction, and poetry.
Bottom line, my mom is an incredible human being, and I want her to be around for at least another 20 years. (She’s only 66, ffs.) If you agree with me that she’s amazing and want to help out, there are a few different ways.
Number 1 is the fundraiser I mentioned above. Mom’s too sick to work right now; she needs help to pay for treatments. Her puny pension barely takes care of basic living expenses.
Number 2 — spread the word. You can use the hashtag #Wellness4Wolffy on Twitter or any other social media network. Send the fundraiser link to all your friends. Let people know why you think it’s a worthy cause.
Number 3 — buy our books! Any ebook purchased from Kat & Wolff will help with Mom’s fundraiser (books purchased via 3rd-party retailers like Amazon don’t help). If you have our books already, tell your friends about them! Know any wolf-lovers? Suggest How to Keep a Human or Stranger Skies to them. (Witch-lovers will also like Stranger Skies.) Fans of epic fantasy? Bellica and The Jade Star of Athering. Literary fiction readers who want to read about escape from abusive relationships? White Birds, Broken Sleep, and La Chiripa. People who like absinthe? Bitters. Poetry-lovers? the witless poisoner and glasstown. Or my mom’s non-fiction — one on dental tourism and one on how she fixed her thyroid.
Again, only books bought through our direct sales sites (Kat and Wolff, Kaimana Wolff.com, Katje van Loon.com, The Pack Press, and Stars Above, Stars Below) will help us with the fundraiser, because we get the money immediately and with minimal fees. The money from Amazon and other 3rd-party retailers comes much later, and with more fees taken out. (This isn’t to say don’t ever buy our books from Amazon; gods know it’s also a big help. Just a different sort of help from the fundraiser we’re specifically running right now.)
Number 4 — read my mom’s blog. She’s chronicling her illness at The Law of Love, the blog for her non-fiction persona. Feedback is also very much appreciated! First post is “The Boiling Frog,” with posts coming up every Wednesday for the next few weeks.
Number 5 — if you are local (ie, Southwest BC), there will be a chance to donate and get physical perks. I’m still setting things up, but stay tuned to this page to see what we have available. This way of helping is only available to local folks because of shipping time/money costs.
Ok, that was pretty long-winded. A few other short updates:
So much of religion or faith is ineffable, or experiential, that when people ask me to explain something, or when I feel like I want to write a post about something, my explanation just turns into a lot of vague hand-waving and sentences peppered with “um” and “you know.”