Just Me

I wore that reversible cloak of courage and self-doubt for the entirety of my life. Where I obtained it and how it covered up both my fears and confidence at the same time is the tale told herein. I owe it to myself and maybe even to others in my life for whom the enigma called Stephen Charles Sheppard begs address. Steve Sheppard is no celebrity. He has done nothing heroic or newsworthy or anything else that would usually qualify one as the subject of an autobiography. But maybe that's what makes his story compelling. He is simply a man looking back at his life and its turns, as each of us eventually will do. By most measures, his life has been gifted with good fortune and success. He led for-profit and nonprofit organizations. He wrote Beanie and Me: An Angel On Our Shoulders, the story of Steve and his wife, Katie, and their more than fifty-three years of married life, including the raising of two sets of twins. But against that backdrop, there were other forces at work, always attempting to sabotage the fairy-tale life that they built around each other. Just Me explores those realities and how the two succeeded in their dream despite Steve's internal makeup rather than because of it. Meanwhile, this is the story of a rather ordinary guy. But this is not an everyman story. While nearly everyone struggles in life with conflicting feelings and torn priorities, this is a story about improbable opportunities and how Steve Sheppard managed them, and his nagging sense that it was all undeserved. His doubts were matched only by his gratitude. Just Me was written as a happy memoir, a coming-of-age story in self-analysis, an attempt to reflect upon and come to terms with who he has been, who he is, and how any of us come to view ourselves. It is one man's effort at being totally candid with himself, a work that is both physically and emotionally difficult and always easier to put off until another day. That day has now arrived.