warrior

on being brave

By Kate / December 10, 2013 /

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…

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a new home!

By Kate / October 29, 2011 /

For almost five years, I have been blogging under the name “Mother Words.” I have also taught classes, led retreats, coordinated an annual reading, and mentored other women writers under that name. It’s time for a change. It’s been a hellish year in which I lost ten pounds and gained ten pounds (inevitable, I guess).…

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the power of words

By Kate / March 17, 2010 /

Thank you for your kind comments on yesterday’s post. I’ll keep plugging along, I promise. And because I’m going to keep plugging along, I have a few things to say about how women’s writing is described. So often in our society, writing by a group of people is lumped together and dismissed. This has certainly…

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respecting differences

By Kate / November 27, 2009 /

I hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving holiday and didn’t eat beyond capacity, something I seemed to do. Two meals, spaced five hours apart = too much food. I’m sure many of you have read Lynn Harris’ Salon article “Everybody Hates Mommy,” in which Harris tries to unpack why there is so much anger…

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the debate goes on

By Kate / September 2, 2009 /

The other day, a friend e-mailed me the link to Patricia Cohen’s New York Times article “A Mother’s Memoir, a Son’s Anguish,” which discusses how British author Julie’s Myerson was “pilloried” after the release in Britain of The Lost Child: A Mother’s Story, a memoir about her son’s drug addiction. Apparently the press in Britain…

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red enough

By Kate / December 20, 2008 /

Last week I posted about how people smile and gush when they see my little, beaming Zoë. What I failed to mention is that after some of them have exclaimed about her hair and her smile, they turn to me and say, “Where does she get the red hair?” or “Does she get the hair…

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a long and controversial post

By Kate / September 4, 2008 /

I’ve been thinking about this post for some time. I was going to write it last January, on the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, but then I was busy being pregnant and tired and sick with a series of debilitating colds. I was going to do it in February, when I wrote a review…

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how hard must you look?

By Kate / August 22, 2007 /

On Sunday afternoon I went to see The Mother Project at the Open Eye Figure Theatre in Minneapolis. It was a six woman production, directed by Augsburg College theater professor Darcey Engen, in which the women’s stories about motherhood, relationships, identity, grief, their careers, and how they balance art and work and motherhood were woven…

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a choice, a responsibility

By Kate / June 12, 2007 /

Last night I was watching the evening news—something I try never to do—and there was a story about the sextuplets just born in Minneapolis, at the same hospital where Stella was born. They are now on warming tables in the same children’s hospital where I sat for weeks, staring at my daughter. The coverage of…

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a thought from anne and a dream

By Kate / April 11, 2007 /

Last night I went to see Anne Lamott discuss her new book, Grace (Eventually). She was reading at Barnes and Noble in a fancy schmancy suburban mall, and the place was packed. Seriously—hundreds of people lined the aisles, trying to get a glimpse of Anne and her crazy dreadlocks. (The fifty or so people who…

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