Dear Daniel

Dear Daniel,

I took a chance today. Actually two chances. I want to release a second volume of letters. I plan setting the first volume of letters on permanent FREE on Amazon. What started out as place to initially thank you and everyone else who has every helped me. Or to let off steam whenever I needed a place to be emotionally honest with myself. Or even just get something off of my chest so that I could get in the frame of mind to work. Became something bigger. I started getting comments from people saying that I really helped them understand what they were going through. That I was giving them hope that they too could crawl out of a tunnel that seemed to be pitch black and it was all they could do to feel along the walls to find their way out. In the sense that your work and Maurice’s advocacy and been my way out of the darkness I was acting as theirs.

I didn’t really know what to do with that. But I was touched just the same. I had been where those people had been. I had been struggling to just get out of bed, get in the shower, keep from having a hair trigger temper. I had needed heroes who understood me. And while I laude you and Maurice there have been so many nameless people on this blog. Those who have fed me when there was no money. Gave me a place to stay when there was too much friction at home.

Then the army of one named Missy who, along with the doctors and therapists put me back together. And Pam who has unfailingly been steadfast in her support (even if she is half evil). And of course the parental units who run hot and cold on me in their support. I am ever grateful to them for what they do take part in, even if they don’t really understand what it is I do.

No, the two chances I took today were calling Maurice Benard’s management and your publicist to see if I could get introductions to my second volume of letters.

Maurice because he too has bipolar disorder and copes with it on a daily basis and his advocacy got me into treatment, and you because, well, your work got me a career I have always wanted. And as I sit here writing this I’m well aware that the chances of either of you actually saying yes to this is slim to none I had to take the chance that you might. If I didn’t I would have lived with the kind of regret that nags at anyone who dreams big then fails to capture any part of that dream.

The documentary is something that has really just blossomed into something I could have never dreamed of. But it all has to start somewhere. And for me it starts with you and Maurice Benard.

I hope you can understand this isn’t me just fangirling and hoping that you will pluck me from obscurity. Letters to Daniel has NEVER been about that. It just hasn’t. And what may have started out as something as intensely personal has kind of taken off like a rocket. 

I have secured bestseller status with the first book, so I’m not looking for that kind of thing. Even the blog was never about that either. The film? I thought I might get into 1 festival, Imaginarium. And that was a huge IF. But then they said yes and that they wanted to make it a premiere event of the Con. And then Film-Com accepted us. And then The You Rock Foundation came and along and showed interest.

This second volume is my way of keeping the blog alive in it’s grown purpose. To help people. To make people see that even in the darkest of circumstances that they too can break through their obstacles, whatever they might be and make their dreams come true.

Sincerely,

Amy McCorkle