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“It’s just a house! Do something with it!!”

  Last year, Paul and I bought the family beach house and these words from my mother’s painting class keep me going. She charged her painting students with this and other pithy sayings when they were blocked. Today, the words seem prophetic. On the 15th anniversary of my mother’s death, my dear husband and I […]

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“It’s just a house! Do something with it!!”

  Last year, Paul and I bought the family beach house and these words from my mother’s painting class keep me going. She charged her painting students with this and other pithy sayings when they were blocked. Today, the words seem prophetic. On the 15th anniversary of my mother’s death, my dear husband and I […]

The post “It’s just a house! Do something with it!!” appeared first on Janice Wilson Stridick.

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Guided Self-Discovery Can Be Sublime

The Mother-Daughter Way LIVE weekend was a celebration of shared self-discovery. On the sign-in book, I see these comments: “A warming of the heart,” “Wonderful sharing and fellowship,” “Beginning to really enjoy life,” “Sharing with others is very healing,” and “an opening of the heart in remembrance of Mom.” Although our event began on a snowy […]

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Transcendence in the Mother-Daughter Way

    For the final week of the Mother-Daughter Way, we focus on transcendence. What does that mean in everyday terms? When my mother asked me to sit for this portrait, I resisted. I was busy. She was dying. I imagined having yet another unfinished portrait to remind me of the ways we couldn’t sign […]

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Loving, Losing, Letting Go

Yesterday, I helped out as my friend Sandy Sampson conducted an estate sale to empty her parent’s home. I had to see how she did it. Sandy is an awesome daughter who provided much family caregiving over the past decade. Her father, Harry Trigg, died in April 2009, and her mother, Marion Jane Bold Trigg, […]
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The Promise of Mothers and Daughters

…this is how you sweep a corner; this is how you sweep a whole house; this is how you sweep a yard; this is how you smile to someone you don’t like too much …   Jamaica Kinkaid, “Girl” Will you be there?  …  Can you hear the truth?    Tori Amos, “Promise”   It’s been a lovely […]
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Malala: Standard-Bearer for Girls’ Rights to Education

This month of honoring women may be coming to a close, but it’s been an opening for me in a way I never dreamed. As a writer who is given to privacy, revision, and possibly overworked revision, this blog accomplished what my mother said the shift to watercolors from oil paints did for her. I […]
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Ten Interview Questions for the Next Big Thing

I am happy to participate in this writer’s round robin after being tagged by the lovely poet Lorraine Henrie Lins (thanks, Lorraine!).  After I answer the questions, I’ll tag two additional wonderful writers. What is the working title of your book?                   The working title was The Alice Book or OK FOREVER: Alice Steer Wilson’s […]