Saturday, December 31, 2011
Happy New Year
As for my next book, I am going to hold myself
from writing it till I have it impending in me:
grown heavy in my mind like a ripe pear;
pendant, gravid, asking to be cut or it will fall.
~Virginia Woolf
What is your New Years Resolution? Mine are:
1) I resolve to be happy.
2) I resolve to relax.
3) I resolve to be calm.
4) I resolve to be grateful.
Thank you all for being a part of this memoir writing website.
Happy New Year, Jennifer
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Book Talk: Crazy for the Storm by Norman Ollestad
This week, it's me writing the column Book Talk. Anne and Cloie are busy writing future posts.
From Amazon: The story itself could take your breath away: an 11-year-old boy, the only survivor of a small-plane crash in the San Gabriel Mountains in 1979, makes his way to safety down an icy mountain face in a blizzard, using the skills and determination he learned from his father. But it's the way that Norman Ollestad tells his tale that makes Crazy for the Storm a memoir that will last.
This book was handed to me, in the same way a runner hands off a baton in a relay race. My co-teacher Anne passed it over last month. She hoped it would provide needed inspiration. I was in the midst of coaching a writer who just wasn’t getting the message.
After listening to me kvetch, Anne let me borrow her copy of Crazy for the Storm. 
I must confess this is not a book I would usually read. I’m not much for the “in your face” testosterone laden memoir. Afterall, what does Ollestad have to do? This story practically tells itself. The monumental tragedy, which happens in a relatively short time frame, is an obvious container. Stay in real time, tell the story and boom—bestseller. Plus it’s very masculine and heroic and let’s face it—a man’s book about a man being a man—well, you’ve got yourself a no-brain winner. This is America. John Wayne mythology abounds. Women want the Marlboro man to sweep them away. Men want to be that brink-living-brave hero.
Come on.
It’s too easy.
But then I started to read.
It wasn’t the tragedy that captured me. It wasn’t the bigger-than-big father who pushed himself and his son to the edge of human limits and beyond. It wasn’t the “do they survive” breath stealing quality either.
It was the writing.
I’m not sure Ollestad wrote this book–something in me suspects a ghostwriter lurks in the shadows–but in the end, who cares? Whoever wrote this book, there is great skill and craft here. Some of the lines took my breath away. And, Ollestad used a brilliant device to tell the story. He worked the front story (the accident and the hours that followed as he alone made his way off the mountain and away from the crash) in tandem with the backstory (a trip to Mexico with his dad which brought the reader up to speed with the life the young boy—pre-crash—was living with his screwed up mother, his abusive step father and his “live else where adventure hungry” dad). 
It works because he holds both the front and the back-story very close. He doesn’t wander around into every moment of his life with his father pre-crash and he doesn’t get sentimental which is something that would be easy to do when commemorating a manly man like his father. Instead Ollestad tells the story straight, stays close to a manageable time frame and never drops us from that time line.
As a memoir teacher, I would encourage all memoir writers to read this book. It’s so tight and clean and yes, obvious. But it’s the most obvious story line that can help you see your own container for your story. Ollestad (or his ghost writer) teaches us to keep things simple, keep it moving, keep it clear, keep it clean and most of all—keep it on the bone honest.
A valuable lesson for you waits in this book. Get it. Read it. Study it.
Friday, December 23, 2011
Annoucements & Updates
Life May Have Been Your Enemy but a Writing Teacher is a Friend:
A writer sends me her work, she says "you are the writer for me. I am dying to be taught. My work is attached."
I write back, we set up time to speak, I take a deposit, I read her work and I make my comments. We set up time to speak but hold on...the writer disappears. When I send an inquiry, the writer is hostile and defensive. It turns out I am not the "the writer for her" after all and it also turns out the writer is not "dying to be taught."It is not easy to hold my center in these situations. I work hard to remind myself that I am still the same writing teacher and the same person. It is the writer who has shifted. One moment hopeful, the next hostile.
There is something about memoir that seems to draw out the most poison in people and rather than seeking to be freed of the poison, so many keep it inside, curl up around the pain and attack anyone who might draw near with a solution.A thought: If you cannot "respond" to advice and critique but instead are stuck in the "reaction" phase (negative emotion tinged with discomfort), it is not time to get feedback.
Wounds take time to heal--years in fact. Some wounds will never heal and that is our lot as human beings. Change is hard. Waking up is very hard. Making the shift from reaction to response requires effort.
