Coming in May:

Author Dee Dee Rapp
Dear Mom: Remembering, Celebrating, Healing

Dee Dee will be with us to discuss her book of letters to Mom.

Here's her message to you:

Happy May to Baby Boomer Women Everywhere!

I am thrilled to spend May with you as Dotsie’s featured author! We celebrate moms on Mother’s Day and I’d like to spend May with you to help you take a journey of remembering and celebrating your mother’s gifts.

I know firsthand the pain of sudden loss, and I know the joy of celebrating the gifts of the one we’ve lost. My mom died very suddenly, just before Christmas, in 1990. No goodbyes, no closure. On the ninth anniversary of her death, I saw Christmas tree ornaments she had made as “gifts” and wondered what I’d say to her if she were still alive.

Listening to a voice that encouraged me to go to my computer, I found my fingers writing “Dear Mom.” Tears flowed as words appeared on the screen. I wrote another letter, cried, laughed, and kept writing until late spring. Friends encouraged me to share the letters, and five years later, I published Dear Mom: Remembering, Celebrating, Healing.

Dear Mom offers heartfelt stories that guide a journey we’ll all take. First, writing letters that allow you to remember and celebrate a Mom’s life, what I call “narrative healing.” Second, identifying the gifts of every Mom’s life: the lessons and values that make us who we are today (including her plastic pink flamingoes!). Third, and maybe the best part, once claimed, consciously passing those gifts on to our children and grandchildren.

I was transformed by looking not at what I’d lost, but at the gifts Mom gave me. My thanks came in the form of letters nine years after Mom died. Don’t wait. May is a perfect month to honor your Mom for her gifts with flowers and letters. Write your mom a letter. Submit it via my web site www.DearMomBook.com and enter the Dear Mom Writing Contest. Whether your mom is alive or has passed on, you will benefit from writing a letter of thanks.

Coming May 1st.

You can order her book at her site, www.dearmombook.com

[ May 15, 2006, 10:33 PM: Message edited by: Dotsie ]

Welcome Dee Dee. Seems like it took so long for this moment to arrive.

I lost my mom five years ago in March. What I liked most about reading your book is that it gave me time to reminisce about childhood events that I hadn't thought about i years. While reading your letters, my memory was jolted into remembering similar activities/stories from my childhood. I recognized so many similarities between our moms that I believe were generational issues.

Something you mentioned a few times was how your mom liked to watch the soaps. So did my mom. She watched Days of Our Lives. I never watched a single episode because I chose to be outside, but two of my sisters got hooked when they were teens.

Anyone still watch the soaps their moms watched?

Thanks Dotsie! May is here, and that means May Day baskets! One of my favorite memories of spring with Mom was creating May Day baskets. We made them out of the bottoms of milk cartons, decorated them and then filled them with prairie flowers. They made great gifts for my grade school teachers. At least I HOPE they were delighted! And May Day is a great day to begin the journey of sharing Dear Mom: Remembering, Celebrating, Healing, with Baby Boomer women!

Dear Mom is both a book and a journey. I hope you can take a moment and read the first chapeter on-line at www.DearMomBook.com. You'll quickly see it's a book of letters I wrote Mom after she died. I decided to share the letters because I was transformed by the healing I received from finding, finally, a way to say goodbye.

The Dear Mom "journey" is the gift the letters have been to me. Re-reading the letters for publication made me realize how many gifts Mom gave me, including traditions like May Day baskets. The journey is one of remembering and celebrating, and as I told a reporter today, all of that leads to a wonderful sense of healing for those of us who have lost our moms.

Do you remember special spring time traditions you enjoyed with your Mom? Do you carry on those traditions with your children and grandchildren? It's one of the best parts of the journey!

This post of yours rmeminds me of my Aunt LIbby. We stayed with her whenever Mom and Dad went away. She taught us to make the tissue paper flowers. I recall making a whole basket full of them for Mom while she and Dad were away.

Your stories always trigger something in me.

