The Gift of Story for Mother’s Day

May 7, 2012 By 4 Comments

Last Mother’s Day I was preoccupied—I was editing the Wisdom Has a Voice anthology, consumed with final proofreading issues and details of book design. As the editor, I felt the burden of perfection.

Now after the successful launch of the book and many positive reviews, I realize that this book has become an evocative gift for Mothers and their daughters.

In the introduction to the book, I wrote: “Mother is the silent icon of our times.” My desire was to bring Mother into the spotlight as a real person through the eyes of her daughters—to speak of her and for her. In doing so, we could begin to understand the wisdom inherent in mothering and give her wisdom a voice.

Since the memoirs written by 25 very different women have been read and shared, I can see that our work has gone beyond the pages of this book. What readers tell me is that the stories and memories trigger theirs. When a group meets to discuss the book, they begin to tell their own stories about Mother.

It’s not that every memory reflects a flawless Mother who lives up to the impossible expectations of our society: career, home, beauty, unconditional love for her children, etc. Our stories share the complexity and conflicts of motherhood through real incidents told with insight and compassion.

Through these stories we see the binds of limited opportunities in past generations of Mothers and their inability to develop a separate identity. We understand the resentments that one generation of Mothers can hold against their own daughters who had many more options than they.

In spite of all of these issues, we often marvel at the endurance of Mothers, Grandmothers, and Godmothers to face challenges, illness, and financial crises and remain loyal to their duties of home and family.

Most of all, stories and memoirs are a way to honor our Mothers even while they are still with us. And what we can ultimately learn from a compendium of stories about Mother is her essence. In fact, I found that I learned more from the memoirs that showed a lack of Mother love: sometimes what is missing is most acutely described.

This Mother’s Day give the gift of story to your mother. Stories tell what words cannot say.

Our anthology, Wisdom Has a Voice: Every Daughter’s Memories of Mother, is an inspiring book to read memories together and to begin telling your own!

For both paperback and eBook editions, click HERE.

 

Filed Under: Anthology, Legacy Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Deep in the Heart of Texas

April 17, 2012 By 5 Comments

Hotel hallways crowded with women writers set in motion the Story Circle Memoir Conference in Austin, TX last weekend, April 13-15.

Famous for their wide friendly smiles, women—mostly from the South and Southwest—encouraged one another to express their deep down wisdom in well- crafted memoir. Women of all ages bent their heads over paper and laptops to refine their writing skills and find their unique voice. Better than a quilting party.

The supportive surround of the Story Circle culture created ease in our work. I felt invigorated by the workshop sessions rather than enduring the burn out that can often occur in a weekend writing marathon.

From the start our radiant keynote speaker, Gail Straub from New York, called us to our task with a spirited talk and an innovative workshop. Author of the award-winning memoir, Returning to My Mother’s House: Taking Back the Wisdom of the Feminine, she told of her journey in writing the book. Her original publishing contract was to write a self-help book about her decision not to have children. But she hit a block, sensing the presence of her mother who had died prematurely when Straub was ­­­in her early twenties.

Straub soon realized that the book had to be written about her mother—that impulse became a vital calling to nourish her own spirit and eventually that of others.

Following up the next morning, Straub’s workshop on the intersection of fact and imagination was stunningly incisive as she directed us to cut through left-brain dominance to a new way of knowing. It’s almost giddy how easy it is to access right brain and create a new sense of the same experience. Yet we seldom use this powerful combination of symbol and fact, emotion and intellect—all part of the treasures Straub found in her mother’s house.

Within the Story Circle context of non-competitive discovery, I even enjoyed facilitating my own workshop, “Pearls of Wisdom: Memoirs about Mother.”

I felt more like a participant than a presenter as we explored the common threads of mother wisdom through personal stories. Some of those quick pieces were stunning in haunting imagery, the brilliance of feminine wisdom.

Adding to my joy in being at the conference was sharing it with my fellow Californians and presenters: Amber Lea Starfire, Linda Joy Myers, Suzanne Sherman, and B. Lynn Goodwin.

Back in Northern California today, I sense the ongoing work of my fellow women writers, the sound of their voices, the impact of what they know.

