My Mother's Story

Who was that woman?

Everyone has a mother; every mother has a story.

Our relationship with our mothers is the most primal of our lives and yet throughout the world and 5000 years of written history, the story of who these women were as human beings remains cloaked in silence.

Who was the woman who played the role of mother in your life? Where did she come from? What were her hopes and dreams?

In times past family history was passed down orally though stories told around the fire, on long trips, or while washing dishes. Today many people believe anecdotal evidence is false, preferring to remember what they see in movies, on television or the internet. Or parents have not told their children what they lived through, because it was horrible or preferring to wait until they're older. So much of how we believe the world works, our Rules of Living, come from our earliest days when our mothers told us of their lives or through what we experienced living with her. If we don't write it down though, will our history be lost?

In the ongoing process of individuation, sometime in our teens, many people take the memories and experience of their mothers and put them in a box to be stored high on a shelf, often with a one word label: Sweet, Absent, Crazy, Martyr, Loving. It takes courage to bring that box down and sort through the contents as an adult, reflecting on the person who was often the same age if not younger than who we are now. That's what this course is about.

This is not therapy; this is a writing course. The writing recipe we use will give you the experience of good writing, creating an effective story on a subject you already know. Whether you knew her or not, whether you liked her or not, your mother's life is a great story.

This kit will give you the exercises I've used for years in My Mother's Story workshops. You already know all the facts you need; now you will learn how to tell your mother's story in your own voice. In discovering her as a human being, you and she will be set free.

What you do with your story is up to you: share it with friends and family, share it with the world, share it with your mom, keep it for yourself.

I will really, really welcome your feedback on how this course works for you and how it can change to work for others.