I don't normally write about current events, but an article by Paul Silva in our neighborhood paper, The Beach Reporter, made me realize I needed to write this. This week two young men from my hometown of Manhattan Beach had their lives end way too soon. One, a senior at the University of California at Berkeley, was spending a semester abroad in England. He was hit by a car as a pedestrian. He had looked the wrong way (the way we usually look in America) for oncoming traffic as he stepped off the curb to cross the street. The other young man, a high school student, was riding in the top of a double-decker bus celebrating a friend's birthday. He stood up on his seat at the wrong time and hit his head on an overpass. As a mother who has lost one of her sons (mine to suicide and just as sudden), I know the death of a child is the worst thing that can ever happen to a parent. And I just had to say how much I mourn with the parents and families of these two talented and able … [Read more...]
Please join me in welcoming Eleanor Vincent back to Choices
It's wonderful to have Eleanor Vincent back on Choices on the last day of her WOW Women on Writing blog tour. I'm delighted to share about her memoir, Swimming with Maya: A Mother's Story with you. (See my review at Goodreads.) Eleanor's work hugely inspired me to write my memoir Leaving the Hall Light On: A Mother's Memoir of Living with Her Son's Bipolar Disorder and Surviving His Suicide. Swimming with Maya had been released a few years before, and I felt if she can do it so can I as hard as writing about the death of a child is. As soon as we met in December 1999 I felt we were soul mates the deaths of our eldest children bound us together, and we have been friends and writing buddies ever since. Just last weekend my husband and I visited with her in northern California. It was such a treat to meet her two grandchildren for the first time. I wrote a blog piece about how we met earlier this year you can find it here. About Swimming With Maya; A Mother's … [Read more...]