Connection is the focus of this, the 7th week of the Mother-Daughter Way journey. My connection to my mother, Alice Steer Wilson, fifteen years after her death, is one of imagination and memory. I lead this part of the journey with a renewed sense of the relevance of the program mission, which is to open up the process of self-mothering the way you wish you could be mothered, or in the case of a difficult daughter, the way you wish you could open up that connection using the MOM … [Read more...]
Christmas Story: Mothers and Daughters
Red was my mother's favorite color. I love blue. For the first week of the Mother-Daughter Way program, we focus on safety: feeling grounded and connected to earth. Within the practice of yoga and energy work, we honor the ethereal body by balancing the chakras. The healing begins with the root chakra, which is associated with the color red and the element earth, or source. Every Christmas, I feel close to my mother when I surround myself with red. What brings you close to your mothers or … [Read more...]
MOM Fix III: M is for Mercy
Even when I was an angry teenager, long before my mother and I forged our way back to forgiveness of each other and ourselves, we shared a love of the colors of nature. I was grateful for the beauty of the roses my father grew in our garden, and when I picked a few and gave them to my mother, she expanded the gift by creating the painting above. Later, when I prepared to move across the country, she gave me the painting as a memento. The 3rd profound shift to lighten and reframe the … [Read more...]
Art Sale as Autumn’s Release
The summer of 2015 went by too quickly, as many summers seem to, but this one was remarkable in the level of excitement and discovery that stayed high all season. The last time I posted, I had yet to open the exhibition of Alice Steer Wilson's works at the Carroll Gallery. Since then, I have collated and sold a record number of card packs and prints. Next Friday we will host a closing sale and celebration of the works, and all the stories as well as old and new friends they have brought … [Read more...]
Thrilled to unveil Alice’s Cape May, the part represents the whole . . . .
Fifteen years ago, Saturday, my mother began painting a large oil portrait of me. That may sound unremarkable, since she was a painter and I am her daughter, but it was highly charged for two reasons: I was busy, healthy, and I hate to sit for portraits. She was weak, breathless, dying of breast cancer, and she had never been satisfied with any of the previous portraits she’d attempted of me. In her home, and my sibling’s homes, there were plenty of portraits of the rest of the family. Her … [Read more...]
The Promise of Mothers and Daughters
...this is how you sweep a corner; this is how you sweep a whole house; this is how you sweep a yard; this is how you smile to someone you don't like too much ... Jamaica Kinkaid, "Girl" Will you be there? ... Can you hear the truth? Tori Amos, "Promise" It's been a lovely meditation for me to sit down and write daily tributes for Women's History Month. Now, on the last day, I'm returning to the relationship with the most elemental power: the Mother-Daughter bond. So … [Read more...]
Malala: Standard-Bearer for Girls’ Rights to Education
This month of honoring women may be coming to a close, but it's been an opening for me in a way I never dreamed. As a writer who is given to privacy, revision, and possibly overworked revision, this blog accomplished what my mother said the shift to watercolors from oil paints did for her. I had to trust my instincts, post it, and let it go. Your responses have been awesome, and I will not crawl back under that rock any time soon. Thank you for reading, liking, and responding. So, yes, I'm … [Read more...]
Virginia Tabor: Artist and Best Friend to Alice, Cape May
Today is day 28 of Women's History Month, and I'm beginning to panic. There are so many women on my heart and mind. I'm starting to think in categories, such as: Best Friends, Sisters, Aunts, Letter Writers, Diarists, Newly Discovered Relatives, Mothers and Daughters, Musicians, Asian Women, Latina Women. I only have three days left! I can't cover all the women or even the categories of neglected women! I choose the painter Virginia Tabor because she is an awesome artist, a surrogate "Mom," … [Read more...]
Three Women Docs Who Rock
Today, on the 27th day of Women's History Month, I'm honoring the countless women who provide care for family members, and three outstanding women doctors who touched my life as I cared for my mother and later, my uncle. According to a study by AARP, there are more than 65 million Americans providing $450 billion worth of unpaid caregiving for family members. In the not-too-distant past, women typically acted as nurses or caregivers, while men became doctors. When I grew up in the 1950s and 60s, … [Read more...]
Terry Tempest Williams and the Legacy of Mother, Earth, Spirit
It's late on the 25th day of Women's History Month, and from amongst the crowd of worthy women and organizations on lists I wrote as I contemplated a month of daily tributes, I'm choosing Terry Tempest Williams. Reading her memoir, Refuge, in 1993, inspired me on so many levels. In luminous prose, she wrote of her mother's slow death from breast cancer, the loss of habitat of the birds of the Great Salt Lake, and the dark legacy of patriarchy and nuclear testing. Almost twenty years later, as … [Read more...]