her able hands

Click to read the Intro!

Thanks Andi and Amy, for letting me participate in the Literary Mama, Reading for the Matnernally Inclined blog book tour!

Andi Buchanan & Amy Hudock edited this collection of some of the finest writing by mothers about motherhood that I have ever read. Every piece, originally published on the website Literary Mama is gripping, and deeply satisfying. So much so that I’m having a hard time articulating what I think about it. See? I’m trying to write well about this great writing, and I can’t string a coherent sentence together. It stupified me! It’s that good.

While I enjoyed the entire book, I felt a particular resonance with the writing in the section Mothers, Father, Parents. As I move into the second decade of my own motherhood, I find myself facing aspects of those who have gone before me with a lot less judgement than I did when I began. My relationships with my elders, my parents, and my extended family have taken shapes that I didn’t expect when I first set out to live a life of my own. Now I find myself so much like these people who I spent my youth trying to be the opposite of, and to pull away from, that I don’t know what I was fighting so hard about anymore. I’m hoping it’s a mark of maturity that I am starting to enjoy the resemblance.

Reading the stories in this section brought up a lot of questions about who I am as a woman, a wife, a mother, a sister, a daughter, and an artist. I intend to write about those questions in depth at a later date. For now I just want to encourage you, dear reader, to get yourself a copy of this delicious book, and enjoy the journey. It will take you to places you didn’t even know you wanted to visit.

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