This is the work I do. I pull out the stories in your mother’s, grandmother’s, daughter’s, aunt’s, sister’s or any mothering mentor’s brain who has mothered you. I do this easily by phone or in person.

I’m rather a unique person for this position because I’ve spent over 30 years as an Occupational Therapist being sensitive to all sorts of individuals as well as hearing and listening to them. I don’t judge and help people feel comfortable with talking to me. I feel this is a strong skill set like my writing, editing and formatting a book because this has always been the way for me. People confide in me because they trust me. And I don’t disappoint them.

Because I don’t judge, I get to hear the stories that make a great book so I hear the lucky, mystical and iraculous blessings. I hear the mistakes people have made and how they have overcome problems.Your books are your Write Heart Memories® because we see the growth and healing in this way of storytelling.

I was having dinner with a friend of mine the other day. And she said: “You know I could kick myself in the head because I didn’t get any of my mother’s stories. Mom told amazing stories, and I thought she would always be around, so I never thought any more of it. And then she got Alzheimer’s, and was living like that until she passed away.

I never had another chance to get her stories which I’d like now for me, my children and my grandson.”

You’re in shock and grief; you don’t know what to do because you’re grieving and it’s painful to remember. But if you don’t remember in a timely way, the stories get lost. Yes, they get forgotten and only brought back to life in strange moments of reminders from your heart and your brain’s limbic system that hit your frontal lobe where memories are made.

Adult children assume what they care to know about their Mom. And sometimes, that assumption casts a veil around mom while the clearer vision of who she is lies underneath.

The biggest gift you can give to yourself and your Mom is giving her the choice in keeping the veil on or taking it off. If you have an objective person like me who listens to her and tells her story, it is a beautiful way both the adult child and parent are free to feel the wholeness and richness of these stories.

For example, Mom and I had a prickly relationship. She didn’t live up to my expectations as the Mother I wanted. She struggled with alcohol and cigarettes. As a young Mother, she had no patience for me and I’d often get cracked on the side of the face. I couldn’t understand why she did some of these things and it hurt me.

I couldn’t see past my hurt.

I loved Mom but kept my distance to keep my feelings in check because I was not going to be like her in any shape or form. I was a successful therapist, sales person, and mother raising my kids the way I wanted. She died nine years ago. Since then, I started down the writer’s path she had been on. I never respected the courage it took for her to feel and be true in feeling her emotions and creating something concrete from those feelings so she could connect to herself and others. I’ve read her poetry in all its beauty, depression and despair.

In growing this company now for six years, I’ve embraced mom and released expectations from my past. I am like Mom and I love her completely with all her flaws and mistakes as I’m left with the wholeness of who she tried to be. If she were here today I’d hug her tight, cry and tell her how much I appreciate and love her. I know she did the best she could as a parent and I’m grateful for this acknowledgement but I never gave my mother the respect she thoroughly deserved.

It would have been so easy to do in turning her writing; her poems and stories in a book.

I’ll do so posthumously but gosh, isn’t it better to get a book when your Mom is alive and you both can celebrate the connections you have in being family?

I hope your life isn’t affected by it but just in case, be proactive and take the step of capturing your Mom’s stories so you might have a little bit of comfort if tragedy happens.

My friend’s psychotherapist had to cancel her session this week because her mother died. And it’s her Mother’s funeral she’ll be going to for Mother’s Day.

Capture them, so they don’t get away.

That way you can tell them to your Mom if she has Memory Care issues.

Lisa is the only babysitter I used for my children. She has two children now. But they’ll never get their Grandmother’s story in her words because she developed an aggressive form of Alzheimer’s in her fifties and all those memories are not in her capacity to tell anymore.

You don’t have to go to counseling nor does she. If she is allowed to tell her story to an objective person then the whole story comes out.

The natural byproduct of letting your mom tell her story and you reading about it in a book is growth and healing for you and your mom.