You can teach an old dog new tricks if you are the dog and you ask God to transform you!
Dot Day and her husband Charles live in central Mississippi with their spoiled-sweet dog Lady, a collie/shepherd/who knows what? rescued mix. They enjoy a simple lifestyle in a rural setting. Her greatest joy is spending time with family, particularly her daughters and her grandchildren. Her hobbies include gardening with Charles doing 99% of the actual labor; quilting with Charles doing the cutting and some of the pressing; oil painting and forcing her messes on others. They have been involved in quilting flags of valor for a recent Wounded Warriors Project.
She holds strong Christian values and attempts to order her life in keeping with those values. She also has a passion for families and for helping them to have quality relationships. As a born-again Christian, she believes her life is to be lived in serving God by serving others. This also means she accepts the service of others as she needs them.
Dot is a retired English teacher and former licensed family and marriage therapist. Her fifties found her with a foe, a late-onset muscular dystrophy called inclusion body myositis. This debilitating disease took her from an active and involved lifestyle to one of more dependence. It also opened up more time to write.
Dot draws on her careers as an English teacher and as a family therapist in writing her memoir/family history. Dot Ainsworth Day’s memoir/family history was written to honor her parents’ memory and to show a time when survival was not a reality game but was a real struggle. Of their eight living children. the five surviving siblings shared many of the funny stories and memories of what their parents taught or told them. They were stoical and proud and pushed their children to educate ourselves so that their lives would not include physical labor for a livelihood.
Part of the story is true to form in looking at a non-Christ-like father’s influence. He worked hard and pushed them hard, but addictions helped some of the eight cope with pain. Mama’s comfort for her family dysfunction was food. The overall tone is light while telling the stories with a hint of sad judgment for those children and grandchildren who gave in to addiction–a sense of “Such a waste” and the unanswered question of “Why didn’t you fight?”
She has been active as a Muscular Dystrophy Association volunteer both in fundraising and leading virtual conferences for caregivers for ALS patients. She serves also as a KIT leader (Keep in Touch) for Mississippi, Alabama, and Northwest Florida for The Myositis Association (TMA).
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