Dixie Gillaspie is the author of Just Blow it Up – Firepower for Living an Unlimited Life, Doses of Dynamite – Firepower for Capturing the Inspiration in Everyday Things, and most recently, The Truth About Winter. She has nearly 30 years of experience as a coach, business consultant, and analyst to many entrepreneurs and business leaders. A self-described storyteller, Dixie spent her childhood devouring stories in any way she could. Her love of reading from an early age has developed her into the successful author and writer she is today. The Truth About Winter is one of the must read books of the summer. It has a way of inspiring change and is captivating from start to finish.
Dixie resides in the Midwest, still devours books, and writes daily. We had an opportunity to speak with her this past week, this is what she shared with us.
When did you first find your love for reading and writing? Do you recall your first book that captured that love?
I can’t remember not loving books. There’s a little couplet that comes to mind; “Richer than I you can never be, for I had a mother who read to me.” My mother was almost 40 when I came along, I was a big surprise, and she wasn’t much for playing games with me, but she read to me before my little eyes could even focus on the page. I started recognizing words when I was four years old because she read the same books over and over, following along with her finger, and my brain just kind of connected the dots. So, by the time I should have been in kindergarten, which I skipped, I’d started reading to her.
The book I most remember though was a little book of poetry for children. I picked it out at the store before I could read the words and I still have it today. It was tiny, beautifully illustrated with the pirate’s cave, and the gypsy fire, and the moon peeking through the mist, so it caught my imagination. But it was also the first book that let me hear the song in the story, and I’ve never lost my love of finding the cadence in a phrase or the way a word suggests it’s meaning just by the way it feels on the tongue.
We hear you have an interesting nickname. Can you tell us the story of how this came about?
When I was in grade school the other kids started calling me “Dixie Dynamite.” Growing up in a cult-like religion that didn’t allow television or radio I didn’t have any idea where they came up with it, but it stuck. It’s kind of funny now, but I hated it. I thought they were saying I was volatile or destructive and I didn’t see myself that way at all. I imagine they were inspired by the show Good Times, but who knows. I know they were pretty surprised that I didn’t like it.
Years later two different clients tagged me with that nickname, and I’d learned that saying someone was “dynamite” was a way of saying they were high energy, high vibe, high value so this time I embraced it as the compliment it was intended to be. When I published Just Blow It Up: Firepower for Living an Unlimited Life I even used the dynamite metaphor to describe my method for eliminating barriers in our life and some of my social media profiles still use “DixieDynamite” as the handle.
Your last book, Just Blow It Up: Firepower for Living an Unlimited Life, was non-fiction and written from your experience with clients. Your new book, The Truth About Winter, seems to be very different. What do the two books have in common?
Really both books are about our power to create anything we choose regardless of the circumstances of our life. Just Blow It Up was based on the experiences I have had as a coach with people coming to me and saying, “What I really want to do is this,” and then following it with, “But I can’t because,” and all the reasons they believe that can’t have what they want. So the book is a “how to” for blasting through the walls that are created from our beliefs about what we can’t do.
The Truth About Winter is a fictionalized account of how we choose to transform the energy of pain and fear into the energy of love and creation. It’s an allegorical (and greatly accelerated) version of the work I did to redefine myself and transform my life after abuse and to not allow abuse to shape my life, but rather to choose how I would shape my life after the abuse. So, it is also about claiming the power to create who we are and how we live regardless of our past experiences.
The basis of all of my work is that we have the power to choose our lives. We choose who we become, we choose what we create in the world, we choose the energy and emotion we experience and embody. Both books are just different approaches to sharing the same message.
As you’ve noted, The Truth About Winter is semi-autobiographical. Did you run into any challenges writing it in this style and if so, how did you overcome them?
I think the biggest challenge is recognizing your strengths and putting them on the page. Telling the story in a meaningful way meant writing about the truths I discovered about myself, both complimentary and not so much so. It wasn’t hard to write the scenes about my failures and weaknesses, but writing the scenes that acknowledge the wisdom and power this journey has brought me to sometimes felt pretty bold, even audacious.
But I just reminded myself that every story takes us from one place to another, from one state of reality to another, and for this story to serve its purpose, to be both true and meaningful, I had to write it the way I felt it. And sometimes in my own story I felt pretty lost and powerless and sometimes I felt wise and powerful, and that transformation is what I want the reader to experience as well so it had to be written that way.
What was interesting was that I didn’t get pulled back into the emotion of the past. There are some passages that make me teary even now, but it’s the same emotion as I have when I read any story and I’m feeling with the character. It’s not personal, it’s not present, it’s just a story that I’m not living any more.
If you could spend a day with any author, living or deceased, who would it be and why?
I’ve had the privilege of meeting and even having close relationships with some of my favorite authors. But the one I’d most like to spend a day with is Patricia A. McKillip, who wrote some of my favorite stories including The Riddle Master Trilogy.
Unfortunately, she left this plane of existence last year, so I’m not going to get to spend a day with her this lifetime, but I would have loved to ask her what inspired her characters. Not only was she (in my opinion) one of the most lyrical and evocative writers of our time in any genre she had this unusual way of making you feel for all the characters. Even when you were rooting against the villain, hoping they were defeated soon so you could stop holding your breath, you just had to hurt for them too. In nearly every one of her books you’d find that there is not one character that you don’t end up having compassion for, even as you heave a sigh of relief when they’re dead.
I wish we had more stories like that in the world, that remind us that every creature has a heart, they feel pain, and fear, and desire just like we do. And even if they make harmful choices, there is still the kernel of good, the original self before they made those choices, that we can honor, even love.
Follow and download The Truth About Winter https://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Winter-Dixie-Gillaspie-ebook/dp/B0BYTNXKM6
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