Marilyn Norry
Mother of Mothers
About the Instructor
For over 30 years I've worked as an actor, writer, producer, director and editor of plays and screenplays. I've taught acting, writing, and worked with student nurses and doctors on psychiatric scenarios. And since 2004 I've worked with over 400 people helping them find and craft the story of their mother's life - not eulogies or testimonials but the truth of what their mothers lived and experienced.
I know stories - I love hearing them, writing them, telling them, living them.
The writing recipe we use in this course comes from how stories are told in plays and movies rather than in books. The family stories we access are those we heard at dinners or funerals, while doing the dishes, or in the car on long trips. We often take these stories for granted but they are the gold, the unique nuggets of life that give meaning to how we see the world. And your mother lived these stories.
By writing her story you will connect the stories and facts you know about her and see her as a human being in her time.
You'll also connect with your family history, find your voice, and break through the unconscious bias so many hold that keeps women's lives silent, dismissed and forgotten.
Whether you knew her or not, liked her or not, her life is a great story.
- Questions, concerns or queries? Contact me at mothersstory@gmail.com
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.