Alison Bechtel’s new book Are You My Mother?

Posted on May 12, 2012 by janellmoon

Just saw Alison Bechtel at San Francisco’s Booksmith Height Street. (What a neighborhood to remind us of the 60′s and the “flower children” we once were.) It was a crowd of all ages and orientations and the store actually felt warm and inviting with the energy of the crowd coming from folks that wanted connecting. This is what Alison does for us. She helps us connect with her experiences of family and allows us to appreciate the truth in what we have lived, rather than the illusions of our defense.

As she tells the story of her mother, she answers the title’s real question, who am I? Her wavering sense of self is displayed and we understand what it’s like to be with her mother and how that relationship helped form her.

As a graphic art memoir, she brings a whole new audience to reading books and shows her talent through text and drawing. She is remarkably talented and a boon to outsiders everywhere. A lesbian who shows who she is and asks us to share with her.

Reading her form from a memoir editor’s eye,I see she plays with time as associated memories, it shows one of the many ways we can approach our own story. She shows us that just as our experiences are unique so can our approach to the retelling be done in our own way.

 

 

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Adrienne Rich

Posted on April 20, 2012 by janellmoon

The passing of poet, Adrienne Rich is a milestone. A time that has come to an end when she is among us to talk of sexism and with the courage to “tell her truth.” . She was always the voice of the oppressed and the one of few women let through the “old boys network” to have her work be part of the poetry canon. I believe her talent but also her great intelligence found a way to her acceptance. I met her once in San Francisco at a reading for Diving into the Wreck. She was a wordsmith for sure.

There will be a celebration of her writings at the San Francisco Main Library the evening of April 25, 2012 at 7 pm.

Celebrate the talented among us for they shall lead the way!

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Linda Sexton’s Reading, Anne’s Daughter, A Memoir

Posted on April 14, 2012 by janellmoon

Linda was one of the readers at 333 in Sausalito, CA, Thursday night reading from her memoir, Half in Love: A Story of Surviving Suicide. Her famous mother took her own life when Linda was twenty, after years of  depression. Linda, struggled with her own depression and suicide attempts, and writes of her life with honesty and compassion to her troubled mother and herself.

She shows us that depression and mental instability is a generational problem and that the person suffering today may have generations of relatives who suffered from depression or mental illness. What is important with Linda and others is that they can decided to get treatment and stop the hurtful patterns for their family. She is doing well today and writes well of her road to recovery.

I talked to her at some length  and she is open-hearted to other writers who are trying to get out the message of healing.

 

Posted in "As Told to...", Anxiety Reduction, Books, Communication problems, Counseling, Creative Life, editing, Ghost writing, Identity, Intuitive, Memoir, Poetry, Sensate, Stage-of-life crisis, Transition, Writing, Writing Coach | Tagged Wtiting as healing | Leave a comment

Visaul Art As Poetry

Posted on April 10, 2012 by janellmoon

I have talked before about how all the arts feed into an artist’s sensibility. I went to the play RED at the Berkeley Rep which was a two man show of Mark Rothko and his assistant. Rothko had an interest and talents in music, writing, philosopher and was, of course, one of the leading artists of Abstract Expressionist. In his large works of color blocks he wanted to show an absolute, uncompromising purity. His signature works were large single colored rectangles over a hovering ground. Even in the years of poverty he had a piano or other instruments and a record player so he could play Bach. He wrote a book and essays on art and was an arresting thinker. However, he used the arts to “feed” his paintings and finally gained recognition as did his friends Jackson Pollack or Andy Warhol. Rothko’s last work showed the complex emotional truths of isolation and connection.

How to tie to counseling? It is better for us to search for connection. Isolation can come on it’s own. Better to have have times of solitude chosen for ourselves or accepted and then connection to others built in. To be an artist in any field calls for long times alone.

