Explaining what’s coming ahead. My new writing style. Mum’s birthday.

[a cartoon image of Jodi holding a very large pencil, drawing on the ground in front of her.]

I have made the beginnings of a rough draft of the story of my personalities. A few of the articles, I have written a large portion of. I’m struggling to figure out how to do all of this sequentially.

Hopefully I just figured out that challenge now. I also had to go back and review what I’ve written already because I could have sworn I already wrote some specific things, but I don’t find that I published those.

It’s hard to keep track of what I have written and what a previous Me felt was so important to write …

Going back through newsletters from last year - December, November, October, 2024 - those are topics that felt so important to me last year. So that’s why I wrote them. Who I am now, though, wouldn’t choose to write those things, I feel like. It’s like looking at a shadow.

Have you ever gone to a children’s science museum, a shadow box room? There is a slow strobe light that lights up maybe every 15-30 seconds. Kids place themselves on the wall with arms outstretched, or try to jump in time with the light, or squat. The strobe comes on, and it flashes brightly.

When it goes off, the kids pull themselves away from the wall, and there is an outline of a vivid green background and a black shadow of the shape they took while they waited for the strobe light to shine.

I feel like looking at my newsletters from the last several months of 2024 matches that sort of description for me. These brightly lit shadows of a way I used to hold myself. And it’s fading fast so another brightly lit shadow can come and take its place.

I have many newsletters I am going to write. I figured out today that I think it maps out nicely if I describe the splitting of my personality / personalities in 5 year increments. I started with the newsletter about the lobster and the starfish, and even before that, talking about my mum’s lasagna, though I think the stories in my head about it didn’t make it onto the (digital) paper for that newsletter. Maybe in the future. Or maybe that story will be reserved for my memoirs at some point in the future. Santa figures into that set of stories.

So I think next week, I will dive into telling my life story in here in about 5 year increments. And every story I tell has to do with either the dividing up of my persona(s) or the integrating into who I am now. Every story that I share is important in my life, to me, to explain what has happened.

Years ago, I read a book from the library about a woman who had multiple personality disorder. I remember one of her personas was a young teen boy. Or maybe he was about 9 years old. He had a different name. He wore his hair in a pony tail with a baseball cap and insisted to be called by that name all day. My stories are not like that story. Mine are different. I have felt like different people, but it’s not in this way. I’ve always been Jodi. But there are different Jodis.

Even before I was born, my parents knew that no matter if I was going to be a boy or a girl, I would have the same name. If I was a boy, it would have been spelled “Jody.” But I was born a girl, and thus I am “Jodi.” Coincidentally, 2 weeks ago, I happened to ask my (lady) UPS driver what her name was. She laughed and said, “Jodie.” Like all Jodis say to each other - I asked her, “how do you spell it?” She said, “with an ‘ie.’” We had a laugh about it. Silly me, I blurted out that I had the same name. She said, “I know.” It was funny. It’s always fun to meet another Jodi / Jodie / Jody. We are a special kind of people.

This reminds me of something else I want to share - for Christmas one year, my step-mom’s mom bought me stationery. She was an epic letter writer. And I was too, for a while. My customized stationery came in an acrylic open box. The stationery said, “A Jot from Jodi” - and that’s where I got the name for this newsletter! I have always loved that set of words together. And when I was naming my newsletter, this is where the name was born - from my stationery I had as a tween-ager. (Double digits like 10, 11, 12, but not yet a teenager.)

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The other MAJOR thing I want to share here is something that is of vital importance for you to read before you continue with my personality integration story.

In late January and maybe early February, something inside me completely shifted. My entire persona changed. I am a different person now than who I was in the middle of December.

I can only imagine and expect that my writing will shift, too. I may not write the way I used to. And I am okay with this. I am okay with who I am now. I am happy and I am not the scaredy cat I was for decades and decades (see future stories).

My partner says I am more confident now. I feel it, too.

I am sure my writing is shifting.

As I gain my own clarity, I will go and review and revise the “about” my newsletter section. It will take time. I don’t have a staff and a lot of days my brain is barely working. So I do what I can, when I can, and time keeps marching forward whether I’m ready for it to do that or not.

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One other thing I want to share -

It’s coming up on my Mum’s birthday in a few days. A few newsletters ago, I gave you her lasagna recipe. I won’t share which day is specifically her birthday, because it doesn’t feel right to share this information if I can’t ask for her permission to share it.

I haven’t spoken to her in 11 years. I think she may be “living off the land” somewhere. My heart breaks for her that she is in the predicament she is in. I wish she and I had a better relationship. But we don’t. I wish I could do something to help her, but she doesn’t seem to want me to.

But wherever she is, I wish her a nice day and I wish her happiness and goodness in whatever form that takes for her wellbeing & desires.

Maybe you can join me in sending out to the universe, well-wishes for my Mum on her birthday and her life in general, too. I miss her. I wish things were different. But, alas, this is how they are. I accept this is the reality of this situation.

If you feel like it, maybe you can make her lasagna recipe and send her good wishes. I would appreciate just the sending of good wishes to her. I think that would mean something to her and she might feel the energy. Thank you for considering it.

I truly appreciate the readers of my publication. Thank you for reading. And next week, we will resume the stories of the splitting of my personalities and the sewing back or integrating back of my splintered personas.