As I sat down to write this morning, I opened my email, and a reminder came up on my computer reminding me that today is my friend Jacqui’s birthday. Today, she would have been 41 years old, had she not died three and a half years ago.

I once wrote this book called The Mediterranean Source. I could not have written it without Jacqui. In fact, I needed her so much throughout this book, that I dedicated the book to her. The fact that she had passed away before I wrote it, is beside the point. The truth is, she was with me the whole entire time. Without my memories of her personality or her love of life – I don’t think I could have transferred those things into The Mediterranean Source.

I finished writing the book fairly quickly, and now it is sitting in my dusty literary drawer, waiting for me to pull it out for its final structural edit. The last edit is planned to start in mid-June… less than a month away. Does this scare me? Hell yes. I started writing this book just after Jacqui’s 38^th birthday, and it was done and dusted long before her 39^th. Now that I have put it away for a couple of years, I am ready to let it go – finally.

One of my writerly colleagues Penny Epel, recently said, “To me, the energy of the Soul and Spirit doesn’t dissipate, it just changes form.” What a beautiful and encouraging way to look at this process.

I guess that in a way, this is the same sort of change that this manuscript will go through. While it was in Jacqui’s memory that encouraged me to write it, it will undergo some serious form changing once it goes through the last edit, and then perhaps, one day, it will hit someone else’s shelf in its complete form.

To me, Jacqui will always live on in this book. And for others, she will always live on in our memories. And just perhaps, her memory will live on in some way from readers reading my work once it’s published.

Beautiful woman, beautiful life. Never stop embracing it, for time is a valuable commodity.