WOW: Women's Older Wisdom
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March 2024
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Mothers and Daughters

Healing A Mother Wound

Mother’s Day is right around the corner, and while it’s a joyful time to honor mothers, it can also be an unsettling occasion for those adult daughters with a pronounced mother wound. The holiday can reawaken a daughter’s memories of the maternal hurt she experienced growing up and which continues to affect her primary relationships. [...]

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Celebrating the Mother Line

Reading a 2017 essay by Deborah Tannen “My Mother Speaks Through Me,” I paused at the sentence: Though my mother died in 2004, she is the one whose voice comes out when I speak, and whose speaking style shapes how I hear others’ words. I too have been surprised, even amused, when I say something that sounds just like my mother.  Unlike [...]

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Grandmother Wisdom for Granddaughters

GUEST POST BY TONI KIEF For this post Toni collected grandmother wisdom from friends that are grandmothers.  They are among the pairs photographed below. Dearest Granddaughters, Because of you, we joined the community of Grandmothers. We would like to assure you that it’s all worthwhile.  Watching you careen into adulthood pressing forward, [...]

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Crafting Healing Stories to Shed Anger

One of the most valuable lessons aging has bestowed on me is the importance of shedding anger.  The less anger I hold the more inner peace I possess. I’ve learned to release a lot of my anger by imagining myself inhabiting the lives of those who have hurt me, resulting in a new story where I experience compassion towards the other.  This [...]

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Healing the Mother Wound

Mother’s Day can be an unsettling occasion for those adult daughters with a pronounced mother wound.  A celebration of mothers can reawaken a daughter’s memories of the maternal hurt she experienced growing up and which continues to affect her primary relationships. The mother wound can be traced to a woman’s proclivity to rejection, [...]

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After the Sobbing, the Sorting

Guest post by Janet Weil A favorite Jack Kornfield book title of mine is “After the Ecstasy, the Laundry” — modern stories and ancient tales of dealing with life’s day-to-day challenges after the ecstasy of spiritual epiphanies. That phrase frequently ran through my mind as I faced a long to-do list after my mother, [...]

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Honoring Our Mother Line

Reading Deborah Tannen’s piece in last week’s New York Times entitled, “My Mother Speaks Through Me,” it dawned on me that as I age I’m becoming more and more like my mother. My younger self would have fumed at this comparison, but my older self honors it. My everyday life has been enriched by adopting some of my mother’s habits: [...]

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The Education of a Grandmother

There’s nothing quite like the first time you hold a grandchild, experiencing the miracle of your son or daughter now having his or her own child. The baby looking back at you seems like a divine gift. And it is, but as time goes on and you settle into being a grandmother, the relationship gets more complicated. You watch your adult child [...]

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Remembering My Mother

On December 15, 2000, fifteen years ago today, my mother, Jane Conrad First, died. She was one month short of her 83rd birthday. I’ve had an incredible post-mother journey. When Jane left this world, I was still holding anger and resentment towards her. I didn’t show this side of myself to the outside world because, like many people, [...]

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