However, we must learn to seek out others who want friendship and can add to our aliveness. It might seem we want others in the arts for friend and groups where art is discussed. That is true, in some measure. I have learned though that it is others who have their own sense of aliveness that will make up feel alive. We can share our aliveness back. All we can is share aliveness and connect in that energy! So, there’s no special field to find that in. We look for the energy of excitement, interest, humor and grow. We are filled with each others’ energy and go back into our solitude to create.

 

 

Posted in Aging, Anxiety Reduction, Books, Communication problems, Counseling, Creative Life, editing, Essay, Hypnotherapy, Identity, Intuitive, Memoir, Poetry, Sensate, Stage-of-life crisis, Transition, Visual Art, Writing, Writing Coach | Tagged embracing all arts, isolation and solitude, solitude and connection | Leave a comment

Ghost Writing or “as told to…”

Posted on April 7, 2012 by janellmoon

In ghost writing or “as told to…” you have a story to tell and it may be difficult for you to write it down. Maybe you trust the story but not your own writing. Maybe you don’t have time but want a book out in your name. When you work with a ghost writer or “as told to…” writer, it is up to you of how you want to be helped and whether you want her name on your book.

I’ve worked in various ways and currently am trying to use a new software, Dragon, so the author can tell me her story on the microphone that comes with the software and is put on a Word.doc. the Word.doc, of course, can be sent to Apple or a PC. What the author has said is on the document and the ghost can edit the language, add to it, subtract from it, and/or note where there are flat sections and ask the author to flush out the scene a bit more. The ghost my also explain how to write a scene, establish a physical setting, or write better dialogue. Or, the ghost may write it better herself.

It really is up to the author/story teller. The payment is done in all kinds of ways. I charge by the hour and ask for a deposit. We sign a simple contract that states if the author or ghost is having any troubles with working together after the lst chapter has been sent to the author, the contract is voided. This way you don’t go too far into the process and not like your ghosts writing. It is also a way to relieve yourself from someone difficult. Then the remained of the deposit is returned. All fair in writing and between those who have an investment in books!

Hope this helps you know the various services you can hire. Maybe next time I’ll write about what a writing coach does.

Best in writing.

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Writers Need Writers Need Counselors Need Artists and Singers

Posted on March 17, 2012 by janellmoon

A friend and I drove over the San Francisco bay bridgewith a high wind warming last night into San Francisco to hear Jeannette Winterson read from her new book, a memoir, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? You could tell by the crowd’s questions that it was a great group of readers and writer who came out on such a stormy night.

Jeanette talked about how living in the country and being alone a lot with her writing suited her. You could sense from her energy that after surviving her mother’s zealot feelings about religion, she felt invaded and preferred to be alone. She was a great model for finding healing in her writing and wishing to be happy and not what her mom would call “normal.”

Questions from the audience of extroverts were not so comfortable about the aloneness of writing. They get their energy from other people and being alone so much can be very difficult.

We need writing from both the introverts and the extroverts. Winterson”s Oranges are Not the Only Fruit was deliciously funny but quite psychologically probing.  Around the World with A Headache (can’t remember author, at this moment) was one of the funniest books I’ve read from a steward on a plane. It was just what I needed in the moment.

The answer that Winterson gave that if you can’t be alone, you’re in the wrong profession is correct for her. That’s how it feels to her given her adjustment to her background. And, we readers and writers’s are happy to have her.

However, we are not all made of the same cloth and each personality has a different balance to find for themselves. I need to be alone to restore my energy after being out with people and love the solitude. However, I get lonely after a while. For instance, today I will stay in and write and maybe take a swim on this dizzily California late winter day. Tomorrow, however, I will meet a friend and go to San Francisco to see the new show at the Jewish Museum. shows. There is a show on the use of Trees in the Jewish Religion. I love trees and trust I will gain new ideas for my poetry and memoir writing. It will be good to be with a friend and to feel a sense of inspiration. I love the sharing that with this particular friend who has a more intellectual process but, somehow, we meet on ideas.

We need many things to become on-going writers. We need authors to read and learn their perspective. We need to meet authors to get a sense from where they are coming in their life and writings.  What we can learn from them. We need alone time to create. Inspiration from whatever source is important.  And, not best of all, but very important, we need a friend to share our inspiration and new ideas.