I've learned that there are many emotional "triggers" or prompts that allowed me to write the letters to Mom. One is today. It's Mom's birthday. She'd be 78 today. Remembering birthdays and other celebrations is a prompt I encourage people to use in journaling.

Dear Mom is like a journal, and the value of identifying and sharing stories is bigger than us. It's great for our children as well. One of my favorite stories Dad liked to tell was when my grandparents drove through a snow storm for my first birthday. The neighbor called to see who had died, because no one drove through snow storms on the prairie for the fun of it. Dad's reply was, "No one died, it's Dee Dee's first birthday!"

I kept journals for both of my daughters for many years. (OK, I'm a bit of a control freak. I figured if something happened to me, I wanted them to be able to get to know me from MY words, not someone else's!) One of the stories in Jessica's journal is about my dad driving in snow to come see her. I had called him, telling him she was having a bad day, and asked him come visit. He did. When Jess read my first birthday story in my book, and then read a very similar story in her journal, she realized the power of sharing our stories, and just how special grandparents can be.

It's the power of our stories, and it's what we remember, celebrate and pass on to our children and grandchildren. Any "Mom" birthday stories to share?

Dee Dee, welcome. You are like a breath of Spring air yourself. WELCOME!

My Mother is so unique to me. She's always had such a wonderful attitude about life and people, too. I'm sure she originated the phrase, "If you can't say something nice about somebody, then don't say anything at all!" She was also the one who coined, "Just wait till your Daddy gets home." That still makes me tremble!

One of our Springtime routines was to take a blanket out into the back yard and have a picnic. We would play games, fall asleep and nap, and just be. Sigh....

Her first name is Bettye...I call her "Saint Bettye" and if I want her to know it, I'll tell her myself, k?

She wakes up, and has for as long as I can remember, goes to the front door, slings it open and says in a loud voice, "MORNING WORLD!"

Don't you know the neighbors love her?

JJ

Thanks for sharing! Mom's name was Betty....so I love your mom's name! Her name was "Elizabeth." My three-week old granddaughter's name is Faith Elizabeth....and she is the oldest daughter, of the oldest daughter, of the oldest daughter, of the oldest daughter, of the oldest daughter...and all of us have "Elizabeth" in our names. So names are very special to me. When I have people named Betty in my seminars, I smile and think of Mom. It's an uncommon name, and one I hold very dear.

Mom would have been too shy to shout "Good morning!" to the world, but I've made up for it, and have found many opportunities in my life to say something to the world, usually in front of my daughters! What a great way to help them "appreciate" me!

JJ, I can still hear Mom saying, "if you don't have anything nice to say, then don't say it." I attended a heated three hour meeting for my daughter's school last night and some of the attendees must not have had mothers like ours. Phew!

My peonies are getting ready to bloom. Mom loved those flowers. I can't wait to cut some and bring that scent in our home that reminds me so much of Mom. I will be certain to take some to the cemetery for her.

I keep bragging on Saint Bettye, (forgive me) but she has taught me so many wonderful things about life. Her and my Daddy as well. I don't think I fully appreciated how MANY and what a positive impact they've had on my life until the last few years.

I think that is one reason I love what you're doing Dee Dee.

I've told others that I love my Mother so much, that sometimes it hurts. What hurts? The fear of losing her.

BUT....on the bright side I never miss an opportunity to tell her how much I adore her as my friend and Mother.

I always tell her she's the best Mother I've ever had.

JJ

Writing about the gifts from a mom is a very intimate journey, and I encourage women to take that journey with love, courage and gratitude. When Mom died, I could only look at what I'd lost. When I wrote the letters, I was able to look at what I'd been given. I received far more than I gave her, and I was transformed by the process. That, all by itself, was a wonderful gift!

As Mother's Day approaches, what gifts do you most want to thank your mother for giving you? What lessons did she teach you that you find yourself teaching your children and your grandchildren?

Today, when I yelled for my daughter to help me with something, my grandson gently tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Gumma, you need to be patience!" I think that's a phrase with a lesson in it from Mom, passed onto Gavin. And I'll be she's smiling at her Type AA daughter hearing that message from her grandson!