Birthday Joy!

My mother was a twin born on Christmas Day 1926.
She lived for 72 years, 2 months, and 78 days which, for her generation, was a pretty good age.

These days however, people claim that 70 is the new 50. And by those standards mom left us too soon.

 I’ve spent time meandering through these thoughts recently, as in three days I will celebrate my 70th birthday. Amid my ponderings one question has continually kept popping into my mind. "I wonder if I will outlive my mother?"

My wondering was not in a morbid sense. I’m not disturbed by hitting this new decade. I actually feel more positive about life now than I did at 50, and particularly at 60.

I’m in relatively good health, I’m blessed with Irish genetics of hair that's still the original color and skin that resists wrinkles. Sure, I’ve got some sags and bags and can’t remember stuff until I give up trying, but I do my best not to let advancing changes in my body and mind define me.

Instead, I chose joy.

Joy that I live in a home where I am safe and where I can create a space that comforts my being and inspires my creativity.

Joy: that despite starting at the late age of 45, I have been able to build a successful career founded on a variety of jobs as a restaurant manager, Op-Ed Newspaper columnist, legislative media consultant and chief of staff, marketing director for both a medical practice and a retirement community, move-in coordinator for that same retirement community, a weekly talk radio host and a morning drive time co-host, and finally, finally, starting my own events and PR/media business that fills my world with clients that I deeply value and to whom I can bring value.

Joy that I have had more courage than fear in taking risks. Some of those risks didn’t turn out quite the way I imagined---the most disappointing being my candidacy for the NYS Assembly, and my marriages.

Yet the times I risked and won resulted in a wealth of life experiences that still today inspire me to continue risking, no matter my age.

The short list includes my regular commentator/special reporter work at WBFO Radio, my 64 and More year-long interview project that took me nationwide and across the ocean, introducing me to people who changed the landscape of my heart and soul. And of course, there are the vast experiences I have enjoyed over my last twenty years as an author. Writing books have led to some of the greatest rewards of my life and have helped me to realize who I am and what I am meant to do with my story telling ability.

 Joy: that I am blessed with a life filled with love---from people who support my work, friends who make my world a gentler, kinder place, and family who never fail to fill my life with laughter, loving care, and the best hugs in the world.

So this December, as I think about my mother and her Christmas Birthday, and ponder if my life will span beyond her 72 years, I will definitely feel a sense of sadness that she is gone. I will also be grateful for the many joys that have defined my life for the last six decades and look forward to all that is yet to come....for as many days that I am given.

Social Media Hack Mirrors Plot of Money or Love

When preparing to launch Money or Love, Internet Dating From the Far Side of 40, my check list included securing a location (Community Beer Works) and time (October14th 7pm,) planning a menu, and organizing an entertaining program.

When all was in place the only thing left was to promote the launch using my social media sites with more than 5,000 followers. That is until, in a plot twist along the lines of her Money or Love narrative, several of my social media pages were hacked, eliminating half of my audience.

Frustrating?

No doubt. But here’s the irony of the whole messy turn of events.

“The Money or Love storyline is of a man scamming women on internet dating sites by stealing other people’s identities and creating fake profiles. So in a way, If feels as if this hacking of my social media sites brings me full circle in the telling of this story.

However, unlike Money or Love, a Hallmark-style story of family, friendship, and love with a happy ending, the consequences of this hack is that I have lost two of my social media pages and years of content and images, not to mention my diminished ability to market my new book and promote the launch.

After more than a year of publishing delays due to COVID and other circumstances, all I can do now is enlist family, friends, and neighbors to help spread the word and hope to generate my own happy ending.

Money or Love, Internet Dating From the Far Side of 40, is a light-hearted story that unfolds between Halloween and Valentine’s Day and reflects the challenges of internet dating from the far side of 40, and the rewards of finding love at any age.

As part of the book launch event, I have planned a Money or Love Dating Game and am looking for three fun-loving and eligible WNY guys to play along.

Why, you ask?

Because the focus of Money or Love is that whether 19 or 90, we all want someone to share our life and our love, So, why not celebrate that reality with a Money or Love The Dating Game at the launch.?!

For anyone who might be interested, there is a sign-up form on my website where any over-21-and-single guy willing to play for a chance to share lunch with me, can submit his name. Then a committee of people who know me well will choose three contestants.

The night of the launch, I’ll be on one side of a screen and three guys will be on the other. Three questions and answers later, I’ll blindly choose my lunch date.

I’ll admit I was slightly nervous about it before losing my social media pages. Now I’m meditating every day to stay calm as I try to figure out how to reach out to the single men of WNY and hope that three guys step up!”

Tickets for the launch, which include a signed copy of Money or Love, finger foods, a first drink and dessert with coffee and tea, can be purchased at christinaabt.com. Tickets are also available for the launch only, as well as for a livestream of the event.

Anyone interested in participating in The Dating Game can sign up at christinaabt.com.

A portion of the proceeds from the launch and $1 from every book sold will benefit St Luke’s Mission of Mercy in Buffalo, which is featured in Money or Love.

Please help a girl and share, share, share!