While I love to help writers grow, I will admit this is the least pleasant and most perplexing aspect of my job. The writer who knows if she is processing vs. writing is the wise writer indeed. If you find you are needing to process, that's okay. Take your time. And when it's time to write, remember, you will need to let people read your book and you will be served by gaining the distance necessary to hear what they have to say. Life may have been your enemy but writing teachers and editors are your friends.
~
The Download Class at The Attic Institute is nearly full! Do not miss an opportunity to learn, at a very affordable price, how to get your memoir off to the best start possible. CLICK HERE to learn more.
The Portland Master Class is at half capacity. That means we have room for about seven more writers. Will you be one of them? And...if you are not in Portland but would like to take this class long distance...let's talk! I have devised a perfect way for you to attend so that class fits into your schedule. jennifer@jenniferlauck.com or CLICK HERE to sign up.
The Phase III: Market, Sell and Publish Your Memoir class is coming. I am testing brand new material, pulled together this month which teaches you everything I know about getting your book in front of agents, editors and publishers. You can get published and this program will open your mind to how it can happen. Ask questions by writing me at jennifer@jenniferlauck.com or CLICK HERE to sign up.
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Book Talk: The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
I'm happy to present Clover Cohen, a long time student in the Master Class. Cloie is one to watch! Enjoy her insights on memoir. She's a hard working writer who is paying her dues.
Extreme poverty sears itself in to one’s senses. The damp cold bites the nose and cheeks when there is no heat in January. A mouse’s scuttling in the dark perks the ears. Salty Rice-a-Roni from the donated food box burns the tongue. Smoke seeping out from the car’s hood alerts to another impending break down and a long walk home.
When I first read The Glass Castle in 2005, I had not started writing yet. I didn’t understand how a writer tells her story and the devices she uses. After years of reading and both receiving and offering feedback, I want to suggest to Jeannette that she slow down. Set the scene. Use sensory details even more to make the story come alive. We want to be there with you. 
In Jeanette’s story of her crazy, neglectful parents and their transient life, we see the places where they settle then abandon in the middle of the night. We hear their conversation in dialogue that’s fantastic. We understand the characters and their complexities. The sense underrepresented in this story is smell. This sounds weird, even to me, but I want to smell this story.
I want to know:
What burning flesh smells like (even though I’m sure it’s beyond disgusting), “I smelled the burning and heard a horrible cracking as fire singed my hair and eyelashes.”
How the chemicals at the dump in Phoenix burned their nostrils as they unscrewed the lids and tried to set them on fire, “So we mixed up a batch of what Brian called nuclear fuel, pouring different liquids into a can. When I tossed in the match, a cone of flame shot up with a whoosh like a jet afterburner.”
About the stench of the inside of a dumpster, “When no one was looking, Brian and I pushed open the lid, climbed up, and dived inside to search for bottles. I was afraid if might be full of yucky garbage. Instead we found an astonishing treasure: cardboard boxes filled with loose chocolates.”
How an open pit of rotting garbage smells, “He explained that we was going to hire a truck to card the garbage to the dump all at once. But he never got around to that, either, and as Brian and I watched, the hole for the Glass Castle’s foundation slowly filled with garbage.”
How the stink of a molded out cabin in West Virginia must overwhelm, “Everything in the house was damp. A fine green mold spread over the books and papers and paintings that were stacked so high and piled so deep you could hardly cross the room. Tiny mushrooms sprouted up in the corners.”
About the breath of a drunk man as he tried to force himself on her, “His hands dropped down. He squeezed my bottom, pushed me on to the bed, and began kissing me.”
About the absence of smell, or perhaps the pleasant scent, of a nice apartment in New York City, “Eric’s apartment had cross beamed ceilings and a fireplace with an art deco mantel. I actually lived on Park Avenue, I kept telling myself as I hung my clothes in the closet Erick had cleared out for me."
How a person reeks of body odor when they live on the streets for years, “Mom broke into a huge smile and started hurrying toward us. Instead of an overcoat, she was wearing what looked to be about four sweaters and a shawl, a pair of corduroy trousers, and some old sneakers.”
It’s easy to be on the other side of the page and make these requests. I have become greedy as a reader. Yet as a writer, it’s a laborious challenge, to say the least, to infuse every scene with every sense. We live in our heads and our memories are dominated by what was seen.
Our auditory and olfactory memories are accessible though.
Like when I pass by the make-up counter at Macy’s, a whiff of Estee Lauder’s Youth Dew drops me back in the middle of Grandma’s bathroom, in my 6 year old body, as I snoop through her make up and spritz the brown bottle of perfume on the inside of my wrist, them rub it together with the other.
