"THE SHARING OUR STORIES PROJECT"
Vv and I are hoping that you enjoyed this first year of the SHARING OUR STORIES PROJECT. Exciting plans for SHARING OUR STORIES 2022 will be announced in January, but before we call this year complete we want to thank our amazing writers and readers.
To our writers: Thanks so much for your willingness to share your stories with such honesty, sensitivity, and skill. Because each of you wrote so beautifully from your own experience, each of our eleven stories was as unique and interesting as you are yourselves. We hope this writing and sharing experience was a positive and learning one for each of you and that you will consider sharing more stories with us in the future.
To our readers: Thanks for appreciating the work of these fourteen very talented women and girls. If you haven’t made your way through all the 2021 stories, we encourage you to go back to January 2021 and scroll through to enjoy them all. Or perhaps the summary below will spark your interest in selecting a particular month’s story to read.
We just finished a heartwarming review of this year’s stories, and noticed a few things:
- We asked writers to share their experience as daughters, mothers, grand-daughters and grand-mothers. Our stories included:
- Five stories in which women wrote about their mothers’ lives and the relationship they had with their mothers. (March, April, June, August, October)
- Three stories in which women wrote about their experience as mothers. (February, July, and September)
- Two stories where mother-daughter pairs wrote about their relationships with each other. (May)
- One story in which a grandmother and grand-daughter wrote about their relationship with each other. (November)
- The eleven stories were each very different, but we noticed some recurring themes:
- A daughter may remember watching her mother and wanting to be like her:
- “ My mom always had this great earthy, yet sophisticated style that shows up in everything: decorating, fashion, cooking, gardening to name a few. In high school I remember I loved to raid her closets and borrow one of her many flowing peasant dresses. I would pair this up with one of her big chunky belts and tie it together with my old Frye boots. I thought I looked amazing because I looked a little like her.” (Sherry Senior, March).
- Of course, I loved her! But I also admired her. I wanted to be like her…only cooler!” (Patty Johnston, September)
- A daughter may really admire her mother.
- “My mother is probably one of the most extraordinary people I have ever known. Not just because she is my mother but because of who she is and what she has overcome to be that person.” (Sherry Senior, March)
- “She had suffered so much in the seven months since her diagnosis, yet she fought the disease with amazing grace and dignity, never once complaining. She was a true super-hero.” (Beth Bokan, April)
- “She is small but her soul fills a room.” (Tia Ganguly, October)
- A daughter may change her feelings about her mother over time:
- As a younger woman, Beth said “I found myself thinking I did not want to be like my mother.” Over time, their relationship changed and as Beth wrote, “I knew at that moment how much my mother loved me. I knew without a doubt that I wanted to be just like her.” (Beth Bokan, April)
- A mother may value seeing her children grow up to become adults.
- “I have raised her to verbalize what she needs, stand up for what she feels is right and lean on me when she needs it. Through it all that is exactly what she has done.” (Cari Kelley, February)
- “My kids are kind, loving, thoughtful, funny, generous, responsible and dedicated individuals who genuinely care about others.” (Patty Johnston, September)
- A mother can be a true supporter and an important teacher:
- “ She supported me always, lifting me up, guiding me, NAGGING me through my teen years, providing “helpful” reminders. She was never pushy always permitting ME to do the work and reap the benefits.” (Terry Callahan, June)
- “What I loved most about my mother is that despite her worries, fears and insecurities, she applauded and encouraged her daughters to be independent. She taught us to save money and said that a woman should always have a savings account in her own name, so that she could afford to leave a relationship if she ever felt the need to.” (Michele Delhaye, August)
- “She taught me so much by example about family, strength, and incredible love. I have learned from her joy and her pain.” (Tia Ganguly, October)
- A mother can learn from her daughter:
- “I learn something new from her every day. She teaches me how to do new things in Zoom, about assorted Disney musicals and new approaches to problem solving and how to work through important things with people you love.” (Jen Arner Welsh, May)
- Mothers and daughters and grand-daughters and grand-mothers can enjoy just being together and sharing their common interests:
- “ We share lots of common interests as well. We have jars upon jars of seashells that we have collected over summers spent on Cape Cod…We both like dancing in the snow and singing along to the Back-street Boys.” (Patricia Mahoney, May)
- “They were twirling and playing til they went to the beach with the sand in their toes and the water splashing on their feet.” (Willow, May)
- “We just really like each other and respect each other’s opinions.” (Sherry Senior, March)
- “As the mother of my father, Grammy is the best. She is always here for me. We have so much fun. I almost feel like we are one.” (Ella, November)
- Mother-daughter relationships can feel special and different from other relationships.
- “There is something special about my relationship with my daughter. I delight in her presence. When I talk about her, I feel a surge of pride and sense her lightness and joy….I am so glad that my daughter has joined the female club with me.” (Lynn Arner Cross, July)
- Mother-daughter relationships can seem complicated sometimes.
- “The lesson we are trying to teach is that there’s a lot of things that drive us crazy about each other and a lot of things that we love about each other at the same time. And that is honestly like most mother-daughter relationships.” (Vv Welsh, May)
- Our experience as a mother or grandmother can cause us to reflect on our role as a daughter or grand-daughter.
- “However, now that I have three children of my own and a few years under my belt, I see that my mom, after 20 plus years of parenting experience and six children had the equivalent of a Ph.D. in motherhood.” (Patty Johnston, September)
- ”I have grown so close to Ella over this past year and we have learned about each other in ways that I never knew my own grand-mother…I wish I had known her better and had thought to ask questions about her life. There was so much I didn’t know about this woman who was the mother of my father, the great-great-grandmother of my grandchildren.” (Lee Curtiss, November)
- A daughter may remember watching her mother and wanting to be like her:
Thanks for sharing in this project as a writer or as a reader or both!
We wish you a happy December and hope you will join us in our new SHARING OUR STORIES PROJECT beginning in January 2022.
Love,
Carol and Vv
