The Life and Writings of Barbara Nelson Blinn
Preserving the Legacy for Future Generations
ANSWERING THE CALL
The date is September 5, 2005. Just eight days earlier I convinced my mother to go to the emergency room at Goshen Hospital due to her abdominal pain and weight loss. I was thirty-five years old and had enough medical and nursing education to know I was about to lose my mother. The dreaded cancer diagnosis was presumed based on her test results. Just a few days later we met with the oncologist who told her she could have an extra five months if she took chemotherapy, something she swore she would never do. She shocked me when she said "yes" to the therapy because it might buy her a few more months with her grandchildren, my boys Josh and Jacob White, who at the time were ten and seven. I supported her decision and privately cried many tears while trying to keep a smile on her face and last days special. We did not have a lot of time to fulfill last-minute wishes, but one wish she always had was to get family pictures with just me and her grandsons. My husband worked with a gentleman who had a photography business. So, on this date we made this dream come.
Carol White and Barbara Blinn September 5, 2005
Jake White, Josh White, Barbara Blinn, and Carol White September 5, 2005
After Barbara's death, I felt like I lost my best friend. But I did not have time to grieve her loss. I was working part-time as a nurse practitioner, and the rest of my time was spent as a nation-wide medical education speaker. I was usually traveling three weeks a month and also trying to develop my legal consulting business so I could get off the road. On top of that I was raising two boys, so I did not sort through all of Barbara's belongings for several months.
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When it came to her writing, I corralled it all together and found a bookshelf in my living room to stack it on. That is where it sat for fourteen years. On that shelf in Warren, Indiana and then it moved to Huntington, Indiana.
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One day in early 2019 I felt that shelf was mocking me. That writing was calling out to me to do something with it. Barbara entered many poetry contests throughout the years and won nearly two hundred awards in fifteen states for her efforts. I believed she was an excellent writer, but she had terrible self-confidence. I knew she also wrote short stories and a novel, but never attempted to publish these works. She did not have the emotional or financial support from others to do so.
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Barbara was also scared of failure. She felt like she failed in so many areas of her life. She did not have the strength to potentially endure another one. She had suffered years of traumatic abuse from my father, and struggled caring for a quadriplegic son as well before he died at age sixteen.
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After several months of listening to the call of the writing and ignoring it, I finally answered. Over the next two years, I organized and typed her writings into electronic format. Many writings were hand written, typed on a manual typewriter with handwritten mark-ups, or on small pieces of paper tucked in a folder. Some poems were not finished, so I completed them. Some books needed additional content, so I created it.
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I was amazed that I amassed her material into eight separate books. I learned so much about her during that process that I also have written her biography, which is in the process of being edited for publication as well.
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I felt that God sent me the call to publish what Barbara was unable to when she was alive. This is her legacy. It touched my life is such a deep way, and I learned more about this courageously strong woman after her death than I knew while she was living. It is beautiful and thought-provoking, as well as down-to-earth. Barbara never put on pretenses and she was a genuine person with a big heart.
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When I thought I had completed my search for all her writing, I came across a poem stuffed in the corner of a folder written on a small piece of notepad paper. "My Legacy" is the poem that you will find at the beginning of most of her books. Barbara wrote this poem to me and said she had little leave me, but she did have pieces of her mind that she could leave as her legacy. She told me, "I hope they'll be an inspiration when blue skies have turned to gray, and I hope they will sustain you and help you through a troubled day."
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Her message to me, is my wish for you as well when you read her books. I hope that by sharing Barbara's thoughts and pieces of her mind that you will find a nugget of insight that will make your day better.
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Sincerely,
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Dr. Carol Ann Blinn White
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