Hello from Queen Me!

As most of you know, I took back www.QueenPower.com from Barbara Bellissimo in late January of this year. It took me about five minutes to make my decision. “Yes! Yes! Yes!” Although I knew the timing was bad, I’ll explain later, I thought I was ready to say yes. Not.

For those of you who want the short and sweet version…

1. The forums will be back soon! QueenPower.com is collaborating with By, For and About Women and will announcing our forums SOON.
2. With the help of two talented cyberfriends, we are launching a radio show called “The Mother Daughter Mother Club.”
3. We’re excited about Queen Power, and hope you’ll stick around to see what we’re planning next!

And now for the longer, sadder, but much more interesting version…

Here’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
In early January, after returning from a holiday trip, I found the letter requesting my presence at the courthouse the following Monday. It was my lucky day—jury duty time. Not sure why, but I have rarely been called to serve. The first time, I no longer lived in the county requesting my presence and the second time, I had an infant baby and was excused.

My husband encouraged me to “get out of it.”

“No. I can’t do that. It’s my civic duty. I’ll go and see what happens.”

“Okay, but remember I told you so.”

Why is he always right?

After two hours of talk and hearing twenty something excuses from people “getting out of it”, the county clerk randomly drew names out of a spinning raffle drum. If called, we’d be seated on the first jury trial starting immediately. Turns out, I was lucky number twelve.

And so it began.

After it was all over I wrote an essay about my experience. The Amazon Shorts program editors accepted it (Yippee!!). I will share details about the new Short soon.

The experience—the experience that lasted 4.5 days—left a mark on me. By the end of my week of service, my soul had been scarred. And to make matters worse, I didn’t feel safe in my own home anymore. It took me months to get over it. Months. And I am still processing what happened and why. Thankfully, now I will go days without thinking about my court experience. I am better.

A couple of weeks after this happened, I found out Barbara Bellissimo had taken a new job. Barbara decided she couldn’t managed both the job and www.QueenPower.com. Thrilled to have the opportunity to return, I took www.QueenPower.com back.

I had so many ideas. Still do. But I had been injured—emotionally damaged—and no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t move forward. Soon after saying yes to Barbara, confusion set in. Then came the downward spiral. Besides confusion, I had turned my attention to freelancing again. Weekly, rejections flooded my inbox while others didn’t respond at all. My enthusiasm for re-launching www.QueenPower.com dried up. I managed to write an introductory queen-zine and update the website. My juror experience knocked me off course. I no longer had a vision, a direction. Thanks goodness I had already booked some speaking engagements—it kept the cash flowing and forced me to be out and about with others.

Twelve Weeks Later…
There really is a light at the end of the tunnel. I see it now. My confusion is rapidly turning to clarity and again I know the direction to take. I wish I could tell you the details—the steps I took to regain my direction. Looking back, I believe when you hit a “brick wall” you need to stop and evaluate. I spent a lot of time thinking about my desires and motives. I talked to others. I read books. I listened to inspiring radio programs. Mainly, though, I waited. I didn’t fight my feelings. I didn’t try to whip myself into shape. Eventually, and much quicker than ever before, I snapped out of it.

New Direction
One of my turning points involved a phone conversation with Edie Galley of By, For and About Women Radio. Besides having similar goals (which included our mutual interest to help women by providing information and resources), we also shared a desire to offer start-up funds for women inspired projects and businesses (hold your horses, it’s not something we are doing yet).

By the end of our meeting, we had agreed to launch a new forum for www.QueenPower.com subscribers and By, For and About Women Radio hosts and listeners! I don’t know about you, but I’ve missed our forums. We’ll send out an announcement as soon as they are up and going!

Recently, another opportunity has come my way. Again, Edie Galley is involved. Soon Joyce Faulkner, Kathe Gogolewski and I will be on the radio! Our new show “The Mother Daughter Mother Club” will hit the airwaves by summer 2007. Again, I’ll provide more details as soon as possible.

And what about QueenPower.com
QueenPower.com will continue to evolve and grow. The first priority is to reestablish the forums. Next, we’ll turn our attention to other benefits. As evident by the new radio show topic, we’re also going to focus on mother daughter relationships. My next book is for parents of adolescent girls and many of the themes for the show will come from the book. And as always, we’ll continue to provide information and resources. From past experiences, we know the forum is a beginning place—a place to help women connect and build relationships. Many of our queens continue to converse privately with former forum friends and many have collaborated on projects and in business.

Royal blessings!
Allyn Evans

Take care until next time. We love to hear from you.

If you haven’t read our featured blog lately, enjoy: www.myjourneytothequeendom.blogspot.com.

P.S. We haven’t forgotten our call for Queens. We’ll be setting up something soon for some lucky Queen to be coached (for no charge) and then we’ll share what happened with our other queens.