As I click through the radio stations on my drive to work, “Today” by the Smashing Pumpkins transports me back 16 years to my wedding day, to the moment when our vows were sealed and we turned to walk back down the aisle, when tears seeped from my Mom’s eyes and I had to pause for a millisecond to catch my breath.
Music can be easily accessed through YouTube or iTunes. Images are easy too when Google can verify a memory in seconds. Taste, touch, and smell have to be sought out though, away from the quiet house, with sleeping kids, where the only sounds comes from the whirring dishwasher and the sharp clicks on the laptop’s keyboard. These going-outs have to be part of the process to inform the writing, to offer another layer for the reader. I have no doubt Jeanette remembers the stench of her youth or at is reminded when she passes a restaurant’s dumpster. She may have even tried to wipe them out by surrounding herself with sweet cut roses and perfumed candles. But as her reader, I want those memories. As a writer, I am reminded again that I need to work harder to seek out my own.
Monday, December 19, 2011
Writing Tip #14: How Does Your Writing Make the Reader Feel?
When I wrote my memoir Blackbird, I told the truth of how my mother died when I was seven and my father died when I was nine. I also told the truth of how I fell through the cracks of my family support system and found myself both homeless and preyed on by abusers—psychological and physical. These were not pretty stories.
I had been trained as a journalist in hard news events, which meant I reported on murders, drug busts, domestic strife, abductions and even gang activity. In early drafts of Blackbird, I decided I would write like I reported which meant I would give the hard cold facts.
My goal? Let the reader come to his or her own conclusions.
My rational? If I could survive it, you could read it.
Thanks to the gentle and not-so-gentle guidance of many good teachers and editors, I made different decisions in my later drafts.
Thank goodness.
Memoir is not a news report. Memoir is a genre that invites the writer to use the tools found in literature in order to explore memory. These tools include the use of vivid details and scenes that evoke deep emotional responses in the reader. When you write memoir, you are going to create something that makes the reader “feel” a great deal.
It was Maya Angelou who said, “people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
This is never truer than when we write a memoir. We have all read memoirs that made us feel so deeply that we couldn’t fall asleep at night, had us holding our children closer or even made us become kinder and gentler people as a result. We have also read memoirs that made us so furious we vowed to never read another book by that writer.
The difference between the good memoir and the unbearable memoir is care for the reader and a good measure of restraint.
As David Huddle writes in his book The Writing Habit, restraint means decorum, control, a holding back, a measuring of language against silence. Huddle, a professor of literature at the University of Vermont, is referring to the fact that writers are artists and the artist sensibility is what is needed when approaching storytelling. Memoir is no exception.
Yes, we as memoir writers will admit we have had a pile of misfortune heaped upon our shoulders and on our backs, but we must also recognize that how we tell our story truly matters. A recounting of the grisly details does not make a work readable or even interesting. A writer of memoir must remember he or she is digging toward meaning, essence, the pith and the gold that is lodged away at the core of a lived experience. The grisly details can lead us to that core but in the final edit, many of these details must to be carved away.
As my former teacher, Tom Spanbauer (Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon, Far Away Places, In the City of Shy Hunters), used to say, "never drop the reader."
To me this translate to mean hold your reader close. Don’t let a reader “fall out” out of your story or away from you as the guiding force who knows all and tells all (in careful measure). Lots of vivid details told with balance and attention to space, place, time, people are necessary to paint your story in the readers mind. Understanding the psychology of your reader—what makes him and her tick—is also important. For example, we all know that a reader is a human being and that human beings want to feel safe, they also want to be in on the secret and they want to know things are going to turn out okay, or if they aren’t going to turn out okay, they need to know they won’t be left dissatisfied about how things turned out. This means you need to wrap up your loose ends. Don’t leave the reader hanging (unless that is your goal and you want them to buy your sequel). The bottom line is that you want your reader to know you’re on their side—not against them. You want your reader to know the writer is working hard to get to true meaning under the events of her life. The reader respects the writer who struggles on the page and presents this struggle with humanity and humility.
It’s a balancing act. We must have room to “get it all out” of our system and write poorly. That’s a huge part of being a memoir writer. But we must also know when it’s time to write well and when we think about the reader—with kindness, empathy and even a share of gentle compassion—we are on our way to creating a better book.
