Blog Post #4
Eleven years ago, when my daughter Nadia neared the end of her treatment for Ewings sarcoma, we attended a benefit for the Children’s Museum of Manhattan. When I wrote about that experience in my book Motherhood Exaggerated, I described watching Nadia scale a climbing wall. She wears a bandana over her bald head, she is very thin and I am marveling at her energy since she spent the night in urgent care receiving a blood transfusion. While I watch, I think about who I am in this scenario. Am I, “… a woman who’s strong or sad or different or a martyr? Am I anticipating the time when I will be just like every other mom in the room—no longer special or super? Or will I realize that I was never either of those; I was just a mom with a sick kid surrounded by people with their own stories disguised by smiling faces so similar to my own facade.”
Months later, when Nadia’s hair had grown into a short pixie and the prominence of her bones lessened, I thought it was time for me to put the story of the year I spent caring for Nadia away. Despite the fact that we didn’t even know yet if Nadia would be a survivor, “I didn’t know how to introduce the topic [of her illness] without feeling as if I were dropping my burden like garbage on someone’s doorstep …”
At that museum benefit, I didn’t actually believe there were other mothers like me. I had immersed myself in my daughter’s illness with the focus of a meditating monk. It would have been impossible for me to recognize that the people around me were carrying similar wounds unless my trance was broken by their words. Which it rarely was. We have so many stories to tell, yet we keep so quiet. Motherhood Exaggerated has broken the trance and the silence.
Despite my own need after Nadia’s treatment to read stories similar to my own, and the prominence I gave in my book’s proposal and marketing pitch to the impact I hoped to have on the lives of others, I can’t say I understood the extent of the thirst for books like my own. Perhaps it was too many rejections from publishers telling me there is no market for “sick kid” books or that, even though I knew it was a book about a mother’s journey, no one else would see the universal story it contained.
After a dozen events, one-on-one meetings with readers, and mail correspondence, I wish I could go back into my book and rewrite that sentence about leaving garbage on a doorstep. Because the stories I am being told are given to me like presents that for so long could find no one to receive them, open the wrappings, and lift out the precious treasure. First the giver says thank you. Then he or she speaks.
“My son had cancer. He didn’t make it. Now I’m writing. My other son has psychological problems. You understand.”
“My son has a serious mental disorder. My stepdaughter had cancer and her mother wasn’t very much help.”
“My husband’s esophagus ruptured.”
“I have an incurable leukemia. I’ve only told three people, not even my children. Your book is such a gift to me.”
“I’m going to make my husband read this book. I’ve never had an ill child, but I am a mother and my husband has no idea what that means.”
They tell me about their daily hurdles, the major traumas—the moment that will grab us all someday when the path we thought we were walking alters course, like the stairs at Hogwarts that keep changing the place of their landing
A story-receiver is different from a storyteller. It requires a projection of the heart through the absence of words. The person speaking could be so fractured that you know even the slightest touch could shatter whatever protection they have erected around themselves. My hand, so ready to hold or stroke, must remain at my side. Others come wanting a continuation of the embrace the have found in my words. Still others come as equals; their tales are gifts that replenish my store of compassion, and I understand that I need them as much as they need me.
When it is time for me to speak, I know that what is wanted from me is not to take the pain away, to offer therapy or false promises of hope, as much as I wish I had the ability to do so. Whatever words I find must be both mirror and window. That part is like writing, but now I can see the face on the other side of the glass.
Months later, when Nadia’s hair had grown into a short pixie and the prominence of her bones lessened, I thought it was time for me to put the story of the year I spent caring for Nadia away. Despite the fact that we didn’t even know yet if Nadia would be a survivor, “I didn’t know how to introduce the topic [of her illness] without feeling as if I were dropping my burden like garbage on someone’s doorstep …”
At that museum benefit, I didn’t actually believe there were other mothers like me. I had immersed myself in my daughter’s illness with the focus of a meditating monk. It would have been impossible for me to recognize that the people around me were carrying similar wounds unless my trance was broken by their words. Which it rarely was. We have so many stories to tell, yet we keep so quiet. Motherhood Exaggerated has broken the trance and the silence.
Despite my own need after Nadia’s treatment to read stories similar to my own, and the prominence I gave in my book’s proposal and marketing pitch to the impact I hoped to have on the lives of others, I can’t say I understood the extent of the thirst for books like my own. Perhaps it was too many rejections from publishers telling me there is no market for “sick kid” books or that, even though I knew it was a book about a mother’s journey, no one else would see the universal story it contained.
After a dozen events, one-on-one meetings with readers, and mail correspondence, I wish I could go back into my book and rewrite that sentence about leaving garbage on a doorstep. Because the stories I am being told are given to me like presents that for so long could find no one to receive them, open the wrappings, and lift out the precious treasure. First the giver says thank you. Then he or she speaks.
“My son had cancer. He didn’t make it. Now I’m writing. My other son has psychological problems. You understand.”
“My son has a serious mental disorder. My stepdaughter had cancer and her mother wasn’t very much help.”
“My husband’s esophagus ruptured.”
“I have an incurable leukemia. I’ve only told three people, not even my children. Your book is such a gift to me.”
“I’m going to make my husband read this book. I’ve never had an ill child, but I am a mother and my husband has no idea what that means.”
They tell me about their daily hurdles, the major traumas—the moment that will grab us all someday when the path we thought we were walking alters course, like the stairs at Hogwarts that keep changing the place of their landing
A story-receiver is different from a storyteller. It requires a projection of the heart through the absence of words. The person speaking could be so fractured that you know even the slightest touch could shatter whatever protection they have erected around themselves. My hand, so ready to hold or stroke, must remain at my side. Others come wanting a continuation of the embrace the have found in my words. Still others come as equals; their tales are gifts that replenish my store of compassion, and I understand that I need them as much as they need me.
When it is time for me to speak, I know that what is wanted from me is not to take the pain away, to offer therapy or false promises of hope, as much as I wish I had the ability to do so. Whatever words I find must be both mirror and window. That part is like writing, but now I can see the face on the other side of the glass.
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