The Writings of a Book: My Memoir

Me, Age 4

I've been toying with writing a memoir for years -- since my days at InStyle. So that makes it about a decade I have been digesting words, stories and building a platform through this blog to finally start the big story.

This isn't your ordinary memoir about why my life turned out the way it did, and who did what to influence my life. This is a story about how I learned my life through my blog posts, about learning who my father is and was (a person of some mystery to me while growing up), and how I came to understand that as much as I love beauty and makeup -- my primary goal is to provide health and wellness information as I suffer from chronic medical conditions that effect my ability to mother, interrupt my daily life and have made me the strong survivor I am today.

So this is where I turn the corner in NuyBeauty.com and go from providing easy beauty service for busy women and mothers, to sharing my life as beauty expert who for the first time in my life is finally embracing the disabilities of my illnesses as POSitivies and to share the experience within my writing as I look back a little further and reflect on how today came to be such a beautiful day.

I'll share passages of my book as I blog and keep you posted. And don't worry, the beauty tips, makeup up know-how, parenting venting and sharing will always be there! Maybe even a recipe ;-).

Now, wish me luck...

First Share:

My father traveled a lot from when I was first born. He was gone on average two weeks out of every month. The story goes that I always had tummy aches and got belly sick when he left for his exotic abroad work trips. I missed him dearly.  But my family also had no idea also, that years later I would be diagnosed with a very rare liver disease contributing to this medical situation.

The concept of Dad is so important to the little ones, no matter how small. I admired and adored my father, even though I had a very limited understanding of what he did until my early teens (he is a demographer, social scientist, economist and political scientist). 

When I was old enough to be able to stand up in the car behind him as he was driving us somewhere in Honolulu, Hawaii where I grew up -- this before child car safety rules became much more heavy handed -- I would hold tightly to any part of what was available to me to reach that I could. His jacket shoulder sleeve, his shirt sleeve; I'd stand very officially behind him on the middle bump of the back seat foot bottoms and be proud that little me was attached in my own strong and balanced way in our 1970s roaring Dodge Dart. 'Daddy is close to me now,' I remember thinking, no matter how rocky this ride.

--N.C.