Submitted by Kate Farrell

 

Filed Under: Craft, Workshops Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Story Circle Memoir Conference

March 26, 2012 By 2 Comments

This mid-April, I am honored to be a presenter at:

Story Circle Network
Sixth National Women’s Memoir Conference
April 13-15, 2012
Wyndham Hotel, Austin, Texas

My session echoes the themes of the Wisdom Has a Voice project and the memoirs in the anthology:

Pearls of Wisdom: Memoirs about Mother

Presenter: Kate Farrell
A mother-daughter relationship is often the closest of all, like the two sides of an oyster shell. In the best of times, the sheen of the inner shell encases their bond, but often an irritant within or without creates a pearl. Layer upon layer of experience produces a lustrous wisdom that is frequently untold, too closely held. A memoir about Mother is the perfect way to express the pearl of experienced truths.

In this workshop, we will explore techniques to describe and distill the stories about Mother and to share their value with others: a string of pearls, a legacy of feminine wisdom. We’ll select key experiences and produce two pieces of writing: one reflective commentary and one a story, the elements of memoir. We’ll read our works, discuss the process, and review next steps in writing.

About the conference:

Stories from the Heart VI will bring women from around the country to celebrate our stories and our lives. Through writing, reading, listening, and sharing, we will discover how personal narrative is a healing art, how we can gather our memories, how we can tell our stories. We welcome readers, writers, storytellers, and any woman with a past, present, and future. There will be opportunities to explore difficult or hidden issues, expand our relationships with other women, and discover different modes and media—such as art, dance, and drama—for sharing our stories. Come, learn, share, celebrate with us as we honor our stories!

For more information, click: Sixth National Women’s Memoir Conference

 

Filed Under: Craft, Workshops Tagged With: , , ,

Writing for My Mother

February 25, 2012 By 14 Comments

By Angela Tung, author of “Puo-puo” in Wisdom Has a Voice: Every Daughter’s Memories of Mother

“Women, show your fiction to your mothers, not your lovers.” Mary Gordon

“Don’t tell outsiders the ugly things that happened at home.” Chinese idiom

When I set out to write “Puo-puo,” an elegy to my grandmother who passed away in November 2010, my aim was to write something that my mother could read. I’d write about my grandmother’s amazing life, how she lived through the Sino-Japanese War and the Communist Revolution, how she, my grandfather, and their children fled from China to Taiwan. How despite poverty they raised five children who all ended up going to grad school in the United States. How she ruled the roost with her tough love, loud laugh, and amazing cooking.

But the essay turned out to be more than that.

I don’t usually let my mother read my writing. I tend to write about very personal things: divorce, infidelity, sex, and relationships. While some women can talk to their mothers about such things, I cannot. My mother knows about my divorce and that my ex-husband cheated, but I’d prefer not to give her the chance to say once again, “You should have told us right away,” instead of three months after we had already separated, “You should have left him right away,” instead of almost a year after his confession, and “You shouldn’t have been with him in the first place.”

I write to understand the past; my mother only seeks to undo it.

As I wrote “Puo-puo,” I found writing about my tumultuous relationship with my mother to be inevitable. Her mother’s opinion, always old-fashioned, sometimes backwards, and so important, often clouded her judgment. How dare I want to become a teacher! Didn’t I remember my grandfather earned so little as a teacher in Taiwan? Could I lose some weight before Puo-puo’s visit? Couldn’t I date a guy who was taller and better looking?

I found myself having to admit that my grandmother, like my relationship with my mother, was far from perfect. I found myself having to mention my divorce and my ex-husband’s infidelity, which most of my mother’s friends, seven years later, still don’t know about. The reasons she hasn’t told them are strikingly similar to the reasons I didn’t tell my parents for so long: they don’t want to get blamed. How could you not see what was going in your daughter’s life? Their friends might say. How could you not stop it? Why did you let her marry him in the first place?

