TRUTH And The Eye Of The Beholder

Charise M. Studesville: The Perks of Being A Hoodoo Rose | Mandy M. Roth

Aged to Perfection Author Spotlight: Charise M. Studesville The Perks of Being A Hoodoo Rose About Charise M. Studesville Charise wrote her first story on a chalkboard at 5 years old. Since then, she’s expanded to writing books, films, and tv shows, mostly on paper. She’s also the …
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Author Q&A

Q: What’s a misconception about midlife that you’d like to clear up?

A: We are not obsolete or past our prime. We are the precise opposite of that, smarter, wiser, focused, practiced, resolute, innovative, seasoned. The idea that beauty and desirability are traits that belong solely to women under 40 is the most preposterous and damaging offshoot of Madison Avenue modern advertising tropes there has ever been. I look around at my friends who are over 40, and I am awestruck at the everything-ness that they encompass. One friend just turned 70 this year, and she is the most vibrant, brilliant, beautiful human I know…still writing, editing, dating, and falling in love. We didn’t grow up knowing that was a possibility. But now we are creating a new paradigm for ourselves, and the women who will come along after us. Also, sex after 40 is way hotter and more fun than anyone ever told us. We know ourselves, our likes and dislikes, our bodies. It’s honestly the best kept secret of midlife.

Q: What was your favorite part of writing Paranormal Women’s Fiction? 

A: The relationship between the sisters. While the main story revolves around two sisters in their forties, there are three generations of sisters in this story. While I was writing it, I was missing my own sister. She lives in Louisville, KY, while I live in Los Angeles. My heart has ached all through the pandemic that I couldn’t just hug her. Writing this story brought the spirit of our being reunited back to my mind and heart. We have had to work at our relationship. But no matter the bumps in the road, we are one another’s fiercest allies and protectors. And there is no one who can make us laugh like we do with each other. Our kids always know when we are talking, because we sound like we are 16-years-old, giggling as we tell our secrets. Writing this story brought all of that into play for me.

Q: Tell us a bit about your story.

A: The story is ultimately about family, the sacred bond that sisters can have with one another, and the ancestral traditions and ties that bind us to each other. But it is also about the possibility that romantic love is out there for each of us, simply waiting for the right time to make its arrival into our lives.

My Homage to a Beautiful Soul

In honor of World Suicide Prevention Day, I share this from the heart, something I wrote in 2015 out of love for an old friend…

Someone I love once told me, I am the Collector Of Broken Birds. She meant that I tend to bond with people who are in ownership of their pain, who have seen things in life that would leave others lost amidst the rubble. I knew what she meant. But I never looked at it that way. Instead, I saw it as an outgrowth of my understanding of pain, and my willingness to see it in others without shrinking away from it. Looking into the eyes of pain does not scare me, as it does so many other people. I don’t see it as contagious, or a sign of weakness. I see it for what it is, the remnant of survival. So, when some are fooled into believing that beautiful woman who is always smiling, is also the beholder of a perfect, pain and sorrow free existence, I am not so quick to be taken in by the smile worn across the battle scars. And for those of us who can see both the smile and the scars, without flinching, and also share a glimpse of our own scarring under the smile with that brave soul across from us, who also doesn’t flinch, that is a miraculous moment when it feels as though the universe, or god, is saying that it sees you, and loves you, no matter your imperfections and complications.

I met a woman who proved to be one of these rare souls, while I was in the throes of mommying my little trio of girls, and she was mommying her trio of one boy and two girls. She offered humor and irreverence and a kind welcome that doesn’t always come from a lifelong resident of a small community, towards a newbie interloper. But she never thought twice in making me feel welcomed and at home, without any of the once-over that can be used even by adult women in their leftover from middle school dynamics. After awhile of knowing one another, we chatted one day about a film I was blown away by, Searching For Angela Shelton, where 70% of the filmmaker’s namesakes she discovers in her travels across the US, share the same unfortunate background of being survivors of rape, sexual abuse, or domestic violence. But before I could get the name of the film out, she finished my sentence for me, sharing that she’d been blown away by the honesty and rawness and bravery of the film, as well. We each shared our connection to the film from our respective personal lives, and joked that we would forever be “Angela Shelton Sisters.” After that, we kept in contact with each other, and relished the honesty we could put forth with each other, facts we wouldn’t share freely with many others, not because of shame, but because not everyone could be expected to look into the eyes of broken birds, and still be able to see the bird, without only focusing upon the broken bits. This woman became my friend. And in doing so, she fortified my vision of myself as a member of an army of women who were strong enough to buck family secrets, and societal victim blaming, without crumbling under the burden of The Past, in order to build our lives with depth and love and humor and strength.

This week, she drove to a quiet spot, one she’d probably driven past a million times, on her way to take kids to activities, or running errands in surrounding communities, or even as a teenager, while looking for the perfect, secret drinking and make-out spot. But last Saturday, she navigated her way there for her own private reasons. Some of those, I know from our conversations, were most-likely the remnants of the shadows of what made her a beautiful, broken bird. She acted in the here and now, but the reasoning was put into play during those early years, when carefree, sun-dappled moments were darkened with unthinkable violation and betrayals of the highest order. When someone loses a limb, there can be excruciating moments of phantom pain, even though there is nothing there, to the naked eye. Today, as I think of my friend, I’m reminded that the scars we carry bring their own phantom pain. And, sometimes, that phantom pain is enough to move us to cut it off at its source, and life has to end in order to bring us the relief that living could not grant us. I pray that wherever she might be, she finds the laughter and love and kindness and beauty that she shared with the rest of us while she was here, along with finally reaching her own little patch of sun where what made her broken is forever vanished with the first shimmer of her ever after.