Mothers and Memoirs

Funny how things can align… this week I read a new memoir written by Maya Shanbhag Lang called What We Carry in preparation for a class being taught by the author. It just so happens to be about mothers and daughters. (By the way it’s fantastic, an incredibly thoughtful, multidimensional story about the ongoing rediscovery of who our mothers are.) I’ve also been thinking about launching this newsletter in an effort to bring wider attention to my first season of Daring to Tell. In the course of reading the essays from each writer, then recording them, then producing the episode I get to do one of the things I love best—hear a story I love over and over again. Each time I might absorb a phrase in a new way, or realize with greater clarity what some moment must have been like for that writer. It allows me to pause, think, consider, and consider again; to hear the story in a deeper or different way as I continue to listen.

I listen to be transported to a new place, as I was in childhood, with a story. A story that I place myself in the middle of, trying on someone else’s experience. What is different here from my own life? What is the same? How did she react in this situation? What might I have done? Could I try that same thing she did? Maybe.

For example, when I talked with writer Nadine Kenney Johnstone (my own writing coach) about the time she was preparing for the publication of her memoir—Of This Much I’m Sure. Her’s was a memoir that told of a struggle with infertility, (hmm… not my story but ok, I’m curious); it was a telling of lifesaving emergency surgery (ok… I’ve got one of those… not exactly the same, but still… I want to hear about that); and it also included the push-pull of her relationship with her mom. Yup. I always want to hear about the mother daughter tussle. And so Nadine’s Daring to Tell episode was the story behind the story of when she handed her prepping-for-publication manuscript to her mother to read.

That was a story I really wanted to hear.

It had been a story I’ve stopped to consider many times. How do we write what we have to say, if Mom might read it. Mom. The omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent force of our childhood (though not for everyone… I also realize…) peering over our shoulder? Into our thoughts? Offering her guardrails of direction… go this way… not that. Molding us into ourselves. And sometimes, shaping us to become someone she herself may no longer see. Becoming an independent entity just like her, and yet not at all like her. How can we be the same but so different?

Every time I sit down to read a memoir that’s what I’m seeking. Connection. How are we different? How are we the same? Can we pause, take a breath, consider and listen?

Ok… I know I’m getting all didactic and philosophical here (kind of like my own mother does! The point when I usually interject ok, ok, enough already!)

Here are my messages for you today though… and they are rather instructive (ha! Again, like mom?)

1)   Hit pause at some point in your day to listen. Mothers and Memoirs is the opening of Daring to Tell Season One.

And, 2) for anyone who finds the Mother of All Holidays a challenging time…check out a 90 minute workshop I’ll be emcee-ing with three writer friends. We are declaring the Saturday before Mother’s Day to be, Mother (Yourself) Day— it’ll be fun in a serious, contemplative, writerly sort of way for anyone interested in some nurturing self-care pre-Mother’s Day activities.