My Mother's House: A Memoir

At age 12 Alexa Wolf won first place for her age group in a poetry contest sponsored by the International Women's League for Peace and Freedom. Ten years later she won a fellowship to the MacDowell Colony. She is currently working on her Writers Certificate at the UCLA Writers Extension Program.

After eight years spent writing My Mother's House: A Memoir, Alexa's book was published! I'm happy to showcase it in our Readers Circle for you to read. The following is an excerpt from the book:

My Mother's House: A Memoir
By Alexa Wolf
Copyright 2007 by Alexa Wolf.

The Night It Rained

I think of the times my mother might have died and didn't: when she dropped unbatlike from the steel bar across the top of her bedroom door and hit her shoulder on the floor; when the neighbor caught her as she lost her balance on the small dirt path to her walkway, halting her backward fall toward the sidewalk cement; when the drive-by shooting missed her; when she escaped the couple who wanted her to get into their truck; when her car broke down, as it seemed to do every other month and always at night, and countless, kind people stopped to help her and make sure she got home safely.

Then there was the night it rained. At a familiar intersection on her way home, Mother made a right turn and the steering wheel stuck. "The wheels only turned right!" she narrated to me on the phone the moment she got home. "The car just went around and around in the middle of the intersection - and the rain was pouring - the night was just black - for almost ten minutes."

"What did you do?" My mouth dry, I pictured the surrealistic scene she described. This was exactly the kind of thing I feared for her.

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After reading this story, please share your thoughts and comments with the author and fellow MBM members below.

Would you like to learn more about Alexa and her mom? Consider purchasing My Mother's House: A Memoir for yourself.

How about sharing a story from your life depicting the relationship between you and your mother? I'd love the opportunity to share it with the MBM community here and discussing it with you. Submitting your life stories for online publication is easy...and free. Try it...you'll be glad you did.

Life Story Writing for Seniors

Kathleen Adams from The Center for Journal Therapy shares some great activities for Senior Citizens in her article, Life Story Writing for Seniors.

A few of these activities include:

1. Writing in small sketches as proposed by Lois Daniel in her book, "How to Write Your Own Life Story",
2. Maintaining correspondence with loved ones
   
3. Dictating spoken poems

She explains,

"One of the markers of a life well lived must surely be the stories, experiences and memories that are told, retold, remembered and re-experienced throughout the life span. Life story writing captures the priceless and the poignant, the truly memorable and the quirkily remembered, the historic and the unique. It leaves a legacy of living history for future generations. And it can bring enjoyment, satisfaction and closure in the last stage of life."

She concludes her article with Six Suggestions for Seniors when it comes to Life Story Writing; practical no-nonsense ways to get one's life story recorded for generations to come. Read more about these now in Life Story Writing for Seniors.