BettyAnn Martin - Writing Mothers: Narrative Acts of Care, Redemption, and Transformation

W riting M others

Narrative Acts of Care, Redemption, and Transformation

Edited by BettyAnn Martin and Michelann Parr

Writing Mothers

Narrative Acts of Care, Redemption, and Transformation

Edited by BettyAnn Martin and Michelann Parr

Copyright 2020 Demeter Press

Individual copyright to their work is retained by the authors. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.

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Demeter Press logo based on the sculpture Demeter by Maria-Luise Bodirsky www.keramik-atelier.bodirsky.de

Printed and Bound in Canada

Cover artwork: Irena Zenewych in collaboration with Heather Vollans
Movement title pages artwork: Dara Herman Zierlein
Cover design and typesetting: Michelle Pirovich
eBook: tikaebooks.com

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Writing mothers : narrative acts of care, redemption, and transformation/edited by BettyAnn Martin and Michelann Parr.

Names: Martin, BettyAnn, 1971- editor. | Parr, Michelann, 1964- editor.

Description: Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: Canadiana 20200154125 | ISBN 9781772582239 (softcover)

Subjects: LCSH: Motherhood. | LCSH: MotherhoodAnecdotes. |

LCSH: Mothers. | LCSH: MothersAnecdotes.

Classification: LCC HQ759.W75 2020 | DDC 306.874/3dc23

to my children

whose intellect, creativity, humour, and humanity are humbling sources of inspiration and joy. For your many challenges to my learning edge, and a sustaining ebb and flow of love given and received, I am ever grateful.

BettyAnn

to my mom

for it is only in being a mom that I have truly come to understand all that means. You are truly an unsung hero. Never doubt that I see you and give thanks for your resilience, your selflessness, and your unconditional acceptance. Thank you for all that you are and all that you have challenged me to be. My success is indeed your success.

Michelann

Acknowledgments

We express a deep sense of gratitude to Andrea OReilly and Demeter Press for creating a space for continued dialogue for women and mothers to write about motherhood and the multitude of social and emotional intersections women experience through mothering. In an era of disconnection and alienation, it makes sense to return to the maternal bond as a starting point for redefining strength as a function of compassion and for rediscovering the inherent possibilities of empathy. Through the study and experience of mothering, we learn that it is possible to be selfless without a loss of selfthat is, through empathy, there is an opportunity for expansiveness in our under-standing of humanity that takes us beyond the limitations of our individual consciousness. Sharing stories of mothering extends this opportunity as an invitation to both experience and feel motherhood through various perspectives, and sometimes a renewed perspective is all that is required to initiate meaningful change.

We acknowledge the power of our writers and their stories to stir our empathy and contribute to this movement of increased understanding and connection. Their stories are the inspiration for this collection and our continued inspiration as both mothers and writers. Through the documentation of maternal experience, women are encouraged to understand their stories as part of a collective and cultural negotiation of what it means to be a mother as well as the empowering prospects that lie beyond absolute definitions. It is within their stories that we find both a sense of community and support.

We would also like to thank our close friends, families and children for their encouragement and support in the writing of this book and for the many relational opportunities they provide to know ourselves through motherhood; in our encounters with mothering and being mothered, we find the possibility for personal and communal transformation and healing.

Finally, we acknowledge mothers whose stories are as yet untoldsilenced out of fear or oppressionwhose worth is not diminished by this silence. We see you and acknowledge your experience, and we hope that collections such as these create space and provide courage for you to come into your voice.

Cover Artists Statement

My mother was moving into a personal care home; her apartment needed to be liquidated. As the only child, that responsibility fell on me. In the process of liquidation, I distributed many things to people and places I thought would appreciate and/or use them. And, of course, I kept some things for myself. But there was this set of tea cups and saucers that nagged at me. Pure white porcelain. Rich purple and gold leaf designs. Overwhelmingly beautiful, but not my style. I would never use them. On the second last day of cleaning, my cousin asked me, So, is there anything special that you would like to keep? I thought of the tea set and my friend, Heather Vollans, a mosaic artist. And in that moment, I decided that my mothers tea set was coming home with me.

Irena Zenewych

Foreword

Kate Hopper

For almost two decades, motherhood has been the primary focus of both my writing and my teaching. In 2004, when my older daughter, Stella, was five months old, I began work on what would become Ready for Air , a memoir about my daughters premature birth and my first year of motherhood. In those early days, I was writing to make sense of the trauma that we had experienced, and I also knew that I wanted to write against the myths of motherhood. My experience becoming a mother didnt seem to fit into an acceptable narrative of motherhood, so I sat down and wrote my way into understandingone scene, one image at a time.

It is challenging to really lay yourself bare and write the hard parts of life. But it was important to me to write as honestly as possible and to not sugarcoat anything or make myself into a hero. I wrote the difficult moments, including the moment when I thought Stella might die. I wrote into my confusion and anger, straight into my own vulnerability. Some days, I sat in the coffee shop with tears streaming down my face. Some days, I needed to step away from the work and go for a walk. But even when it was hard, the more I wrote, the less alone and more ground-ed I felt.

In his research, Dr. James Pennebaker has found that writing about traumatic events has many physical and emotional benefits; it can lower your blood pressure, strengthen your immune system, reduce stress, and help you gain perspective and improve your outlook on life. This was so true for me that I began to create spaces where other women could come together and explore writing about motherhoodthe gritty parts, the beautiful parts, and everything in between. Through readings, classes, retreats, and a blog I began to create a community of mother writers who could encourage each other to put their words out into the world even when those words didnt fit into tidy narrative boxes.

Over the years, I have watched countless women heal, grow, and transform through the process of writing and sharing their mother stories, as is evident in this collection. Again and again, I have witnessed exactly what Marjorie Jolles writes in her chapter Slow Motherhood: Utopian Narratives of Time Lost and Found in the Slow Parenting Movement: the very act of narrationthe imposition of narrative order on somewhat inchoate experiencepreserves precious memory and can ease suffering and confusion.