An Abundance of Gratitude
This past Monday, as I read the subject line in an email that popped up in my inbox, I smiled. Its message struck me as serendipitous, yet perfectly timed: “During this season of letting go, autumn encourages gratitude for our abundant blessings.”
It wasn’t that I needed a reminder about all I am thankful for, but this week, as I celebrate the publication of my memoir, In Pursuit of Radio Mom, I am especially grateful to family, friends, my editor, Linda Gray Sexton, She Writes Press, Wildbound PR, and you, my Blog reader, for being an integral part of my writing journey.
Celebrating the launch of Radio Mom earlier this week at The Book Bin
Those who have followed my posts these past three-plus years know that Radio Mom was written for women who have been abandoned by their mothers in an emotional sense, and those who have abandoned their daughters (perhaps because they too were abandoned in just the same way). One of the book’s central messages is that it is indeed possible to disentangle oneself from the grasp of an inadequate mother, and similarly, that mothers who grapple with an overwhelming desire to be a constant in their daughter’s life can come to realize that relinquishing such an intense hold on a daughter does not constitute the abandonment so many of us fear. Instead, it helps us to build strong and healthy relationships with the people we love.
I have also written about how Mary Oliver’s eloquent “In Blackwater Woods,” a poem about human connection and separation resonated for me throughout the writing of Radio Mom and served as an anchoring theme. “To live in the world,” she observed, “you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing that your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.”
Now, as I revel in the launch of my memoir about my search for the longed-for Radio Mom, these words echo once more in my mind. I hear them as a reminder of the ways in which the mother-daughter bond is both powerful and unique, and how, in order to be healthy, these relationships require, again and again, our sure knowledge of when to lean in and when to release.
Writing Radio Mom required a leap of faith that I had a story to tell that would resonate with other women who may still be searching for their own Radio Mom––the kind of mother who can, in the end, both receive and broadcast love. My readers, of course, will judge whether I succeeded in this aim, but of one thing I’m certain: I made the right call in choosing to set aside my professional mask as a therapist to weigh in on the complicated relationship between my mother and me, and to develop the strong connection I now share with my daughter.
An abundance of gratitude. It’s the emotion I’m holding close on this splendid autumn morning here in the Midwest. And the best part about embracing gratefulness so fully? It requires no letting go.
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