Look forward to seeing you on the 14th.

ABOUT

The Value of a Third Grade Education

There is a time between completing the final manuscript of a book and the publishing of that manuscript where I traditionally enter into an author’s zone of self-doubt and anxiety. These days that zone sounds something like this.

”What if no one reads Money or Love?”

”What if they read Money or Love and hate it?”

”What if I never write another book that engages readers and earns reviews like Crown Hill or Beauty & Grace?”

That desolate territory is where I have been languishing for the last few weeks, until an email from my friend, Maureen Purcell, took me on a bit of a life review.

Maureen and I attended Mt St. Mary High School together many years ago. (That is Maureen behind the wheel and me in the backseat.) We recently reconnected via Facebook, yet our alumni friendship is not the place where the two of us most strongly intersect.

For that we have to go back to 1957 and Blessed Sacrament School, in the Town of Tonawanda. There, as a fresh-faced, uniformed, beanie-wearing third grader, I was taught by a funny, kind, and wise woman named Mrs. Dundon… Maureen’s mother.

Marion Dundon was the ultimate teacher, not because of her educational background or degree. Rather, because she was the mother of eight children, five girls and three boys. That experience provided her a full understanding that at the tender age of 6 or 7 years, each one of her third graders were in need of various levels of discipline and equally generous amounts of love.

While I cannot tell you one english, math or science principle I learned in Mrs. Dundon’s classroom, I clearly remember being treated as if I had value and learning that my little voice mattered.

That life lesson came back vividly when Maureen reached out to me after reading one of my Facebook posts on the challenges of producing an error-free book. Her reaction was a generous offer to proof read Money or Love, relying on the expertise she had developed in years of professional corporate writing/copywriting.

I was honored by her offer, but also uncomfortable about responding. There are few people I allow into my pre-publishing inner sanctum of writing and editing. Mostly it is about the amount of trust it takes to let someone read a manuscript to which I have devoted two or more years of my life and a great deal of my heart and soul. When I finally found the courage to explain to Maureen my author’s insecurity, she responded with a reply that is now indelibly inscribed in my being.

”It’s not about critiquing your work, it’s about lifting each other up. We will call it a tribute to my mom. She would be very proud of you.”

Those words took me right back to Mrs. Dundon’s third grade classroom and the lessons of self value and worth she taught me there. They also reminded me of the reasons that I write books…to tell the stories of life that I have experienced and witnessed, as only I can do.

Does that make me an Anne Lamott or an Glennon Doyle? Nope. It makes me a Christina M. Abt, of which there is only one. And, as Mrs. Dundon taught me, my voice matters.

Whether Money or Love becomes a best-seller that Hallmark turns into a movie or an unread door stop at the bottom of the pile, I love this book for the characters that define it and their stories they inspired me to create.

I based those stories on a variety of life experiences I have known or observed and told them with a passion for the telling that has defined me for as long as I can remember. At the end of the day, more than booksales or five-star reviews, that is the true measure of who I am as a storyteller and as an individual.

As I await Maureen’s copy edits, I do so wondering if she will like my latest book. And taking great comfort in the fact that, regardless, she believes her mother is proud of me.

Realizing My Writer's Dream

While I love storytelling and creating characters that touch people's hearts, there is something extra special about being in a room with real people and talking about books, writing, women, wisdom and life.

Today I was invited to speak to the Clarence Contemporary Club, a not for profit philanthropic women's club founded 53 years ago by members of The Clarence Welcome Wagon.

Currently numbering 60 members, these women have fundraised close to $400,000 dollars in support of area charitable and educational activities. Definitely an impressive group.

My assigned speaking topic for this group was based on my first book, Chicken Wing Wisdom. The women wanted to know to acquire it, how to live it and how to share it.

For an hour, I told stories of the 14 women in my book who took their innate senses of wisdom, combined them with food and changed their lives, our community and sometimes even the world.

I then suggested every individual at that luncheon was a CWW Woman, as they have given and continue to give of themselves and their time in volunteering to make a difference throughout Western New York.

Afterwards, the women and I visited as I signed their books and listened to stories they shared about themselves and their lives. Their conversations were so engaging that I was literally unaware that they were purchasing everyone of the thirty copies of my four books I'd brought with me.

Unfazed by my empty table, these supportive women then began placing orders for an additional seven books, with the agreement that I would deliver them by week's end. One kind lady even ordered an advance copy of my newest book, Money or Love, which I promised to hand-deliver when it publishes in May.

While to some authors, 37 books may be a relatively small sale, the support of these women today made me feel like a NY Times Best Selling Author.

Ernest Hemingway once wrote, "“Writing, at its best, is a lonely life." From my experience, there are days, weeks and even months when that statement is true. Yet today. my life as an author was as interactive and validating as any writing dream I ever imagined.

Thank you ladies of The Clarence Contemporary Club for reminding me that I am a writer of talent and a speaker of value. Sorry I didn't get a chance to take pictures with every table. Next time, I promise!

#chickenwingwisdom #crownhill #heartandsoul #beautyandgrace #moneyandlove