On we go into the writing life. Oh, and if you can’t find it on your own and sometimes it’s very difficult, use some sessions with a creative counselor to help you find tools to balance. It’s those tools that will carry you through.

Excuse me now, time to write. Must turn on the opera first.

 

Posted in Anxiety Reduction, Books, Communication problems, Counseling, Creative Life, Essay, Events, Hypnotherapy, Identity, Intuitive, Memoir, Poetry, Sensate, Stage-of-life crisis, Transition, Visual Art, Writing, Writing Coach | Tagged balancing writing in life | 2 Comments

Adult Children

Posted on March 3, 2012 by janellmoon

It may hurt but it’s great when an adult child of ours does tell us something that is bothering them about us. It’s our time to listen and be willing to really hear. Can you imagine what it would have felt like if our parents could have done this. Or, maybe they have and you had the good feeling of release that “your” truth is out in the open and you are not a child to this person anymore but on equal footing. This truth telling can help your child to truly feel adult and help her/him on his way. Also, it can help you grow closer to your offspring. You hear, you understand, you say you’re sorry for their pain (since you don’t want your grown child to carry a wound within). This is the listening and understanding phase.

The next step may be in several weeks or years. You need to wait until your sure your adult child has been heard. You need to ask if there is anything else they need to tell you. We were all imperfect parents and really just had to be “good enough” but the adult child doesn’t always know this. Once you understand though and they know it, they will move closer to saying that I love you and you were good enough and I am ok too. Good enough, a human who makes mistakes. Us both, human.

It took me eight times to tell my mother how I felt about being slapped and other hurtful things that happened in my childhood.  She came to see me and her grandchild once a year and each time we had a “little talk” about half way through her trip. I talked to her half way through her trip so we could have some chance of normalizing. One time she hit me, one time she fainted, the other six times she was hurt and mad. Somehow, we got through it enough for me to feel good about speaking up (I couldn’t help or fix her reaction) and being the adult that spoke in defense of  the once child.)

I realized in the telling and in her reaction that she still didn’t understand about me separating from her, just as I wouldn’t fully understand during my son’s teenage years in the early ’80′s She thought that I was being disrespectful and didn’t understand I had feelings and needs different from hers. I got that in this process and felt sad for both of us. Somehow, the anger was drained out in this realization.

She is now in her 90′s and still doesn’t understand what I was trying to say and is glad my sister and brother never “did that to her” and I understand now. Sometimes I want to tell my brother and sister about separating but I mind my own business. Telling them won’t do anything. Sometimes I want to explain to her but it won’t do any good. I let it go and let my relationship with her be a supportive one for her as she ages. I am actually grateful that she finally “let it go” and we can be sweet to each other. She showed she loved me by “letting it go” and I know it must have been hard without understanding.

So we are two adults in our aging process and I feel content with our relationship. She is feisty and brave and vigorous, in her own way. Her mind is sharp and she wants to continue to live, even as she gets frail.  She looks forward to my calls several times a week and the packages of readings I send weekly. My sister is five minutes away and happy to look after her.

Blessed be. Psychology and spirituality come together in wonderful ways. More later. I’d love to hear your separation stories.  Would love to read some memoirs about this. Not an  easy process but a must!!

 

Posted in Aging, Anxiety Reduction, Books, Communication problems, Counseling, Creative Life, Hypnotherapy, Intuitive, Memoir, Stage-of-life crisis, Transition, Uncategorized, Writing, Writing Coach | Tagged Parent/adult offspring communication, Process of separation from parent, Separating from parents, Sympathy for once child | 2 Comments

Relationship With Adult Children

Posted on February 13, 2012 by janellmoon

Lately I’ve been thinking about our relationship with our adult children and what new challenges we mothers have if our children feel safe enough to tell us what was difficult about our mothering. We may know our children need to separate from us and use the teen years or young adulthood to step into adulthood as a man or woman. And we may know that they do this, not necessarily by distance, but by speaking freely to us about our relationship with them. Often, it’s how to speak to them as adults or accept their adult behavior different from our expectations. Often too they need to tell us what we did/are doing that feels wrong and hurtful.

