When celebrities like Angelina Joli, Joan Lunden and Hoda Kotb summon the courage to speak openly about their breast cancer, they offer an alternative to fear, hopelessness and isolation. October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, but for many, this awareness is year-round. My awesome artist-mother, Alice Steer Wilson, died of the disease in 2001. […]
When I saw this painting on Alice’s easel, I cried. She was going to die, and she knew it. That’s what I saw. My mother loved what she called “jumping off places” like this path across the dunes to the ocean. I couldn’t let the painting out of my life, so I bought it and […]
I am happy to participate in this writer’s round robin after being tagged by the lovely poet Lorraine Henrie Lins (thanks, Lorraine!). After I answer the questions, I’ll tag two additional wonderful writers. What is the working title of your book? The working title was The Alice Book or OK FOREVER: Alice Steer Wilson’s […]
Yesterday morning I made the final correction to the document that will become a book of my mother’s art life, with more than 200 images from her studio. What was the final change? The addition of the title “POEMS” on the copyright page . . . it’s interesting how many iterations it takes to get […]
Fortune from Wednesday night’s Chinese dinner: “Your respect for other will be your ticket to success.” The grammarian in me corrected it first to “others” but then, as I am almost ready to go to press with the book about my mother’s art, I made a different single-letter edit: “Your respect for Mother will be […]
Although I participated in two Thanksgiving dinners, I am feeling lighter than last week. Why? Because we finally buried my mother’s ashes in the Moorestown Quaker cemetery that she chose as her final resting place. The family gathered there on Saturday morning. We read and spoke of her love and the way she held us […]
OK, it’s not going to take me forever to do this book, but it is going to take longer than planned when I last posted on this blog. My mother’s journals were not blank, unlike those left to Terry Tempest Williams by her mother. The green post-its (above) mark passages to return to, share, possibly […]
