Mother’s Day Stories – Happy, Sad, Bad

Posted on May 12, 2024 by moonbridgebooks

Every Mother’s Day most of us celebrate our moms or remember our moms with fondness. Social media is full of us assuming everyone’s mom is or was great. Happy Mother’s Day! Now that I know better, I think of the people who are sad on Mother’s Day. There are mothers that abandoned, neglected, or abused their kids physically and/or emotionally. Not all mothers should have been mothers. Same with fathers. If we’re lucky we’ve had good-hearted mothers, mothers who tried their best even when they weren’t the best. Mothers may have hurt us, but we may love them anyway.

When I write my own family members’ stories or help others write theirs, I always ask about their parents and grandparents. What were they like? Good and not so good, because no one is perfect. We actually relate better to the imperfect! Sometimes we can laugh. Sometimes their actions were just the way things were in those days, and that needs to be said as a matter of explanation to us in “modern” times who might look askance. If a parent or grandparent behaved badly, what do you suppose was the reason—likely they were affected by their own past, their own parents. And THAT is why I like people to know the stories of their parents and grandparents. Their early experiences helped form who they became, and in turn affected how they raised their children. Asking for their stories helps us understand them, and this understanding can help us have better relationships. Writing my mother’s memoir with her helped me to love her better.

I hope you’ve had a loving mother who did her best, whatever that is for her, and I hope you honor her life by asking for her stories. But I leave you to have a thought for those who have/had painful relationships, and those who are missing their mothers, for the mothers whose children have abandoned them or mistreat them, and for the mothers who have lost a child. On Mother’s Day, some people really need love and hugs.

Posted in heritage, storytelling | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Poetry Can Be Lifewriting

Posted on April 7, 2024 by moonbridgebooks

April is National Poetry Month, a time when I like to tell people that poetry can be a kind of life writing. When my daughters were children, I wrote poems to document my feelings for them during their stages of growth from babies to high school graduates. Now they each have a pretty little book of hand-written poems about themselves to remember their young selves and me as their mother. My Poems That Come to Mind booklet holds very short poems, much of it haiku-type, that document my time caring for my mother and being among others with Alzheimer’s at a care home.

I see a lot of poetry out in social media, written freely for all to see. My area has a poetry center and poetry readings while the local colleges have classes on poetry writing. Maybe Amanda Gorman, the first National Youth Poet of the United States, inspired poetry writing, or at least poetry reading. I recently went to a well-attended writing presentation by Missouri’s current poet laureate, David Harrison. People do like to write poetry—are you one of them?

Most modern poetry does not rhyme, making it much easier to write. All you have to do is think about life and feel some rhythm and cadence in your wording. Make a booklet of poems about your life, or include your poems in your life writing stories or memoir. Maybe one of your poems would be a good introduction to your book, or as an ending.

In my mother’s Cherry Blossoms in Twilight memoir of growing up in Japan, she says her teacher took the class outside to nearby woods one day and told them poetry is to “find the feeling inside ourselves.”

Poetry as Memoir 2/4/2018

we sit side by side

holding hands in the soft sun

soon we fade away

dozing in warm nothingness

lost in the dove’s lamenting

– Poems That Come to Mind

Poems for Alzheimers

Posted in capturing memories, lifewriting, memories, poems | Tagged | Leave a comment

Life Story of a Lost Baby

Posted on January 7, 2024 by moonbridgebooks

Our family suffered a tragedy when a shocking pregnancy complication resulted in a young couple losing their healthy child in its second trimester. Nothing could be done to save the baby and her days-long torment finally and mercifully ended during delivery. The parents tenderly cradled this tiny, perfect baby, their first, with heart-searing love and soul-deep grief profound to behold, marveling at her wee hands and dear little face.

The supporting grandmothers felt their own searing pain, not only of seeing the exquisite sweetness of what could not be but also of witnessing the terrible grief of their grown children. The grandmothers lived nearby and had been part of the pregnancy journey of excitement, first trimester worries, then hope, finally a tragedy made much worse by a state’s coldly rigid law and a catholic hospital’s version of “ethics.”

The young man’s mother was so affected she wrote the story of the baby’s brief life, to capture how much the baby was hoped for and loved, how bonded the parents were during the mother’s physical and emotional trauma with the father firmly beside her for days, being strong for her while holding his own deep grief. The story is a way to focus on beautiful love rather than pain.

Losing a pregnancy, even an unwanted one, is a painful story. This baby’s story lives on in all our hearts and in a ribbon-bound booklet to treasure. Butterfly babies have stories, too.

Posted in bad memories, capturing memories, death, lifewriting, memories | Tagged | Leave a comment