Posts tagged motherhood
October 11, 2010 · Filed under Author Interviews, Book Reviews · Tagged abuse, angels, dancing, fearless, fiction, happiness, healing, inspiration, mother, motherhood, novel, optimism, pedophilia, positive thinking, rape, relationships, self awareness, stepfather, storytelling, trauma, writing
Room
By Emma Donoghue
Published September 13, 2010 (Hardcover) Little, Brown and Company
If you have a five-year old, you know how pivotal that year is. A bridge between fantasy and reality, between playing with anything and going to school where you play with what you are given, between trusting just nearby adults and trusting an expanding world. Trust. What is really real.
Five is a touch-point. You remember being five in your own life. What happened then may have altered your direction in life. It did for me. It did for Jack, in this bestselling novel by Emma Donoghue. Read the rest of this entry »
September 19, 2010 · Filed under Book Reviews · Tagged abuse, career, fiction, mental health institutions, mentally ill, mother, motherhood, novel, self awareness, storytelling, thriller, trauma, writing
My Lost Daughter
By Nancy Taylor Rosenberg
Published September 14, 2010 (Hardcover) Forge
How do you know if your kid is on drugs, clinically depressed or just bummed out by life’s hairpin turns?
That’s Judge Lily Forrester’s situation when her 28-year old daughter Shana – just weeks from graduating with a law degree from Stanford – gets dumped by her boyfriend, and seems dangerously messed-up. In Nancy Taylor Rosenberg’s novel My Lost Daughter, Lily makes an unbelievably foolish choice for Shana. Read the rest of this entry »
August 30, 2010 · Filed under Book Reviews · Tagged career, father, fearless, fiction, friendship, happiness, healing, inspiration, love, mother, motherhood, novel, optimism, passion, relationships, self awareness, storytelling, writing
The Atlas of Love
By Laurie Frankel
Published August 17, 2010 (Hardcover) St. Martin’s Press
Maybe I loved The Atlas of Love because it felt like a friend’s journal I’d picked up and accidentally opened to the first page. And couldn’t stop reading it until page 35 or so, still standing, and then it was too late. So I read the whole thing, feeling guilty, as if I’d eaten a carton of Ben and Jerry’s at one sitting. Not that I’ve ever done that. But I also felt pleased, because of the light humor laced in with the literary configurations.
Maybe I loved The Atlas of Love because Read the rest of this entry »
July 12, 2010 · Filed under Author Interviews, Open Book · Tagged career, friends, friendship, girlfriend, happiness, healing, inspiration, love, manifest, marriage, motherhood, non-fiction, optimism, passion, positive thinking, relationships, self awareness, storytelling, trauma, writing
Kris Carlson is my newest friend. I say this with certainty, after spending a few hours together, first at my home, then in studio on-the-air at www.pdx.fm. Kris tells me that Richard Carlson, her husband, world-famous for his Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff books, used to tell her that we would like each other.
But Richard is gone – he passed suddenly at age 45 on descent into JFK on his book tour a few years ago – of an embolism. He fell asleep, and never woke up.
Kris said on Open Book with Diana Page Jordan today that she lost the love of her life – and gained her self. He never woke up. She had to.
Heartbroken Open tells Kris’s aching journey non-chronologically and beautifully. Grief – especially from the sudden, unexpected wrenching away of a loved one – must be traveled, not walled up. Kris says she learned that when you are grieving a loss, you Surrender. Trust. Accept. And, Receive.
If you’ve ever grieved – and we all do – this tough, rewarding, opening path will take you to the most amazing places, places you’ve never imagined possible.
May 7, 2010 · Filed under Book Reviews · Tagged abuse, alcoholism, doctor, fiction, friendship, marriage, mother, motherhood, novel, pedophilia, plastic surgery, relationships, self awareness, stepfather, storytelling, trauma, writing
Heart of the Matter
By Emily Giffin
Published May 11, 2010 (Hardcover) St Martin’s Press
The exquisite premise of Heart of the Matter tugs hard. What was the moment when your life changed its trajectory? I know that moment in mine, and I had nothing to do with it.
