I’ve been a mother for 50 years. Yet I rarely read or hear anything truly honest about motherhood. Motherhood itself, not the Hallmark version. The real day-to-day slog. The unending, unpaid, under appreciated work that women do to feed, clothe, nurture, bathe, change...
"What's this, Mimi?" My granddaughter Francesca pointed at a glass vase of shells on my desk. "That's my shell collection," I said. Her blonde curls bounced as she nodded her head, "Oh," she said, "Can I play with them?" "If you're careful. Some are very fragile, they...
Some people have lucky numbers. Others, unlucky ones. I have a sacred number: 11:11 in the morning, the hour and minute of my daughter Maya's birth. When 11:11 popped up on my iPhone screen this morning, I thought, "Aha, beloved girl. There you are, waking me up...
Today, sitting outside at a cafe on Grand Avenue, I met a two-month old baby, Stella, her mother, and her grandmother. We chatted under the shade of a tree, while Stella followed her grandmother's words with her blue gray eyes, alert to every syllable. I couldn't...
I love memoirs that push the edge of the genre, using fictional techniques to tell a riveting true story. Authors like Alice Sebold (Lucky), Jenette Wells (The Glass Castle), Cheryl Strayed (Wild), and Ann Patchett (Truth and Beauty) spring readily to mind. But...
Maya's quirky little saying, "That's the way live lives," was meant to comfort me. Today, on the 22nd anniversary of her death, it still does. I have a beautiful bouquet of lilacs on my writing table in her honor. Her spunk, fierce intelligence, and beauty are with...
Often, when tragedy strikes, we feel singled out. As if we are the only ones who are suffering. Our culture tends to create an exclusion zone around people who are grieving, or who have been horribly wounded in some way. This only adds to the wounding and makes grief...
“What are those cracks by your eyes, Mimi?” My four-year-old granddaughter was staring intently at my face. It took me a minute to compute. “Wrinkles,” I said. “Do I have wrinkles?” Lucia touched her own cheeks. “No honey, you’re too young for wrinkles,” I...
For today's stop on the WOW! Women on Writing blog tour, I am visiting Journaling by the Moonlight, a wonderful site hosted by Tina M. Games. Tina provides tips, encouragement, and resources to journal writers everywhere, with a special focus on mothers. She invited...
“There's no tragedy in life like the death of a child. Things never get back to the way they were.” -- Dwight D. Eisenhower, American president Let’s begin with the sobering statistics: 21,000 children die every day around the world. That translates to a child dying...