Tis the season to be jolly…or is it? For some of us who have
lost a loved one or are struggling with challenges which seem insurmountable, the
holidays can be an especially difficult time. Well, here’s a piece of GOOD NEWS.
There is a special book, full of life strategies, life-embracing, fascinating
anecdotes, funny jokes, and yummy recipes that can help to pull you out of your
funk. It’s called At the End of Your
Rope? Tie a Knot and Hang on. Help Has
Arrived! Buy a copy as a gift to yourself and grab a few more to give away
to people you love. It was penned by my good friend Camille Sanzone. Here is a
segment from a recent interview:
Liz:
Can you tell my readers a little about your background, and your nationality?
Camille:
My full name is Camille Adelina Sanzone…that should tell you something right
off the bat. I come from a very strict Sicilian family, but there
was always lots of music, lots of food, lots of laughter, lots of food… Did
I say that already? (Laughs.) I was raised with food to the left of me
and food to the right of me. My luck – it settled in front of me and
behind me.
Liz: I love how you include your mom’s recipes in the book. But tell us a little about your career.
Camille: I
won’t recite my entire résumé…as my background has been
diverse. I’ve been a caseworker in children’s protective services and I’ve been
a bank training officer; I’ve worked with people challenged with AIDS, seniors
struggling with Alzheimer’s disease; I’ve been an instructor with Women In
Distress, teaching a program in middle and high schools called “It’s not OK,”
about abusive relationships; I’ve been executive producer at an all news/talk
radio station, and an activities coordinator at a senior citizen day
center…among other things.
Liz: I love how you include your mom’s recipes in the book. But tell us a little about your career.
Camille: I
won’t recite my entire résumé…as my background has been
diverse. I’ve been a caseworker in children’s protective services and I’ve been
a bank training officer; I’ve worked with people challenged with AIDS, seniors
struggling with Alzheimer’s disease; I’ve been an instructor with Women In
Distress, teaching a program in middle and high schools called “It’s not OK,”
about abusive relationships; I’ve been executive producer at an all news/talk
radio station, and an activities coordinator at a senior citizen day
center…among other things.
Liz:
Sounds like you’ve lived a life of service, Camille. Tell me, what prompted you
to write your book, At the End of your Rope? Tie a Knot & Hang
On! Help has Arrived!
Camille: I
started writing it in 1986, after writing an 8-page suicide letter.
Liz: A suicide letter?
Camille: Yes,
and the operative word in that sentence, Liz, is letter; had I
written the traditional suicide note, I might have gone through
with it, but 8 long, hand-written pages later, I had managed to talk myself out
of it. For once in my life, being prolific saved
it!
Liz: That
was 1986. You’re not saying it took you twenty-eight years to write your book,
are you?
Camille: Perhaps,
in a way, because it took me 28 years to be ready to write
it. After I wrote that letter, I wrote a few chapters of what was
going to be a Suicide-Prevention Manual because I wanted to share what I’d
learned.
Liz: And
what was that?
Camille: That
most people who attempt suicide don’t really want to die; they just don’t want
to go on living the way they’ve been living. I know all I wanted was
for the emotional pain to stop. But somehow I didn’t think people
would buy a Suicide-Prevention Manual – too much stigma attached to the title;
so, I put the chapters away and didn’t go back to them until a few years
ago. When I did, I came at it from a whole new
perspective. At the End of your Rope is decidedly not a
Suicide-prevention manual; it is a Life-embracing Manual.
Liz: How
so?
Camille:
Well, I realized I had to make an about-face, make better choices and take
responsibility for my own happiness. You’ve probably heard of NDE’s, Liz; an
NDE being a Near Death Experience. Well, if I had committed suicide,
I would have had an NLE, a Near Life Experience. You see, I was so
close to living a full life, but because of the monumental, albeit temporal pain,
I almost summarily ended it.
Liz: I
never thought of suicide that way.
Camille: As
an aside, once when I was in counseling, my therapist asked me if I had
considered suicide. My immediate response was, “No, but thanks for
the suggestion.” My sense of humor is, apparently, always
intact. Anyway, actually contemplating suicide gave
me the jolt I needed to choose to live life consciously, intentionally, and
with joy. And my book is intended to show others how to do that, to encourage
them to take a deep breath of life and assure them that things are going to get
better, that they’re going to be OK. But my book is not just for
people on the verge…it is truly for anyone who wants to find better and more
life-enhancing ways of being in the world.
Liz: Are
you working on any other books?
Camille: I’m
reformatting my one-woman play into a book: Confessions of a Recovering
Catholic: I still make the sign of the cross when I pass a PIZZA HUT! While
it makes some serious observations, it is, essentially, filled with material
from my stand up routines.
Liz: Please
tell us a little about your stand up comedy? How long have you been
doing that?
Camille: I’ve
done it on and off since the eighties. Through my work in radio, I
met the great, late Phyllis Diller when I was 35. She heard me do my
act and was very encouraging, telling me she was 35 when she
began her career, but I wasn’t cut out for the life of a stand-up comic –
traveling across the country, doing one-night stands.
Liz:
And what do you do when you aren’t writing?
Camille: I
play at the piano, and I have sing-alongs with friends and
family. I also host a weekly Internet radio show, “Tie a Knot &
Hang On! Help has Arrived!” It airs LIVE Wednesdays at 1
pm Eastern Time on: http://w4wn.com/
Liz:
Where can readers go to find your book?
Camille: They
can go to Amazon.com,
enter my name: Camille Sanzone and they’ll find the perfect-bound 8 X 10
paperback of At the End of your Rope? Tie a Knot & Hang On! Help
has arrived!, along with a short kindle-edition book I’ve written called Drop
the Wait: Someday is Now. I’m currently writing A Conversation with Some
Angels, which is the backstory of how I came to write, or veritably channel
from the angels themselves, the 82-line poem of the same title.
Liz:
Thank you, Camille. It’s a pleasure having you join my blog. I wish you the
very best with your book, anything else you publish in the future, and with
your radio show.
Camille: Thank you,
Liz. I appreciate the opportunity to introduce myself to your
readers. Whatever path they take, I hope they keep choosing ever
better ways of being in the world.