I’ll talk about this process in the next blogs. It’s a difficult process for moms and for the adult children and there’s no timeline for this: often in teen years separation starts and  can end any time the child feels safe enough to tell us what they need to and can safe enough to ask for new behavior. It takes a grown up mom who successful separated from her mom.

I would love to see this process written about in a memoir with all its ins and out. More later.

 

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Memoir Writing: What to Leave Out

Posted on February 9, 2012 by janellmoon

You do not have to tell the whole story. You can tell a truer story by leaving some stuff out. We don’t leave out important events or feelings. We just eliminate side events and feelings. Things that happen that are not part of the thrust of the story are left by the wayside.

In my memoir, Salt and Paper, I left in my difficulties with my son but left out much of the sweet times we had experienced together. I inferred there had been many by showing a few as background but we came to a time when he needed to move away and it was difficult. The story was about his decision to do that. How that effected me and my grandchild.  His wife was involved but not the main person I was concerned with, at that time.

Do not change the story which is most important and which is the story at the center. Memoirs are made of memories, and memories are mere impressions, bits and pieces of events, imprints on our minds that withstand time. It may be an especially happy or sad time. They may reshape themselves, proving that our memories is not the absolute truth but “a truth.” Try to get all the siblings in a household to agree and you’ll see what I mean.

How is memory not static? Have you learned to find the heart of the issue for your writing?

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Dialogue in Memoir: An Element of Fiction

Posted on February 5, 2012 by janellmoon

Most who write memoir have an important story to tell of surviving hardship or letting us go on an amazing adventure with them into new worlds of some kind. We know that the best memoirs come to life on the page because the author uses elements of fiction, such as dialogue.  At the same time, a memoir writer wants to be honest and write what only happened. No stories of abuse that didn’t happen and no mountain not climbed. However, to use dialogue is a tricky venture.

Readers assume the dialogue in memoirs is written verbatim but who can remember important conversations — especially those dating back to childhood — word for word? Most authors recall either a central line of the dialogue or some semblance of what was said, and construct the dialogue around those words. It’s the intention of the conversation that we aim to recreate and remain true to.

Dialogue makes the memoir seem “here and now” to the reader. It hooks the reader into what is happening to the characters.  It pushes the story ahead. The goal of the author is to write a dialogue that is true to the main event, true to their perception of what was said. For example, when a mother exchanges a dead bird for a new bird that looks almost like the old bird and the child notices the difference, you have a main event in truth-telling for a child who is later diagnosed schizophrenic.

“Who’s that in Petie’s cage?” I ask as I stand tiptoe up to the table that holds my pet bird.

“Pettie,” says my mother with a toss of her red hair, smoking her cigarette.

“No it’s not. Pettie doesn’t have that yellow spot on his head.”

“Don’t doubt my word. That’s your Petie. If I say it’s Pettie, it’s Pettie.”

Never mind that schizophrenia is a brain disorder. We know that genetics plays a large part in this mental illness. Still, there can be familial ways of handling the truth that can add to a person’s propensity to this disorder.

And we may want to explore other examples where truth is handled weirdly in the memoir. And, instead of making the mother the “bad mother,” we can explore why she might lie about her son’s bird. In this case, the author showed as the story unfolds that the mother was so overwhelmed with feelings that she couldn’t face her young, most sensitive child having to face death.

The dialogue makes the incident crystal clear. The words don’t have to be exact as long as the attitude is shown, the event is detailed enough.

Have you used dialogue in your memoir? How have you handled dialogue in your memoir?  What do you remember most? How do you remember details?

 

Posted in Communication problems, Counseling, Creative Life, Identity, Intuitive, Memoir, Sensate, Stage-of-life crisis, Transition, Writing, Writing Coach | 2 Comments