Today marks the 15th Mother's Day since I became a motherless daughter. I am grateful that my mother and I were able to resolve our difficult relationship, and my heart goes out to the many for whom this holiday brings nothing but pain. Earlier this week, I spoke with Lynda Martin on San Diego Living (click to view) about the Mother's Day dilemma. Tonight, my Rx for Mother's Day airs on KOLO-TV in Reno/Lake Tahoe, the region I fled to forty years ago, to escape her. For anyone who has tried to … [Read more...]
Seek and Defuse Emotional Triggers
For the 10th week of the Mother-Daughter Way, we seek and defuse emotional triggers that sabotage momentum, harm self and loved ones, and destroy peace. These sometimes-benign categories can derail your best self. This week, we do a writing exercise to unmask the devils. In our mind-body practice, we gird our spirit with Ujjayi, or Ocean Breath (click for audio guide) and Utkatasana (Chair) or Fierce Pose. The list of emotional triggers includes some that you would expect – alcohol, drugs, … [Read more...]
Envy Opens the Mother-Daughter Connection
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...]
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...]
MOM Fix II: O is for Openness
The open doors of her third floor studio inspired this black and white watercolor my mother painted to illustrate my grandmother's poem about aging and seclusion. When the three of us started working on The View in Winter, Alice planned to use her skill as a colorist to brighten up her mother's poems. I argued against the use of full color illustrations because I wanted the art to complement, not overpower, the verse. Alice agreed, reluctantly, to work in black and white, and later, she was … [Read more...]
The Mother-Daughter Way Unfolds . . .
I'm excited to share a work-in-progress, the Mother-Daughter Way, although I rarely do that. This work is highly collaborative, and I welcome your questions, comments and feedback. In the potential cover for the book, my mother sits before a blank canvas in a watercolor self-portrait, "Winter Work," (1994) done in her Merchantville studio. The image on the right is her oil portrait of me, "Jan in Blue," done in 1973 as I prepared to move across the county and start a new life as far away from … [Read more...]