Motherhood & Words

All
  • All
  • author interviews
  • community
  • essay/memoir
  • life
  • motherhood
  • poetry
  • publication
  • reviews
  • teaching
  • warrior
  • writing

this week

This is the week that I promised myself I would dive back into the novel. What novel? you ask. I know. I’ve asked myself the same thing. What? I’m writing a novel? I almost forgot about that sad, neglected thing. (Okay, I didn’t really forget about it; if I had it wouldn’t be a source of…

on being brave

I’ve been thinking a lot about silencing lately, about the ways that we, all of us, but especially women, are afraid to say what we need to say, to write what we need to write. Earlier this fall, as the release of Ready for Air loomed, I began to feel more and more anxious. I…

monday morning & two interviews

The weekend was lovely and bursting with family. Stella rocked the 5K (she finished 15th in the female 14-and-under category), and though it was freezing (poor Zoe was weeping), we all had fun. (Or at least we all had fun after coffees and hot chocolates were consumed and we were out of the cold.) The…

thankful

I try to incorporate gratitude into every day, year round. At the dinner table before we eat, we all go around and say what we’re thankful for. (Which can get silly sometimes, but is mostly sweet.) Others days I try to stop in the middle of my rush to do whatever I’m rushing to do,…

prematurity awareness month

November is Prematurity Awareness Month. According to the March of Dimes, 1 in 9 babies is born prematurely in the United States every year. Worldwide, that number is 15 million. It’s the leading cause of infant death in the U.S. and each year costs society $26.2 billion. Those statistics are scary for sure. But it’s…

on craft, writing and motherhood

I have a blog post cooking in my head in honor of November as Prematurity Awareness Month, but that will have to wait until tomorrow. (Sunday was actually World Prematurity Day, but I was en route from Chicago after a weekend of successful workshops and some lovely time with my step-brother and his family, so…

readings & workshops

I’ve gotten caught up in a flurry of activity over the last week and a half. I signed with an agent for the autism and running memoir on which I’ve been collaborating the last few months. I’m very excited, but my week was swept up in talking about and tweaking the proposal, and I had…

last day: within the words

Today is the last stop of my blog book tour, friends, and first I just want to thank all of you for tuning in and for checking out all the great blogs on the tour. And a huge thank you to all the wonderful bloggers for taking the time to read and write about Ready…

gillian marchenko & a book giveaway

I met Gillian Marchenko a few years ago through her blog, when I was swept up in the story of her and her husband’s journey to adopt their sweet Evangeline, who has Down Syndrome, from Ukraine. (Polly, their third biological child, also has Down Syndrome.) I would pop over and check in on the progress, and…

NICU giveaway update

Hi friends, Originally, the University of Minnesota Press agreed to donate 15 copies of Ready for Air to neonatal intensive care units in the U.S. and Canada as part of blog book tour. I was going to randomly pick 15 hospitals from the entries on this post. But the generous Sustainable Arts Foundation has offered to make sure that…

good day, regular people

Alexandra is another one of those amazing writers who came to me through the Interwebs. We were in contact a few years ago about her possibly taking my online class, but somehow it didn’t work out. I would pop over to her blog when I could, but it was only this summer when I left…

andrea lani

Do you know those students? The ones who say things and you think, oh yes, that’s what I meant to say, but they actually said it better than you could have? Andrea Lani is one of those people. I met Andrea in one of my early online Motherhood & Words classes, and then she took…