Meet Renee Leonard Kennedy | Writer, Investor and Burgeoning Farmer as Featured by Shoutout Miami

I recently had the opportunity to be interviewed for a feature by Shoutout Miami. Enjoy an excerpt of the post below. Click here to read the full article.

We had the good fortune of connecting with Renee Leonard Kennedy and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Renee, do you have a favorite quote or affirmation?
“The glory of light cannot exist without its shadows. Life is a whole, and good and ill must be accepted together. The journey has been enjoyable and well worth making–once” (Winston Churchill, Thoughts and Adventures). Truly, these words have and will take a lifetime to understand.
The quote itself reminds me that I’m standing in the middle of where I came from and where I’m going. Hard days mingle with good ones. Despair and joy are often bedfellows, but life must be examined in full. Churchill also reminds to seek the preciousness of this day–this only day ever–as the end of the journey is often not anticipated.

The quote is doubly meaningful, as my mother gave me this book one Christmas.

She rarely read, except for the obituaries over breakfast, and Daily Bread during lunch. She rarely wrote. Yet, she hand inscribed the inside cover. I have few samples of her handwriting left to me: a check never cashed, a birthday card, her name taped to the underside of a chair. Precious were her spartan words, made glorious by her pen.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
Writing is so much more than words. It’s experiencing and observing life, yes, but more like delving knee deep into the Everglades where slimy creatures graze your leg, and your feet sink deep into silt, but you trudge forward anyway. I’ve written since I was in second-grade into my college days, but halted the words for twenty-six years after this, for both good reasons and bad. I’ve often begrudged those years as wasted–think how many book ideas past by?–but now, I recognize the other forms of writing that took place. I’m positive I have the longest single-spaced journal on a dead Mac computer in the history of humankind. I wrote many letters that have been gifted back to me from grandmothers and parents since they’ve passed. My Bible is filled with written prayers, my files with scraps of paper. All these acts add up to this thing called writing, not as defined in local or online bookstores, but as a creative attempt to drag a sentence up from the brackish swamp of thought onto paper.

I’m fascinated that in my sixth decade I’m attempting firsts: a first book release in October 2022, a first-time RV owner, a first-time ballroom dance groupie, a first-time farmer. The freedom to see the unlimited, despite a very real, a very approaching DOA date, delights my soul.

One word to sum up these firsts regarding my stories and my brand would be “Restoration.”

This word should be tattooed on my arm, as it is across the story of my life, from the second-grade poet, to the many Shoutout Miamis I celebrate, to the Winston Churchill motto to this very moment, overlooking my farm land while looking forward to Tango on Thursday.

Restoration means never giving up on dreams, even when they seem buried. Restoration means treading the hard roads, whether once in Cuba, or down a funeral aisle, and setting your heart to endeavor. We recognize and carry the weight, but we remember those before us who have done the same, and those after us who watch.

My hope in my wee, nonfiction gift book, After the Flowers Die: Encouragement for Walking Through Life After Loss, is that we see loss as “a painful passing, yes, but one day, a life story to be handed down to the next generation, which will touch the proceeding three.”

Even my relationship with my publisher is a glorious first. Victoria Duerstock started out as my life coach, long before the birth of End Game Press. She encouraged my writing to evolve from a blog to a dream to a book. As publisher, she spurs End Game to be more than a stable of writers, but a team of authors where each of our successes raise up all. Writing can be done in isolation or in the dear company of others. How rich the latter.

Renee Leonard Kennedy’s new book, After The Flowers Die, is out this Fall. Pre-order now at www.endgamepress.com/store/p/after-the-flowers-die

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