Happy Mother's Day to us all
Strong women need strong drinks. Make yourself a strong cup of coffee and go see the Amy Sherald exhibit at the Whitney this Mother's Day.
Dear Writers,
Happy Mothers Day to all who observe. Whether you adore your mother, tolerate your mother, yearn for your mother, wish you were a mother, are thrilled you’re a mother, feel relief you’re not a mother, wonder what happened to your mother, this day falls heavily in our laps. Whatever motherhood means to you—glee, grief, a shrug, a smile, a thrill, a pang, a roll of the eyes, a glass of wine, a shot of espresso, a call to your therapist—this holiday is a great reminder that it’s on us to mother each other, mother ourselves and celebrate the lovely people who have nurtured us.
My kids are 24 and 28 now, and I know I’ve both failed and succeeded at mothering them. (If they ever write memoirs, they’ll have plenty of grist for the mill.) I adore them and I’ve driven them crazy. What mother hasn’t? The good news is that if you’re a writer, having a mother or being a mother is a gift. Mothers generate such great material! I’ve written plenty about my own mother in Eat, Darling, Eat (A Warm Slice of Solace and Last Licks) and The Girlfriend (The Unexpected Benefits of Divorce, How I Finally Discovered My Late Father’s Vulnerability and We Were Moving. Should I Hang Onto My Wedding Dress?) To my mother’s credit, she is always gracious about what I write. She reads this newsletter so let me just say here, Thank you, Mom.
I’d also like to thank all the women writers I work with weekly, including the summer interns who’ll write for Sweet Lab this summer, both Wellesley undergrads. (More by and about them in June.) I am constantly talking to women about books, memories, writing, reading, love, loss, yearnings, regrets, scene-placement, plot lines, dialogue, action, details, and description, and they’re always giving me fabulous ideas about what to read, write and teach. We mother each other.
Thank you, finally, to my husband, who made me a mother, and waited while I took multiple photos of Kristen Visbal’s Fearless Girl (below), when we went on a walking tour of public art on Wall Street in the rain. Let us all be fearless.
Wishing you a lovely Mother’s Day, full of fun, love and cake, with suggestions about what to do this weekend:
Visit the Brooklyn Botanical Garden. My older son is going with my Mom.
Buy yourself some peonies.
Bring your mother-in-law a cake. I ordered ours from Billy’s Bakery and will nibble at it with my younger son.
Left: Egyptian recipe; Right: MENA recipe Bake this delicious basbousa one of two ways for someone you love, shared by Sweet Lab website designer Amany.
Read these bracing short stories by Lauren Groff:
The Ghosts of Wannsee (The Atlantic)
Between the Shadow and the Soul (The New Yorker)
To Sunland (The New Yorker)
What’s the Time, Mr. Wolf? (The New Yorker)
The Wind (The New Yorker)
Ghosts and Empties (The New Yorker)
Above and Below ( The New Yorker)
Read Loved and Missed by Susie Boyt. Exquisite novel about mothers, grandmothers, daughters and substance abuse. (Boyt is Freud’s great granddaughter. Review here.)
Read Helen Schulman’s essay, At 66, He’s Finally the Husband of My Dreams (NYT). Helen was one of my professors 25 years ago. I was and am in awe of her ability to do it all: Write/mother/teach.
Watch old episodes of Broad City.
Take yourself shopping at the NYPL Shop. Such great jewelry there. Who knew?
Go see the Amy Sherald: America Sublime exhibit at the Whitney and order that nice kale salad with anchovy dressing at Barbuto afterwards.
Amy Sherald, All Things Bright and Beautiful
Rabbi Lisa Greene, Neither Here Nor…Where? A Pesach Reflection (The Wisdom Daily)
Randi Mazzella, My Mom Is Here — But She's Not. This Is What I'm Missing Most (The Girlfriend)
Welcome to Sweet Lab’s Writing Ranch— your return to creativity! Join us this summer as we push our creative boundaries in this 8-week virtual workshop. Class starts the week of June 16 and runs eight weeks through the week of August 4.
This course is for you if:
You want to tap into your “flow,” that well of creativity that is still full but it’s dark outside and you’re not sure where to find it.
You want to commit yourself to starting something new and finishing what you started.
You want to recover a sense of safety, identity, power, integrity, possibility, abundance, connection, strength, compassion, self-protection, autonomy and faith.
You want line edits and written feedback on 40 pages of work.
We’ll meet weekly via Zoom and use Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity as our go-to inspiration and writing bible. We’ll also dip into Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It For Life, Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within, Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, The Letters of Virginia Woolf, Volume 3, and Joyce Carole Oates’ Master Class: The Art of the Short Story.
We’ll explore the following topics over 8 weeks:
Week 1: Recovering a Sense of Safety
Week 2: Recovering a Sense of Identity
Week 3: Recovering a Sense of Power
Week 4: Recovering a Sense of Integrity
Week 5: Recovering a Sense of Possibility
Week 6: Recovering a Sense of Abundance
Week 7: Recovering a Sense of Connection
Week 8: Recovering a Sense of Strength
We live in times of unprecedented stress and confusion. Many of us are marching, protesting, making phone calls, writing postcards, and biting our fingernails down to the nubs. But what we have the most control over is our writing life. Let’s write our way through it.
That was lovely Laura. Thanks!