TALK BACK: What memoirs have you read that made you feel amazed, blown away and inspired? What memoirs have you read that made you feel furious? Leave your comment
Image Credit: Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, Woman Reading a Book, 1845/Flickr.com
Learn more about Jennifer Lauck at Jennifer Lauck Memoir Writing.com
Friday, December 16, 2011
Annoucements
My first video class is available! Check it out and share the word.
The foundation of our beloved genre of memoir is SCENE.
A scene is a moment in time when something happens to move your story forward. It is active, it is vivid, it is alive. Do you know how to write one of these? Do you know the primary elements of this format?
If no, get ready to learn...
1) ...the definition of a scene
2) why scene is vital to writing memoir
3) how to check yourself against a scene writing recipe card
4) what is the difference between showing & telling
5) how to get to work and write a scene now
45 Minute Class (Video Download) & PDF Handout
Cost: $50.00
Monday, December 12, 2011
Writing Tip #13: Be Clear/Be Real/Connect
Great writing is clear writing. Clear writing isn’t fancy or even that “smart” but the intelligence of well done writing becomes obvious when we read it and more obvious when we attempt to write that way ourselves. Writing in the clearest way possible is hard. When a writer nails that clarity, a direct and penetration connection is made with the reader.
Here are a few examples of clear writing that connects. 
The girl next to me on the Portland city bus is bone thin and has mouse brown hair. Her crooked horned rimmed glasses—the temple on my side held together with oily Scotch tape—hang at the end of her nose. The coat she’s wearing is two sizes two big, three sizes, so she’s rolled the sleeves halfway up her arm’s and she’s using ragged fingernails to pick an exposed knob of wrist. I’m guessing she’s sixteen year old, give or take a year and I know she’s coming off a drunk. Either that or a bad high. She’s got sallow skin, half shut eyes, hunched shoulders—but mostly it’s her smell. When I lowered myself onto the vinyl seat next to her, I got the first whiff, the air around her so pungent it tasted of drugs and booze and smokes and daze. The dried-urine, state-ashtray stench of a binge.
I turn away and glance around the crowded bus. Is anyone else troubled, disgusted even, by this girl, this child, and her obvious downfall?
~ From the memoir Live Through This by Debra Gwartney 
Do not set foot in my office. That’s Dad’s rule. But the phone’d run twenty-five times. Normal people give up after ten or eleven, unless it’s a matter of life or death. Don’t they? Dad’s got an answering machine like James Garner’s in the The Rockford Files with big reels of tape. But he’s stopped leaving it switched on recently. Thirty rings, the phone got to. Julia couldn’t hear it up in her converted attic ‘cause “Don’t You Want Me?” by Human League was thumping out dead loud. Forty rings. Mum couldn’t hear it ‘cause the washing machine was on berserk cycle and she was hoovering the living room. Fifty rings. That’s just not normal. S’pose Dad’d been mangled by a juggernaut on the M5 and the police only had this office number ‘cause all his other I.D.’d got incinerated? We could lose our final chance to see our charred father in the terminal ward.
~ From the novel Black Swan Green by David Mitchell
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my louse childhood was life, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t; feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them. They’re quite touchy about anything like that, especially my father. They’re nice and all—I’m not saying that—but they’re all touchy as hell.
~ From the novel Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
I was born with water on the brain.
Okay, so that’s not exactly true. I was actually born with too much cerebral spinal fluid inside my skill. But cerebral spinal fluid is just the doctors’ fancy way of saying brain grease. And brain grease works inside the lobes like car grease works inside an engine. It keeps things running smooth and fast. But weirdo me, I was born with too much grease inside my skill, and it got all thick and muddy and disgusting, and it only mucked up the works. My thinking and breathing and living engine slowed down and flooded.
My brain was drowning in grease.
But that makes the whole thing sound weirdo and funny, like my brain was a giant French fry, so it seems more serious and poetic and accurate to say, “I was born with water on the brain.”
~ From the novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part -Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
As I wrote these examples, I couldn’t help make note that three are novels and one memoir. "Why did I do that?” I wondered. The most obvious answer is that these were the books by my bed and what I grabbed on my way to write this post. But I also picked this collection of examples because they are good. Here we have, in each example, clear writing that makes a connection.
Alexie’s narrator is a young kid who went through brain surgery but lived to tell the tale and the reader is assured—right away—that there is one heck of a story being unfolded by the facts of this boys birth.
