My recent article on Japanese mothers and anti-nuclear activism at Yes! Magazine:

In Japan: A Mother's Movement Against Nuclear Power

Listening to Terry Tempest Williams and Eve Ensler

A few nights ago I dreamed of animals: A very large rat in a swimming pool, a rescue hound gifted to me on the street.   The dog's eyes asked me to care for her.   The rat terrified me.

Tonight I was blessed to hug and listen to my most favorite living author:  Terry Tempest Williams. I asked her what I always wanted to know- about the sadness she still seems to feel over the early death of her mother to cancer  (and all of the matriarchs in her family).  

She asked me if I had lost my mother.  I said yes.  "Then you understand." 

Williams also spoke of the joy and humor in living in these broken and fragmented times: "We are all fragmented, broken" and yet we are strongest in those places where we have been held together again. 

As always, Williams makes me weep. What an extraordinary being she is.  She began and ended her interview with a bird whistle, or was it a bird call?

Eve Ensler said she envies William's loving relationship with her mother--inherent in that loving relationship (and envy) is a deep connection to the land.  I, too envy such a mother-daughter relationship.  Ensler said her own mother did not 'mother' or nurture her.  


I used to be more critical of my mother, and feel 'lack'  and frustration as Eve does about hers--especially as my mother seemed so weak and accepting of her silenced condition.  

Through my discovery of and writing about my own mother's history,  I now see my mom in a new light.  

I see light in the shards.