Do We Ever Fail?

Hi, I’m Judith Ashley, author of The Sacred Women’s Circle series, soul nourishing romantic women’s fiction with light paranormal elements. My stories show you what life could be like if you had a place like The Circle where you are unconditionally accepted, supported and loved. And where, with this support, you make choices to overcome the darkest nights of your life to choose love and light.

This month Genre-istas can repost an old blog post from Romancing The Genres or from another blog. Or they can write something original on whatever PG or PG-13 topic they choose. I’ve chosen to do the latter.

While I was going through, yet again, piles of papers and notes, I found scribbled on the back of a grocery list the following:

To be successful, you must learn how to handle failure.

My challenge with this quote is I’m not sure where I saw it or heard it. When I Googled it, a quote from Michael Jackson has the message but stated a bit differently in that he said one must learn to fail.

I prefer the learn how to handle failure.

Why? I’ve never met anyone who has always done things perfectly. In other words, sat up, crawled, stood up, walked, talked in full sentences, spelled all words correctly, etc. We all move forward in our lives by striving to learn that which we see as beneficial to us.

Children who are always carried or pushed in a stroller do not walk as early or as easily as a child who learns to turn over, crawl, stand and then walk.

When I read that quote I’d scribbled on the grocery list, I thought of my journey as an author.

First: What is success? I’ve written eight fiction and one non-fiction books. They are all available through the major vendors (think Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, etc.) in both e-book and print. I had a goal to have my non-fiction available in audio book this year and that isn’t going to happen for a variety of reason I won’t bore you with. (and yes, that’s a dangling preposition).

Second: My definition of success has changed in the 20+ years I’ve been writing.

Third: What is failure? I like the premise that no one fails. What they’ve done is ruled out what doesn’t work. Knowing that allows them to be more focused on finding what does work.

Fourth: While I may not succeed in the exact way I’d planned, that doesn’t mean I’ve totally failed. My writing goals for this year centered on getting that audio book recorded and released and writing 10K new words.

While, as you know, I didn’t get the audio book recorded and released, I did write 10K new words. Perhaps not a new short story, etc., and yet I did write over 10K new words in blog posts for Romancing The Genres, Windtree Press and The Glasser Institute for Choice Theory-US.

So I reached 50% of my goal. We often discount what we do achieve because we didn’t reach 100%.

I also believe that we are always doing our best giving what else is happening in our lives, where we are at the time (health, other commitments, etc.) and how we perceive what is going on in our lives.

For the past several years I’ve been battling with chronic fatigue. I’m sure that some of you can relate to the “I’m tired of being tired” message I reported to my doctor more than once.

We tried various things that did not work.

And then labs showed my blood iron levels were below 20 (normal range is 20 – 150). Low blood iron levels were the culprit. After looking at an iron rich diet (thankfully I like spinach, almonds and dark chocolate) my numbers did not go up and actually dropped. At one point my levels were 9.

Drastic measures?

Not really drastic but definitely annoying. A few more tests showed I had a bacteria that interfered with my body’s ability to absorb the nutrients in my diet. Two courses of antibiotics finally killed the culprit.

With it being gone, I knew I’d be bouncing with energy in no time at all.

“Not so fast” said my body.

In August of this year through the efforts of a friend who has no qualms about searching for things on the internet, I found Nature’s Bounty Gentle Iron. Those blood iron level numbers began to rise!

How does all this connect to “To Be Successful You Must Learn How To Handle Failure”?

Like most things in life, it takes more than one try or effort to be successful

For me the critical piece is to continue to search for answers, to continue to fight for the level of success I want and have the right to experience and to continue to believe that, in the end, I will succeed while acknowledging the end may not look exactly like I initially envisioned.

And how does this all fit into my writing?

The characters in The Sacred Women’s Circle series face the every-day kinds of challenges most women face. They each keep searching and in that process make the decisions and changes so that they do manifest their dreams. Perhaps not exactly as they’d originally seen it, but certainly exactly as it needed to be for their happiness.

You can find my books at your favorite e-book vendor as well as through my website www.JudithAshley.net and Windtree Press. Print books are available at Jan’s Paperbacks in Beaverton, OR and Arte Soleil in Portland, OR. Get the addresses from my website. And be sure to ask your library if you’d prefer to read my books through that resource.

Learn more about Judith's The Sacred Women’s Circle series at JudithAshley.net

Check out Judith’s Windtree Press author page.

You can also find Judith on FB! 

© 2023 Judith Ashley