And why my mother would need to share “Puo-puo” with her friends is another story. Her children’s achievements aren’t real until they’ve been acknowledged by friends and relatives. This is why our diplomas hang in the room where they play mah-jongg, why when I was a child, my mother would strewn around the house, as though by accident, my elaborately designed book reports. I imagine she’d have wanted to display copies of Wisdom Has a Voice on the coffee table, where a friend might idly pick it up, leaf through it, and either spot my name or ask, “Ay, Ai Li, why do you have this book?” and she’d say, in her best humble bragging voice, “Oh, my daughter has a story published in it.” But I still have yet to send her the book.

Mother and Angela

I tell myself hiding my writing is to protect my mother, but really it’s to protect me.

Recently I told my mother something I’ve yet to write about. I hid it for the same old reasons: I didn’t want her to be hurt; I didn’t want her to be blaming me for what went wrong. Finally, during a visit, I decided I had to ‘fess up.

Surprisingly she was happy. Not happy about what happened but that I had shared this intimate part of my life with her.

This week I finally put a copy of Wisdom Has a Voice in the mail for my mother. I hope she likes it, but even if she doesn’t, I’ll keep writing.

By Angela Tung, author of “Puo-puo” in Wisdom Has a Voice: Every Daughter’s Memories of Mother

Filed Under: Anthology, Legacy Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Life is a Race, a race for the care, a race for the cure.

February 14, 2012 By 8 Comments

By Pat Jackson-Colando, author of “A Kiss and a Hug” in Wisdom Has a Voice: Every Daughter’s Memories of Mother

In 1992 I participated in the initial Race for the Cure in Orange County, California. It was the 10th anniversary of the founding of the Susan G. Komen Foundation and little more than a year since the Komen Foundation ventured to California on the feet of a female runner, Dava Gerard, who was also a breast surgeon. As a community service activist, I participated in early start-up meetings in 1991 – until my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Within days of my request in August 1991, the Komen Foundation had an informational packet in the mail to every member of my family. The organization informed – and nudged – my frightened siblings and father to converge around Mother with a plan and to squelch their self-serving fears. It defused their frenzied, flailing panic. I was privileged to have a surrogate better than me to bolster my family from the perimeter, since I lived far away in southern California. With several visits – and gifts and calls and cards in between – I helped to carry Mother, as she had faithfully carried all of us through every cycle of our lives. Instrumental to move the family team beyond worry, I gave her a mantra: “I will be well” and we worked it together.

I employed the mantra to wield myself through my breast cancer journey fourteen years later. My mother served as loyal guide, willing her child to be a thriver, as she had faithfully done during my previous life trials. I survived six months of active treatment – and my head had sprouted golden spikes of new hair – when she died in June 2006, after a series of disabling, demeaning strokes.

Blessedly, I was able to travel to visit her and help in meaningful ways before she died. Blessedly, her passage occurred the day after I looked her in the eye to assure her that I was well. The hug with which she enfolded me thoroughly communicated her love and joy. It was, perhaps, assurance that her work on earth was accomplished because her smile as she looked beyond me to the corner of the room was radiant. Later my pastor told me that during deathbed visits he’d often witnessed that act and that he was sure the people saw Jesus.

Pat Jackson-Colando

Mother was the hub of our family’s lives, modeling a contented assurance, sealed with unbidden intermittent hugs and kisses, as my memoir showed. I have utilized the book that Kate Farrell so graciously edited to raise money for the Susan G. Komen Foundation, in a series of speeches to local groups in October, which was Breast Cancer Awareness Month. More fundraising events, featuring sale of the book, are planned around Mother’s Day 2012 to raise funds for the Hope and Wellness Center, which focuses its counseling efforts support women as cancer survivors.

I am proud to provide a means to solutions, to amass care and caring to broader levels to serve our local area’s women for the Komen Foundation, which provides free and/or low cost medical and psychological service to women with breast cancer and to their families.

Family meant everything to my mother and my mother meant everything to me. Thank you for helping me on this step of the journey. Wisdom has a Voice and so do I, in tribute to my mother.

