Forgiving Mom For Daughters and Mothers in Conflict

A Utah poet has penned a gift book for the 2008 Mother's Day, Memorial Day season - just released at www.forgivingmom.com.

"I used to get angry looking for Mother's Day cards. None reflected my reality. Complex and conflicted," admits author Linda Athis, "that was my relationship with Mom.

Quite dramatically, near the end of her life, I had a huge, emotional download. I was anxious and driven. I could not stop the words, scribbling on scraps of paper, restaurant napkins, crying into a digital recorder. Once I hid in the bathroom to dictate my poetry, not wanting to worry my already alarmed husband.

As my Mother's health began to decline, I chose to share most of these poems with her. Their effect on both of us- the understanding, love, and surrender was startling and unforeseen. It has made living much easier for me. Only days after her death, I heard Mom's voice in my head: 'Now you can publish your poetry.' And so I have."

About the Book

The true relationship between many mothers and daughters is subterranean: Hidden guilt, lifelong verbal jabs, a cruel unspoken level of competition, and a frustrating inability to live up to the Hallmark Card verse we send or receive on Mother's Day. This is a book meant to heal - to give courage to mothers and daughters to work things out before the inevitable and final separation - death.

This is a book for:

1.Boomers dealing with aging/dying parents.

2.Gen Y women frustrated with their moms.

3.Mothers with rebellious children.

4.The growing ranks of hospice workers, grief counselors and their patients.

Comments From Readers

"Having worked for thirty years in the field of mother/daughter relationships, with my own mother who is now 89, I have seen this fragile and powerful relationship in its many stages of health and wounding. Poetry transcends time and space and the poetry that Linda has written about her relationship to her mother, moves the reader through all the pain, all the glory and beautifully into the love and forgiveness that mothers and daughters truly owe each other."

Dr. Dorothy Firman is the co-author, with her mother of Daughters and Mothers, Making it Work; Chicken Soup for the Mother and Daughter Soul; Chicken Soup for the Soul: Celebrating Mothers. Dorothy is a psychotherapist, life coach and professor. www.motherdaughterrelations.com

"Forgiving Mom shimmers with the almost unbearably poignant courage it takes to love one's mother in a mother-hating culture and with her pure unguardedness in the face of the moment she is about to lose her mother."

Paula J. Caplan, Ph.D., Harvard University, author of Don't Blame Mother: Mending the Mother-Daughter Relationship

"Forgiving Mom offers a long-overdue gift to individuals who have experienced tough lifepaths with a mother. Read these poems slowly. Read them aloud. Read them to a friend or sibling. Let the wisdom of this courageous poet nudge you to acts of forgiving."

Harold Ivan Smith, American Academy of Bereavement and author of

ABC's of Healthy Grieving: A Companion for Everyday Coping

Category: Gift-book, poetry

Cover Design: Michelle Pierce

Publication Date: April 2008

Pages: 22. 14 poems

Retail price: $16.96

ISBN: 978-0-9815122-0-4

Gift-book quality paper and cover, bound with concealed wire.

Published by: Ponderbooks Publishing

P.0. Box 58192

Salt Lake City, UT 84108-8192

About the Author

A Utah native, Linda Athis earns a living as a freelance business writer. She longs for the day when her biggest paycheck comes from her own creative writing.

The author has had many identities: Janitor, waitress, actress, appliance saleswoman, Avon lady, business executive, and wife. As evidenced by her poetry, she is also a reformed rebellious daughter.

Enjoy more of Linda's poetry online:

www.forgivingmom.com

www.secondbloom.wordpress.com

www.firstbird.wordpress.com

Ponderbooks Publishing: For authors who compose provocative stories on the challenge of existence.

Contact:

Rod Goodliffe 801.583.2549

Forgiving Mom For Daughters and Mothers in Conflict

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