Gwartney, in her memoir, tells the story of being on the bus with a stranger—a young stranger—and we are being told that this is a story about her feelings, observations and situation in relationship to young people and abuse. She hasn’t told us—in this example—that two of her own daughters were this young girl and that she had to survive (as the mother) a stunning long run of blows as her girls fell into that world of drugs, drink and street living, but all this is coming soon enough. The concrete example of the girl on the bus, the stranger, lets us get close but remain distant in the way the narrator wants to be distanced as well. We feel her conflict in being next to the young girl, we are connected.
In Black Swan Green and Catcher, both books told from the perspective of a young male narrator who uses a good deal of slang and casual conversational tone, we are drawn into the way a kid thinks and talks. We are part of their world—right away—by the fact of their word choices. They are not pretending to be someone they are not. They are just being kids and they are also showing through the word choices and the focus on the adults in their life, that they are young. Both of these books are considered coming of age novels. In fact, Black Swan is called the modern Catcher in the Rye and we see why. This narrator in Black Swan has the same youth, the same slang and the same focus. But he also has that clear speak of a narrator who is going to take you somewhere and is fully in charge of the story.
And that’s another reason to write with total clarity. You, as the writer, initially have to surrender most of your control in order to follow the mystery of where the story wants to take you (memoir or fiction alike) but once you know what you are going to write about, once you have your beginning, middle, end in a drafted form—it’s time to let your craft take over and that’s when you polish, shine and work your writing to be this clear. Crystal clear.
WRITING PROMPT: Now you try. Talk to me. Write a paragraph that is clear but also casual. Work on a conversational tone—relaxed—but also moving forward toward a goal. Let your narrator take me somewhere.
Here is my example (this took me about two minutes to write)
So Jennifer Lauck, this fancy memoir writer who has this crazy blog called “Prolifically Raw,” says, “write me a clear and conversational paragraph. Go!”
It’s a Tuesday, early in the morning and I’m at my desk at Sell It Fast Reality. I’m supposed to be typing up a form that will sell the Johnson house but I’m not typing. I don’t type unless my boss—Mr. Crabby Pants—is on his way toward my desk. When that happens, I am a flurry of “get the job done” activity. Until Crabby Pants gets off the phone and comes my way, I surf the web and do my best to learn from fancy memoir writer Jennifer Lauck. It’s my Tuesday habit, my Tuesday routine, my Tuesday lifeline to something better than being a form-typer-upper here at Sell it Fast.
If you want to read reviews of books, CLICK HERE and you'll see some titles I highly recommend for memoir writers.
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Listen in: 12/8 Teleseminar
I set writing goals. Period. I would never had written and published four books without goals (and had two kids). I'm telling you, this works. Set goals now!
Jacob Gudger, my marketing guy, showed us how:
Go from having a dream to having a strategy.
Deal with fear: "Do it afraid."
Stop wasting time and HOW.
Listen in now:
If you are a subscriber to this site, send me an email and I'll get you your downloadable link! If not, Sign up now.
Friday, December 09, 2011
Annoucements
First, and foremost, I want to thank all my students this year. I had a banner teaching year with some of the most lovely and talented people. It was a great year, with terrific students.
Second, I was delighted to learn that several (six) of the young people from my Writer's in the School Residency (part of Literary Arts) were placed in the 2011/12 anthology titled No One Carries an Umbrella Here. The title essay Twisted Flower was by my student, Marquisa Sapian and I couldn't have been more thrilled. Another young woman, Jin Mei McMahon won the Glimmer Train Prize for Prose for her essay titled Her Logic. Congratulations Jin Mai. And there were placements for Joel Hwee, Zola Walton, Hana Schiff, Sean Sele (brilliant writing by Sean). I hate to say it but I am a proud mother hen watching all these writers experience the joy of publication. Their essays are stellar too.
Third, the last teleseminar of the year was Thursday, Dec. 8 and it was a great conversation about setting goals. Look for that post on Sunday or go now to THIS LINK and listen in.
Fourth, the new classes are available for registration and it's going to be a great new year. There is a class called Sell It (on how to sell your memoir), a salon style critique circle, a beginner's level craft class and the ongoing and ever popular master class. I'm also teaching a new download class for the Attic Institute...don't miss that.
Finally, the upgraded and fabulous Phase I program is ready. What was a 25 page workbook is now 100+ pages and what was three hours of teaching has been expanded to be five hours. This is the most comprehensive downloading entry level teaching you would hope to get. I've tested this class in two live formats and provided you, the entry level memoirist, with what I think is the richest and most wonderful teaching available.
