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Another ‘Bad Mother’ Memoir
As the daughter of a bad mother, I admit that I am drawn to memoirs in which a child dishes dirt on a parent. When I saw the title of Molly Jong-Fast’s recently published book How to Lose Your Mother: A Daughter’s Memoir, I suspected that, like Jennette McCurdy in I’m Glad My Mother Died,… Read more
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It Happened to Me; It Happens to Others
Shortly after my poetry chapbook, Falling: A Memoir in Verse, was published, I was asked by the university where I taught at the time to give a reading on our campus. I write about difficult subjects. My instincts prod me to face experiences from my past that cause me the most discomfort and to write… Read more
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My Parents’ Hearts: Fragments from a Maybe Memoir
Grandma Swayne said that when she made my mother, she started with an oblong stone. She found it at the edge of Sideling Hill Creek by Little Orleans—the area of Western Maryland where my grandfather was born. She took that stone, smoothed by the creek’s ambling waters, and around it wove the flesh of the… Read more
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My Hillbilly Parents: Vignettes from a Someday (Maybe) Memoir
I didn’t know it when I was a child, but my father was what some people might call a hillbilly. Daddy was one of the many Wilsons from Cameron, West Virginia, south of Wheeling. One of the few of them who left their birthplace, he escaped the poverty and isolation of his mountain home to… Read more
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Sisters Out of Sync
In my earliest memories, I live with my parents in McKeesport, Pennsylvania. I’m four years old. My life began in the 1960s. Dr. Spock tended to my health, Dr. Seuss oversaw my early education, and my entertainment was provided by cartoons and reruns of I Love Lucy. Born to parents who were in their 40s,… Read more
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Hands, Revisited
My thanks to Jeff Cann, whose Windows to My Soul inspired me to keep thinking aobut hands. ….. When I was a child, my father taught me that the height of a horse is measured in hands. He demonstrated on his own horse, Azure, placing his hand sidelong up the length from the hoof to… Read more
Do you write about yourself and your experiences? Do you write about traumatic events in your life? Or, do you struggle to find time and motivation to write?
If so, this blog is for you.
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