When I was eleven I broke the butter dish. I had been cooking, making toast without permission. As punish my mother said I could not accompany her to the annual Christmas parade held the second Saturday of each December.
I loved going the Christmas Parade held in the town where we did most of our
Of a Butter Dish, Christmas Parades and Santa’s Knee … Read More »
My mother had no tolerance for my crying.
“If anyone looks at Anjuelle, she cries,” was how she described me.
She wanted to instill in me a mental toughness–what she had.
I was not going for it.
And so I cried.
I took
Mental Toughness, Girl Scout Badges, and Du’as … Read More »
In that a memoir, and the structure of any narrative, consists of scenes, I must write various scenes of my life, those that most depict my suffering for which I offer forgiveness and hold compassion for my mother.
This is hard. Not simply because I am writing of my mother, and about myself. The challenge lies in my lack of certainty, the ambiguity of my mother’s actions, and thus my ambivalence.
Perhaps what
Of Narrative, Scenes of a Life, and Brimming With Fear … Read More »
A recent study conducted at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois concludes, “ … most girls as young as six years old are already beginning to think of themselves as sex objects.”
The voluminous hours of watching television has taken its toll on girls of all ages and has reached the youngest of females.
But our daughters are not the only ones affected.
Researchers offered more information concerning factors influencing
Of Mothers, Daughters and Marilyn Monroe … Read More »
When I was a child my mother demanded 100% obedience.
Did I give it to her?
No.
Neither did I agree with everything she said or believed.
Many of the lessons she taught and that I employ have kept me in good stead as an adult, wife and mother. I thoroughly appreciate then.
Yet, I have often wished my mother could have supported me more in standing upon my own ground.
Better said, I would have appreciated immensely my mother supporting me in the areas where we differed in our perspectives on an issue.
When our youngest child reached five-years-old, I began
Of Mothers, The Illusion of Control, and Training Yourself Out of a Job… Read More »
I recently read an article on the Huffington Post entitled, Why You’re Not Married.
The author, a TV writer, Tracy McMillan, whose credits include, Mad Men, The United States of Tara, and a memoir, I Love You and I’m Leaving You Anyway offers 6 reasons why the reader, who if unmarried and wishes to be, remains single.
Without belaboring the point of what caught my attention, let me say that reasons 2-6 constitute a repeat of what many articles assert.
And despite the, shall we say, blunt and directness of reason #1, the truth it held forced me, a wife of 29 years, to stop in gratitude after overcoming the initial shock of McMillan’s wording, or more precisely, her word.
“The problem is not men. It’s you. Sure, there are lame men out there, but
Of The Military Industrial Complex, Sarah Palin, and Unconditional Love… Read More »