In Emily Giffin’s gently-written novel, that moment comes when a six-year old fatherless-boy tumbles into the campfire while roasting marshmallows at a friend’s birthday party. One side of his face and his hand suffer second and third degree burns. The boy’s single mother and the wife of the plastic surgeon who tends to little Charlie are tenuously connected – at first. Read the rest of this entry »
May 4, 2010 · Filed under Book Reviews · Tagged abuse, career, father, fearless, fiction, goals, happiness, healing, how to, media industry, motherhood, optimism, passion, pedophilia, positive thinking, rape, relationships, self awareness, self magazine, storytelling, therapy, trauma, women
The Nine Rooms of Happiness: Loving Yourself, Finding Your Purpose, and Getting Over Life’s Little Imperfections
By Lucy Danziger & Catherine Birndorf, MD
Published March 2, 2010 (Hardcover) Voice
Reading The Nine Rooms of Happiness is like reading a whole stack of Self Magazines, only much much better. Makes sense, since Lucy Danziger is the editor-in-chief of Self Magazine. But I chose the book from a couple of stacks of possibilities because I wanted to know what “normal” is.
Danziger says her response to those pulverizing negative thoughts women have in their heads Read the rest of this entry »
February 5, 2010 · Filed under Author Interviews · Tagged abused children, abusive mother, alcoholism, career, cold mother, fearless, fiction, healing, inspiration, marriage, motherhood, novel, passion, rape, relationships, self awareness, stepfather, storytelling, thriller, trauma, writing
Winter Garden
By Kristin Hannah
Published February 2, 2010 (Hardcover) St Martin’s Press
Kristin Hannah and I talked for more than a half-hour today, about Winter Garden and about writing and relationships, while locked up in the inner chambers of a Barnes and Noble bookstore in a Portland, Oregon suburb. We went deep, we dove in together, and we didn’t come up for air, until that thirty-minutes was up. I’ll let you know when the show airs on Open Book with Diana Page Jordan. We taped, because Kristin won’t be in town on a Monday when my show is live, and if an author comes to Portland on tour, I’d rather do the interview in person than on the phone.
Kristin, her blond pageboy gently swaying as she answered my questions, was wise and wonderful. Read the rest of this entry »
January 14, 2010 · Filed under Book Reviews · Tagged abuse, fearless, friendship, goals, happiness, healing, inspiration, manifest, mother, motherhood, relationships, self awareness, therapy
Mother-Daughter Knits: 30 Designs to Flatter and Fit
By Sally Melville & Caddy Melville Ledbetter
Published March 17, 2009 (Hardcover) Potter Craft
It’s been a long time since I picked up knitting needles. Maybe decades. Mother-Daughter Knits brought it back. But better. Read the rest of this entry »
December 21, 2009 · Filed under Book Reviews · Tagged Christmas, festivals, Funicello, inspiration, magic, motherhood, optimism, passion, relationships, revolutions, self awareness, snowstorm, storytelling, writing
Wishin’ and Hopin’: A Christmas Story
By Wally Lamb
Published November 10, 2009 (Hardcover) Harper
The gray skies pelt us with hard rain in Portland, Oregon, while our east coast friends have the snowstorm we had last year. They try to disguise the secret delight in their voices, but it sneaks out. Snow!
No winter snowstorms for us, so I choose a Christmasy book to remind me. Read the rest of this entry »
December 14, 2009 · Filed under Author Interviews, Book Reviews · Tagged 12-step, cooking, diet, family, happiness, healing, health, healthy diet, inspiration, love, magic, motherhood, optimism, passion, physical health, recipes, relationships, sobriety, son, writing
There’s something magical about the smells that fill up a kitchen when the cooking begins. Honestly, there hasn’t been much real cooking in my house since my sons graduated high school and moved in their unique directions – the younger to UC Santa Cruz, where he graduated with a BS in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and moved on to a job in water purity, and the elder who today celebrated six months clean and sober, a real trick with that dual diagnosis of bipolar and drug addiction.
It is magical, the difference. Sobriety and celebration go hand in hand.
My younger son Read the rest of this entry »
