Writing Retreat

This past weekend I had the pleasure of attending a writing retreat with 4 other gifted writers.  
"But you're not a writer."  I hear you.  And yet, I am.  

The Porches Writing Retreat

I have been writing since I was a teenage girl-child, poetry mostly, which I not so long ago discarded. It was a great way to think through my conflicting feelings that by it's nature the teen years bring.  (and no, I didn't say I was good at it!)  I've continued throughout my life to write in journals - dozens of them.  Not consistently by any means.  They are scattered all around my house in drawers and on shelves.  
I know, here comes that recurring theme - My mother's death.  After she died in 2007,  I plunged into the deepest grief, so deep I could not recognize or name what was wrong with me until just this past year.  I realized as I remembered so many things about my mother that my nephews knew nothing of her life as a woman.  They only knew her as their Grandma. An older lady, not especially warm, who had the habit of blurting out whatever she was thinking.  Which sometimes led to hurt feelings and kept a distance between them. 

In 2008 I decided to write about my Mom while she was fresh in my head and before the memories became too distant and while my mind was still functioning, for the most part, pretty well.  I have a gorgeous leather journal that I began to write in.  and then I stopped. 

Last year when I took my writing class by accident - that's somewhere here in the archives - I began to think again about that goal and began to explore it in writing class.  Fast forward to this past weekend: I dove in again.  
I took a box and a folder of some of Mama's things I'd kept after her death.  A Bible, a mirror, evening bags and gloves, childrens' hats, photos and more.  I used these items as prompts, and oh, did the tides of emotions roll in and out, crashing and so softly receding.  Thankfully the extreme grieving has ended. Still, the memories of a life, hers entwined in mine, of a family whose influences on one another cannot be ignored, began to unfold once again with the writing of each sentence and brought me to tears as well as grins. I began to realize that I cannot tell her story without telling some of mine, as it is through my eyes that I know my mother.  And I cannot tell my mother's story without telling that of my father, sisters and brother, too.  

sunrise from my window

My intent is still to record a family record, for future generations to somehow feel like they didn't descend from strangers, as I feel not knowing much about my own ancestors.  This project has become bigger than life, but still, I'm enjoying the journey.  My biggest hope is that time will allow me to get to the finish.