The Life and Writings of Barbara Nelson Blinn
Preserving the Legacy for Future Generations
ANSWERING THE CALL
The date was 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 after her visit to the ER, 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. Imagine how shocked I was 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 make her last days as special as I could. 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 true.
Carol White and Barbara Blinn September 5, 2005
Jake White, Josh White, Barbara Blinn, and Carol White September 5, 2005
After my mother'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 while also trying to develop my fledgling legal consulting business so I could get off the road. On top of that, I was raising two boys, so I did not have time to sort through all of my mother's belongings for several months.
When it came to her writing, I corralled it all together and found a bookshelf to stack it on in my living room. On a shelf is where it sat for nearly fourteen years, first in Warren, Indiana, and then on another when I moved to Huntington, Indiana.
One day in early 2019, I felt that shelf was mocking me. All that writing was calling out to me to do something with it. Barbara entered many poetry contests throughout the years, and she 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 had also written several short stories and a novel, but never attempted to publish any of these works. She did not have the emotional or financial support from others to do so.
Barbara was also scared of failure. She felt like she had 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 had struggled greatly caring for a quadriplegic son before he died at age sixteen.
After several months of ignoring the constant call of the writing, I finally answered. Over the next few years, I organized and retyped her works into digital 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.
I was amazed to discover that the extent of her writings amassed a collection of eight separate books. I learned so much about her during that process that I also wrote her biography, which will also be available for publication soon.
I felt that God sent me the call to publish what Barbara was unable to while she was alive. This is her legacy. It touched my life in such a deep way, and I learned more about this strong, courageous 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.
When I thought I had completed my search for all her writings, 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 to 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."
Her message to me is also my wish for you as you read her books. I hope that by sharing Barbara's thoughts and pieces of her mind you will find a nugget of insight that will make your day better.
Sincerely,
Dr. Carol Ann Blinn White