By Pat Jackson-Colando, author of “A Kiss and a Hug” in Wisdom Has a Voice: Every Daughter’s Memories of Mother

 

Filed Under: Anthology, Legacy Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Like Mother, Like Daughter

January 29, 2012 By 9 Comments

By Nancy LaTurner, author of “Motherless Child” in Wisdom Has a Voice: Every Daughter’s Memories of Mother

Katrina Norfleet’s earlier blog post “Uncovering what’s Universal,” (November 7, 2011) struck a harmonious chord in me. The mother-daughter-mother triangle rings true in my life too. My mother always encouraged me to pursue my dreams and I’ve carried that legacy on with my own children.

In fact, when I signed up for my first writing class I did it for my daughter’s sake. I intended to learn enough to help my daughter achieve her writing goals, not mine. I had no writing goals — I was not a writer.

The listing in the university course catalog said it all, “How to write and publish a children’s picture book.” I imagined that I would go to class, take extensive notes, and relay the information to my daughter, who liked the idea of writing children’s books but didn’t want to leave her newborn son to attend lectures. We agreed that she, always the writer in our family, would do the homework assignments.

Fired up with enthusiasm, I marched into the classroom, claimed a seat in the front row, and poised my pen over the first page of a fresh new notebook. The instructor, Elsie Karr Kreischer, an older woman with an impressive list of published children’s books to her credit, introduced herself and immediately turned my world upside down.

I stared like a robot at the blank paper in front of me as I heard the words, “writing prompt,” “thirty minutes to write,” and “read your work aloud.” My feet shifted forward, ready to carry me out of the classroom in disgrace.

Perhaps I felt too exposed in the spotlight of that front row seat to get up and leave. Or maybe dread had actually paralyzed me. Whatever the reason, I remained in my place and courageously scribbled along with the other fourteen students for a very long thirty minutes.

That life-changing moment altered my reality. Over the next several weeks I learned that I was a writer too. With Elsie Karr Kreischer’s encouragement I submitted stories and essays to contests and responded to calls for submissions, winning awards in both the SouthWest Writers and the Writer’s Digest annual contests as well as publication in the Albuquerque Almanac and the SouthWest Sage.

Over the next several months, I took classes from Eileen Stanton, popular newspaper humorist and radio talk show host; and from Robert Gish, prolific author of fiction, memoir, and literary biographies. As I flexed my new writing muscles, I realized that I wanted to write a book — not a children’s book, but a memoir book.

Using National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) as a springboard, I launched myself into a daily writing habit and finished the first draft of my book in the following two months. Several revisions later, I emerged from my spare bedroom writing space with a final manuscript.

The call for submissions for the Wisdom Has a Voice anthology came with perfect timing. What a marvelous home that anthology would be, I thought, for the chapter I wrote about losing my mother.

And what a wonderful honor to have my piece selected! With the sensitive and gentle guidance of editor Kate Farrell, I moved beyond mere excerpt and combined two chapters of my memoir into an adaptation that afforded even more opportunity to explore and reflect upon my mother’s influence in my life.

When I read the contributions of the other authors, I felt another surge of pride to be among this particular group of women, each with a different story to tell but all united in our belief in the timeless power of the relationship between mothers and daughters.

Like Mother, Like Daughter

I’m glad to say that shortly after Wisdom Has a Voice: Every Daughter’s Memories of Mother came out, I published my memoir, Voluntary Nomads: A Mother’s Memories of Foreign Service Family Life, and soon after that my daughter finished her first novel, Stars in Sticks.

Our experience feels like living proof of a universal truth: as our mothers pass away and we grow into the mother role, we must strive to continue our maternal legacy and, at the same time, provide even more powerful examples of womanhood that will enrich our children’s lives. Like mother, like daughter, again and stronger.

 

By Nancy LaTurner, author of “Motherless Child” in Wisdom Has a Voice: Every Daughter’s Memories of Mother

Filed Under: Anthology Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Motherhood – The Hardest Job

January 16, 2012 By 17 Comments

By Mariana Swann, author of “Finding You Again in Bolivia” in Wisdom Has a Voice: Every Daughter’s Memories of Mother

In January last year, while shopping at my local supermarket in Wokingham, England, I saw a tiny little advert on a writing magazine asking for contributions to an anthology of stories about mothers and daughters. I was immediately interested, as I had already written (and translated from Spanish) the piece that appears in “our” book. In October the previous year, 2010, I had visited my country of birth, Bolivia.

