Back in May, I had the honor of being on the 2013 Listen To Your Mother, Austin cast. I joined 13 other women and one man on a simple stage to help give Mothers Day a microphone. At nearly 30 weeks pregnant, I read my “Letter to My 51 Year Old Self” to an audience of hundreds. And I only cried a little bit.
This is a post I blogged last summer. One of those random thoughts I had passing through my head one morning as I sat down to the computer with a cup of coffee. It was a post I wanted to write for me, but never, ever one that I thought would resonate with so many others. The comments are some of my favorite, especially from mothers whose children have grown and flown from the nest. On rough days, I still go back and re-read this, and then I re-read each comment. It fills me up when I’m low on mothering reserves.
If you’d like to read it, it’s here- A Letter To My 51 Year Old Self. And there are even more lovely comments on Blogher.com, where it was republished.
I was surrounded by immense talent in the Austin show. Each and every reader had a deep and honest story to tell, and each and every one did so beautifully. Even the ones who made me cry from laughing, like Ava.
Photo credit Alison Eden Photography
But there was one that knocked the wind out of me when I heard it in rehearsal, and made me double up on tissues in preparation for her official performance. Listening to Donna Van Cleve read “Don’t Blink” was like hearing that future me I was writing to. Her piece was the flip-side of the coin. I may have mostly held it together for my reading, but I was a total mess during hers.
I have this urge to go on and link to and embed each and every other performance, but instead, I’ll just send you to the official Listen To Your Mother YouTube Channel. You can watch all of the 2013 Austin performances there, you can watch all of the 2013 performances from across the entire country there, and you can even watch every single LTYM performance ever there.
It’s a great place to get lost in when you want to connect with, celebrate, or just soak in the motherhood experience from so many unique perspectives.
A big thanks to LTYM sponsor DrugFree.org for making these videos possible. To learn more and take the pledge to help stop teens from abusing prescription drugs, head to the LTYM official post.