5/6/19, April Showers/Mother’s Day

Hi Everyone,

I hope you’ve had a good week, and are enjoying decent—-even Springlike!!!!—-weather somewhere—-not where I am, unfortunately!!! It’s freezing cold and rainy, a chill wind, temperatures in the 30’s last night, and a hail storm yesterday battering my windows!! No sign of Spring here!!!

The bad weather has given me an opportunity to stay home, and work on 4 outlines for new books, refining them, and working on them in different stages. I’ve been working on them for a while, and I’m excited to get started on the books!!! I work very hard on the outlines before I start the books, and try to get them all polished up smoothly and ready to go!!!

I’m looking forward to Mother’s Day at the end of this week, my favorite holiday, other than Christmas, and will be celebrating it in two different cities with my kids, over the course of 3 days. I feel very spoiled on Mother’s Day, and love celebrating it with them. (Presents, and I don’t have to get any older—-a fantastic deal!!!). My kids are very sweet to me on Mother’s Day!! My own mother is no longer here, and it’s surprising to me that she’s been gone for 13 years. We weren’t very close, and I didn’t grow up with her, but you only have one mother, and it’s a special role in one’s life. And we were very different. The great blessing in our relationship was that my somewhat distant relationship with her made me even closer to my own children, wanting a very different (much closer) relationship with my children than I had with my mother. And I am indeed very close to them, and am very blessed that my children include me in their lives even as adults. So there is much to celebrate and be grateful for.

I’ve also been very lucky that in the course of my life, 2 or 3 really wonderful women, old enough to actually be my mother, took me under their wing, at various times in my life, and became lifelong friends. They provided motherly advice, enormous encouragement and praise. And I have a theory that even if you don’t have an ideal mother, or a poor relationship with yours, one finds people on one’s path that fill that role—-even better than our own mothers. I think women like that come into our lives when we need them—-so we are not left “comfortless”, or without an older woman in that role. So I’ve been blessed on that score too. And we in turn, at some later date, can provide mothering to someone who needs it and isnt our child. Those substitute relationships are sometimes much more rewarding and warm than the real mother/daughter relationships by blood. Not everyone is cut out to be a mother, and some people really do fall short in that role. But a motherly person in one’s life can be a great gift!!!

Mother/daughter relationships can sometimes be very challenging, for a multitude of reasons. Either we’re just too different from our mothers—or sometimes too much the same, so inevitable clashes and differences of opionion occur, which can be painful for all concerned So I hope you have a wonderful Mother’s Day with your mother, and that the relationship you share is a warm, loving, cozy one. But if not, maybe there are other women who can bring you comfort in that role. And maybe you are providing mothering to someone you love that you didnt give birth to. You don’t have to give birth to someone to love them, want the best for them, want to help them, and wish them well. And I hope that your Mother’s Day will be easy and happy, either with your mother, or stand in mother, or with your children. I hope they love and cherish you, and celebrate you on Sunday.

And I will share an excellent piece of mothering advice that someone gave me years ago: Never lend your car keys to a person you gave birth to!!!!

Happy Mother’s Day, and have a wonderful week!!!

much love, Danielle