While walking around the streets of La Paz, I felt that my mother’s spirit accompanied me everywhere I went. It was seven years since her death, and I missed her terribly. She had been a loving mother and a strong and vivacious woman. Of course, she was not perfect, but I had loved her totally despite our occasional disagreements.

After visiting her house, I starting writing her a letter, remembering some of the things we did together and some of the many things I learned from her. That letter became the essay that was published in the Wisdom Has a Voice anthology.

Being a mother: the most difficult job I have ever had. Now, where did I last see that manual on How to Be a Perfect Parent? I must have lost it the day after my first child was born, and I’ve committed several parenting crimes ever since. I’ve failed at being an excellent mother. Society expects a lot of mothers. We want them to have a PhD in Excellent Parenting; we want them to be perfect all the time and in every situation—to satisfy their children’s every need.

So many misery memoirs have been published that sometimes it seems that the most common type of mother is a cruel and damaging one. But I knew there were also good mothers out there and I wanted to pay homage to them.

Since I started walking in my mother’s shoes I’ve come to understand her better. Remembering her life always fills me with compassion as well as joy.

Mariana Swann

I am so glad I was given the opportunity to take part in this collection of “mother-and-daughter” stories, and of singing the praises of my flawed yet good and wise mother.

By Mariana Swann, author of “Finding You Again in Bolivia” in Wisdom Has a Voice: Every Daughter’s Memories of Mother.

 

Filed Under: Anthology, Legacy Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Keepsake Memoir about Mother: Online Class

December 28, 2011 By 1 Comment

Story Circle NetworkStory Circle Network

This January I am thrilled to teach an online course as faculty of Story Circle Network. SCN has been a pioneer women’s literary network for 15 years. Based in Austin, Texas, it now has an international outreach.

In brief, the Story Circle Network offers the only life-writing program designed exclusively for women. Since 1997, this nonprofit organization has provided learning/writing opportunities in memoir, reminiscence, journaling, poetry, family stories, kitchen table stories, writing-as-healing, writing for personal growth and spiritual development, poetry, blogging, and other areas.

My online class is a mini-course.

Class Title: Keepsake Memoir about Mother

Instructor: Kate Farrell

Class Term: January 9-January 30, 2012

Remembering Mother

Synopsis: The New Year is a good time to remember and celebrate our mothers, our beginnings! What better way to preserve her legacy than with a well-written keepsake memoir? You will weave together a life experience and its meaning into an enduring work.

Class Description: “Keepsake Memoir about Mother” is a three-week course to recall and write a key memory about mother (or mother figure) that is both a compelling story and a powerful message, one that reflects a continuing legacy.

At the end of the course, students will be able to recall an authentic key memory of mother and tell it using a basic story structure, distill the meaning of the memory, and relate its personal truth to combine experience and meaning into a keepsake memoir of mother.

Weekly lessons and prompts will be provided via Yahoo Group site. Students will read assigned material and complete the exercises using templates as suggestions and will upload their written work into files for instructor’s feedback.

To sign up for this and other classes SCN is currently offering, click here!

 

Filed Under: Craft, Legacy, Workshops Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Christmas Story: Sunbonnet Sue

December 22, 2011 By 5 Comments

By Sara Etgen-Baker

She lowered her reading glasses down to the tip of her nose peering at me with her warm, brown eyes. “Why’s my little Miss Sunshine so down tonight?”

Indeed I was moody after Christmas clinging to my grandmother’s side and dogging her every step as she puttered around her house.

“My new dolly is lonely and cold,” I muttered.

“Oh, I can see that,” she lovingly empathized. “Maybe she needs a blanket and some hot cocoa.”

“Uh, huh,” I nodded.

“Well, if you’ll fetch your doll teacups, I’ll make some homemade hot cocoa for you and your doll. How does that sound?”