Sunday, December 04, 2011
Listen in: 12/1 Teleseminar
It's essential to have support and inspiration when writing a memoir. Our call today gave both. We discussed the emotions that arise when you write and how to distance yourself (or get closer) via the point of view you chose. We also touched on these points:
When do you know your done with your book?
Tips to reach the end of a draft.
How can we best cope while writing memoir?
Here's a sample from the call:
Want to hear the entire call? Please click here, sign up and I'll get you your downloadable link!
Friday, December 02, 2011
Announcements: A Survey
Thank you for being part of my teaching site where it is my goal to provide you, the memoir writer, with inspiration, community and support.
I have enjoyed sharing everything I know about memoir and
now I would like your feedback. Please answer these questions
and either post below or send to me in the form of an email to
jennifer@jenniferlauck.com.
1) What is your biggest frustration in your writing process, right now?
2) In being here, at the site, what has been the most helpful to you?
3) What more can I do to help you on your journey?
Your answers to these questions are a true gift to me so thank you
in advance!
Happy Holiday, Jennifer
Thursday, December 01, 2011
Book Talk: Live Through This by Debra Gwartney
Book Talk is back and I'm happy to present Clover Cohen, who is a long time student in my Master Class and fine, fine writer. Cloie is one to watch! Enjoy her insights on memoir. She's a hard working writer who is paying her dues.
Being honest on the page is hard. Being honest with yourself and others is even harder. Our brains hide the truth, mask the memories, twist and re-construct our experiences to make it possible for us to live another day. If a writer, even when her work is non-fiction, knows where the story is going, then she does not leave her ears open to the boundless possibilities that hover between her brain matter and the universe. Knowing the destination blocks the channel that will guide her ideas and impressions down to her fingers where they will write or type them into existence. 
I was drawn to Debra Gwartney’s memoir because of the title, Live Through This. Badass, feminist, punk rocker Courtney Love had titled her 1994 album the same. It was actually her band, with the vulgar and ironic name, Hole, who made the album. To me it was just she and her husband, Kurt Cobain, who I heard singing in those songs. The lyrics were raw and brutally honest and hit spot-on the way I felt in 1994 as 21-year-old girl. They articulated my cynicism and darkness, voiced my distrust and contempt, yet they also captured my deep-rooted hope and optimism.
Courtney and Kurt lived my version of the modern fairy tale. They were talented, rich, and passionate for each other. Their fairy tale was rooted in reality though, not the sticky sweet pink fluffy Disney version. Their tale was made imperfect by heroin addictions and mental instabilities. But these two were out there. They were unguarded. They told the truth.
When I picked up Live Through This: A Mother's Memoir of Runaway Daughters and Reclaimed Love
I didn’t know I would read the words that sounded like my own mother's story of divorce and struggle with her adolescent daughters (my sister and I). Reading this book was like being inside Mom’s head. Both the author and Mom were foolish, brave, instinctive and terribly flawed. The author chose the wrong man and the wrong life, and as a result, her daughters suffered the consequences.
Debra showed us when she failed as a mother to her teenage daughter,
Stephanie reached out to me in small, calculated ways—and I reached out to her in small, calculated ways. But I couldn’t find enough strength in myself to make something big or important happen between us. Amanda was closer, and, stuck as she was with the ranchers, I was convinced she needed me more than her sister did—an opt-out that would haunt me for years.
When you have four daughters as the author does, it’s inevitable that one will take priority either while they are in infancy or addicted to heroin or need to get to their horseback-riding lesson.
Debra showed us her strength and resilience.
I couldn’t have her coming and going whenever she wanted from our house anymore. I couldn’t let her do that to Mary and Mollie. And though I’d given her a variation of this ultimatum many times before, this time I meant it. And this time she heard me.
Debra’s unconditional love for her daughter made it possible for them all to survive, and one day, come back together and heal,
Stephanie and I walked the streets of her town, hiked in her woods, swam in her river, cooked in her kitchen, drank cold beer in her favorite cafes, and somehow we found our way back to each other without the explanations I once thought would be required. I’ve not asked why and she’s not said why, and month after month, the why of our once–separation becomes less important.
Here, the resolution they have is not tidy or how the author had envisioned. A bond between mother and child can just do that sometimes, rebuild.
Live Through This makes me want to tell the story from the flip side. From the troubled teenage daughter’s point of view, who did not run away from her mother, but suffered and survived like Debra’s girls had. Live Through This reminds me to show the story, show Mom and myself in our full forms. Live Through This also inspires me to seek honesty and the truth and to welcome the surprises. By Clover Cohen