Ginny Scales-Medeiros has seen her fair share of disappointment. Born into poverty, she lifted herself out of predetermined life paths through ingenuity, incessant drive and sheer guts. Along the way, she made several choices she isn’t proud of-including developing an aptitude for less-than-legal endeavors as a child. Her early life was rife with abuse and she learned early on that her “normal” was not the same as anyone else’s “normal”.
Ms. Medeiros has compiled the events of her life in a fictionalized memoir, “What is Normal?” When I sat down to talk with the first-time author, I asked her about the title. With animation, she replied, “So many kids today ask why they couldn’t have been born normal. We hear about bullying and the about kids who have chosen suicide to escape the taunting, because they are tormented about not being normal. So I’m asking, ‘What is Normal?’ The only place that the word ‘normal’ belongs is on a washing machine.”
“What is Normal?” follows the life of a young girl, Sue, who is born into the same kind of abuse and poverty as the author. While somewhat auto-biographical in nature, Ms. Medeiros chose to fictionalize portions for inspirational purposes. Sue defeats the odds, like her real-life counterpart, through her own grit and determination. She makes her way from upstate New York, living in a trailer home with her uneducated, teenage parents-a structure that eventually became a chicken coop-all the way to California where her ambition helped her purchase her first home at the tender age of 22.
As a child, Ms. Medeiros describes herself as being invisible. She learned to take advantage of that invisibility and embarked on a Dickensesque lifestyle of petty theft. By the time she was a young teenager, she had discovered the misguided benefits of drugs and alcohol abuse. She took on the world with a “them vs. us” mentality that convinced her she could change her “normal”. By the time she was in her early twenties, the author had invented a sunless tanning product that took the spa community by storm, and eventually would find a role in a Hollywood movie.
Ms. Medeiros believes in feeding one’s passion. “Remember where your passion comes from,” she advises, “and give it five minutes each day.”
Sources: Interview with the Author
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