November 22: The day I finished the first draft of my book.

As some of you may know, November 22 is a day that means a lot to my family. It is the day my great-great-grandmother Bessie Anthony died in childbirth when she was just 32, having been forced to hang up her golf clubs (and have as many children as possible) after she won the national championship in 1903. It is also the day that her granddaughter (my grandmother) Kathleen was born – exactly twenty years later – on November 22, 1932.

As of today, November 22 has taken on new meaning in being the day that I finished the first draft of my book in Bessie’s rocking chair, in a place she knew and loved so well. Four years ago, from this same chair, I started writing what I thought was a biography of a turn-of-the-century female golfer. Yet what has emerged is a book far bigger and more beautiful than anything I could have imagined. It is a story about family and womanhood – about our deep ache for that place “where all the beauty came from.” It is Bessie’s story, Granny’s story, and my story, all wrapped into one.

Above all, it is a story about grandmothers. These past four years, Granny and Bessie have walked beside me for every high and low. They were with me when I married the love of my life, just as they were with me when I got sober and said goodbye to our first baby, on a beach not far from this chair. Writing our story has been the crucible of my healing. It has been my way of working through the pain of my childhood and the loss of someone I’d never be ready to lose. It has allowed me to crack open a vast reservoir of beauty and truth, lifting a curtain that has kept generations of women in the shadows for far too long.

Born 20 years after Bessie died, Granny never got the chance to know her grandmother, though she loved her and even dreamt of writing a book about her. Six years after her death, this book is a fulfillment of that dream. It is a tribute to not only the grandmother I was lucky enough to know, but also the grandmother who prayed and loved her into being.

I am eternally grateful to everyone who helped me get here. Now let’s get this baby published!

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