My name is Annette Marquis and I’m an author, activist, public speaker, wanderer, and community builder. I’m so glad you’re here. In this newsletter I write about the things I love, including travel, nature, and connecting with others, and things I’m trying to understand better, especially those that will make the world a better place.
Over the past couple of years, I published two serialized memoirs here on Substack: Living Into the Truth: A Daughter’s Journey of Discovery (originally published in serialized form as If You Only Knew: A Memoir of Family Secrets and Their Undoing) and Accidental Mentors: Inspirational Stories of Women Who Shaped My Life by Just Being Themselves. You’ll find them both at annettemarquis.com
Living Into the Truth: A Daughter’s Journey of Discovery
When I learned that the man I thought was my father was not, I had to find a way to understand and reconcile this truth with the lies I had been told. I had to take a close look at everything I knew, including choices I’ve made in my own life to reconcile this new understanding of myself. My parents were long gone when I learned the truth. During their lifetimes, the secret they kept lay dormant in a mine field ready to explode with just one faulty step, but somehow, they navigated their way through that field and each of them died of natural causes—Dad when he was 69 and Mom, almost twenty-five years later, at the age of 88.
I’ve written what I know of my story in Living Into the Truth: A Daughter’s Journey of Discovery (originally published in serialized form as If You Only Knew: A Memoir of Family Secrets and Their Undoing). In this memoir, I take reader on a journey of self-discovery as I unravel the complex web of family secrets that have shaped my identity. From my early childhood questions about my red hair to my struggles with sexuality and self-acceptance, I share my experiences of growing up in the shadow of my parents' hidden past. Through a series of revelations and personal challenges, I learn to embrace my authentic self as a lesbian, find forgiveness, and stand up for my beliefs. "Living Into the Truth" is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the transformative power of living one's truth.
Print and eBook editions are available wherever books are sold. I hope you’ll follow my journey of discovery and healing.
The Prologue and Chapter 1 are available for free subscribers and the rest of the chapters are available to paid subscribers.
Accidental Mentors
I created Accidental Mentors: Inspirational Stories of Women Who Shaped My Life by Just Being Themselves because I believe that when women find courage from each other—courage to write and speak our truth, to go where we want to go and see what we want to see, to live how we want to live, and to leave the world better than when we found it, a kind of magic ensues.
By supporting each other in our dreams, we can make the world a magical place for all women, and ultimately, for all people.
Published in serial form in 2023, Accidental Mentors: Inspirational Stories of Women Who Shaped My Life Without Even Trying is a collection of micro-memoir stories about women who have shaped my life and given me the courage to grow into the woman I am today. Watch for the print, e-book, and audio versions in 2025. Until those come out, you can read all of the stories for free here:
Accidental Mentors: Start Here!
Thank you for visiting Accidental Mentors. Using this table of contents you can access any Accidental Mentors post, read them in order, or skip around to whatever inspires you. Enjoy!
Wandering WordsWomen
In 2017, I formed a community of outdoor-loving women writers who love to wander. Wandering WordsWomen hosted a women’s writing retreat at a Virginia campground, held online memoir writing workshops, and shared ideas, support, information, inspiration, and community to women writers who love to travel, whether that be in its physical or metaphysical forms.
In this relaunch of Wandering WordsWomen on Substack, I hope to encourage and inspire folks, especially women, to experience the open road.
I’m looking forward to seeing you there.
About Subscriptions
I believe it is my responsibility to use my voice and be involved with the world around me in as many ways as I can. Writing is one way I can do that.
I work hard to write and publish stories, ideas, and content that matter. My dream is to have the resources—personal, financial, spiritual, and physical—to support my writing. If you share my dream, or any part of it, I invite you to come along.
As a subscriber, you’ll join me on the journey and hopefully find inspiration along the way. As a paid subscriber, you’ll make it possible for me to write and publish my writing, and I hope, you’ll be inspired and supported to do the same.
You can also give a gift subscription to someone you think might enjoy this writing:
More about me
In addition to Living Into the Truth: A Daughter’s Journey of Discovery and Accidental Mentors: Inspirational Stories of Women Who Shaped My Life by Just Being Themselves, I’m the author of Resistance: A Memoir of Civil Disobedience in Maricopa County, and co-author of twenty-five software books, including Mastering Microsoft Office by Sybex/Wiley. My writing has appeared in anthologies, including The Women of Katrina: How Gender, Race, and Class Matter in an American Disaster, Struggling in Good Faith: LGBTQI Inclusion from 13 American Religious Perspectives, Coming Out in Faith, and Bless the Imperfect.
I have a Master of Social Work degree from Boston University that I applied to a twenty-five-year career in chemical dependency treatment and mental health crisis intervention services. In my later years, I received a Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Nonfiction from the Solstice Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing Program, now associated with Lasell University in Newton, MA.
Writing is a vital tool in my activist and my how-to-live-my-life tool bag. Over the years, I’ve discovered that writing is a craft that can be learned but that great writing must be felt. I continue to study both craft and feeling.
Here’s my short writing bio:
Annette Marquis is a community builder, wanderer, owner of WordsWomen Enterprises, LLC, and author of three memoirs, Living Into the Truth: A Daughter’s Journey of Discovery and Accidental Mentors: Inspirational Stories of Women Who Shaped My Life by Just Being Themselves, and Resistance: A Memoir of Civil Disobedience in Maricopa County. In a past life, she co-authored twenty-five software books, mostly about Microsoft Office. She works for the Living Legacy Project, Inc and lives with her wife, Wendy, in Richmond, VA.
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