I complied—quickly returning to her kitchen where she gingerly filled each teacup with steaming, rich hot cocoa. As we drank the hot cocoa, my grandmother then turned to my mother and me proclaiming, “Let’s make a doll quilt; we’ll have our own quilting bee—the three of us—like in the old farm days.  What do you think about that?”

With that, we scurried to my grandmother’s sewing room where she retrieved the Sunbonnet Sue pattern and a box of scrap material from her closet shelf; she carefully pinned different parts of the pattern to material. Then, she wrapped her hands over mine initially guiding them through the thick fabric. “This is how you cut out the fabric using the pattern. Now, here’s the scissors; you’re on your own…get started little lady!”

Sunbonnet Sue

I was absolutely delighted to be a part of their inner quilting circle and felt so grown up. My moodiness quickly vanished as I carefully cut out six bonnets, six skirts, six arms, and six feet and proudly handed them to her. Then, my grandmother propped me up on a stool so I could watch her and my mother sew the pieces together. Her sewing machine hummed and slowly sang me to sleep.

When I awoke the next morning, I found my doll lying next to me wrapped in a cherished memory—a Sunbonnet Sue quilt of pinks, yellows, reds, and calicos. Despite her death a few months later, both my doll and I remained covered and warmed by her bright quilt.

Now I am beginning to understand just why I’ve kept my grandmother’s Sunbonnet Sue doll quilt all these years—each time I touch the delicate stitching and embroidery work, I marvel at her patience and talent. I recognize, too, that the quilt she gave me that Christmas was more than just a doll quilt. She gave me encouragement and showed me how a little enthusiasm can chase away the blues.

Even now, 50 plus years later, I imagine my grandmother’s eyes watching me and feel her spirit guiding me. Sometimes when the house is silent, I even hear her voice—golden threads of wisdom and inspiration—and am reminded that my life is like a quilt—bits and pieces, joys and sorrows, stitched together with love.

Sara Etgen-Baker

By Sara Etgen-Baker, Author, “Journey with Mother” in Wisdom Has a Voice: Every Daughter’s Memories of Mother

Filed Under: Craft, Legacy Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Winter Holidays with Mother

December 20, 2011 By 4 Comments

Whenever I think of the holidays, I remember the cookies my mother baked weeks ahead, German springerle anise cookies. These she rolled out with a special rolling pin carved in rectangular images (a tradition centuries old, I later learned). We were never allowed to eat or even sample them as they were stored away in tin canisters, usually in old coffee cans and wrapped in dish towels. Her other favorite was pfeffernusse, rolled into balls and also stored, their spicey dough sometimes spiked with rum or brandy. There they all were: canned and aging cookies, placed high on shelves, verboten until Christmas Day.

To my mother, the aging process made the cookies special and deepened their flavor, a throw back to the Old Country and times past. It was something she revered and had learned from her mother born in Germany before any of the world wars.

Holidays with Mother

Holidays with Mother

To me, it seemed cold and lifeless: cookies stored in tin cans so long that they were no longer really part of the holiday by the time we unwrapped them from their cloth covers. I simply could not bridge the cultural gap between us or understand customs no one else practiced in our South Texas town. If only I could have appreciated her effort.

It’s taken a lifetime for me to accept my mother’s struggles as a first generation immigrant. Such struggles were not acknowledged in 1950′s post-war America. The push for social conformity and disregard for cultural differences did have some benefits. And no one really wanted to be associated with German culture in those days. But yet there it was, in those tin cans, waiting to be appreciated and enjoyed in the simple holiday traditions that transcend wars.

If my mother were alive today, I would thank her for those aged and flavorful cookies, crunchy though they might have been. I do not want the recipe nor do I have the urge to buy a quaint rolling pin and throw down the dough on a flour dusted table and carefully roll out flawless images. I can not walk exactly in her footsteps.

What I appreciate in my mother now is the deep imprint of culture. Without external prompting, she brought skill and precision to holiday baking traditions that were fulfilling to her.

I can bring that same dedication to my own life’s work, my inner urgings, the priorities of my own making. I can understand that some things take time to age and cannot be appreciated without time and patience. With care, with love the time to savor will come.

Happy Holidays!

 


Filed Under: Legacy Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,
« Older Posts