It's not a dragon

but I can feel the heat from the fire it is breathing.

Hi, you beautiful human!

Thanks for sharing your email with me & trusting that I’ll send things that don’t suck to your inbox.

This is so much scarier than I thought it would be. Not the act of writing and sending this thing but thinking that people might not like it. Or me.

It’s not a fire-breathing dragon, though. So here we go.

You see, some memoir stories have been nagging me. They want to see the light of day. I’ve been telling them, “No way.”

To some, I say, “You’re boring. No one wants to read you.”

I’ve shamed others into silence. “You’re written and saved, and I don’t want people to know you exist.”

“But don’t you tell other writers how much their stories like us have helped you?” they question.

“Ugh. I hate it when you’re right,” I sigh.

There are funny stories, shame-filled admissions, tales of heartbreak, mental health wobbliness, a trauma that could have ended me, and writings of sheer joy.

Now that I’m offering this teaser of sorts, I’ll either need to deliver these stories to you or admit defeat.

I'm taking the plunge and working on the memoir that's inside of me, bursting to get out. If I promise it to you in this newsletter I'll have more accountability. I'll have no choice but to write, query, pitch, and all the other challenging and rewarding milestones along the road to publishing a book.

I love the word "publish." It makes me think of the whoosh and clank of the presses. And the sound I imagine that this newsletter might make as it arrives in your inbox. I’m not sure where I’ll go with this memoir yet, but I’m willing to let the writing lead me.

I've spent the past year and a half doing things more freely, less fearfully. This has also been a time of transition for me, and not a happy one. Some days are ok and others verge on unbearable.

Technically, every one of us humans is constantly in a state of transition. Our cells are renewing, our social lives changing, and our knowledge growing. This is a more specific kind of transition I'm talking about. Part of it is physical, but the majority of it is emotional, relational, spiritual, and mental.

I'm talking about the transition to life without my Mom. She died in December 2022, and the year of firsts without her was painful, tender, and a celebration of the kind, caring, strong woman she was.

This is not my first time going through the loss of someone dear to me, but it is the most brutal grief I've experienced. No relationship compares to mother-daughter. But there are gifts inside of the grief, too.

As Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross told us, "Dying is nothing to fear. It can be the most wonderful experience of your life. It all depends on how you've lived." A couple of months before Mom died, around the time of her 4th or 5th hospitalization in a year, she told me something that a friend said about the end of her own life. The friend's cancer had returned and was untreatable.

"I'm okay with dying. I've made my peace with God. I'd just like more time to watch my grandchildren grow."

This was Mom's way of telling me that she felt the same way.

Like a lot of transitions, learning to live without Mom hasn't been much fun. I do have moments of joy when I remember a happy time with her, but I miss being in her physical presence.

When I was a teenager, Mom advised, "Live every day like it's your last, but behave as if you'll live forever."

Got it, Mom! Do the things you want to do, enjoy time with loved ones, but always be kind and try to make the world a little nicer. These days, there are times when I smile and get chills, "I'm doing it! I'm living as if this might be my last day on Earth!" Most times, the feeling is gone quickly.

My siblings & I share our grief in our group text. When one of us is having a hard time, the others chime in with, “Me too,” or, “I felt that way last week. It sucked.” So when I was scrolling Instagram and saw an ad for a Mom-positive t-shirt, I clicked through to Mahogany Mommies (https://mahoganymommies.com).

“Made with the Love, Strength, and Resilience of my Mom.”

I meant for this to be for me, but I realized it would make a great birthday gift for my sister. When she opened it, I stood up and went to her, pulling her into a tight hug.

I said, “And don’t you ever forget it.”

“You, too,” she said.

The next day, I ordered two more shirts: one for me, and one for our brother.

Grief is hard. Like so many other things in life, sharing the burden with others makes it more bearable and it binds us together in a common experience. In “The Year of Magical Thinking,” Joan Didion wrote, “Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it.” For me, some of this grief has been magical, a lot of it has been painful, and some of it has comforted me beyond understanding.

You can bet there will be stories of Mom in my memoir. One fun bath time I remember from when I was five or six. The way she loved horsepower, and how I inherited this gene from her. I’ll share her with you. She would have liked to meet you, so I’ll create a way for you to meet her.

Thanks for joining me on this journey. Feel free to hit ‘reply’ and say hello. I’d love to hear from you.

Take good care of yourself,
Brenda

PS The picture below is of Mom’s beloved mini orchid & part of her snowman collection, all arranged on her kitchen window sill.

Photo by Jess Bailey on Unsplash

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