Rica Keenum's Blog

Mother-daughter estrangement is trending, and it begs the question: mother wound or mother blame? As women often do, I questioned my ability to see the difference. But as I wrote my trauma narrative from the shadowy depths of the mother wound, I began to understand the ways I’d been conditioned to protect my mother, and how doing so had silenced important conversations and critical examination of our mother-daughter relationship. I’d internalized a message, an ideology about mothers as near mythical beings. My mother gave me life, and I’d forever be indebted to her–or so I believed. These statements were the poison that rendered me paralyzed, trapped in a cycle of codependent behaviors. When is Mother-Daughter Estrangement Essential? It took me more than 40 years to pull the trigger on mother-daughter estrangement, a path my former self would have found inconceivable. Bearing the burden of devotion to my mother made it difficult to detach without shame. But writing my second memoir, a mother wound book, helped me navigate the process. One of the things I feared when I published Nobody’s Daughter (note, there were many fears), was creating a one-sided narrative that read more like a flashy exposé than the emotional account of a daughter struggling to heal the mother wound. It took careful consideration and self-examination to approach the writing with an open heart. I would reveal my mother’s sins as I wrote scenes about our conflict, her willful blindness, and her culpability in the abuse I suffered during childhood and beyond. But there were other sides of the story, other angles to hold up to the light. I had to be willing to examine my own actions throughout our relationship and those I’ve made as a mother to my own children as well. Doing the inner work and conscientious self-reflection was part of the healing process. It was, and still is, as much a right as a responsibility. Healing is Our Right and Responsibility: But What About Mother Blame? To ensure our motives are pure as we explore mother-wound healing, we must first understand our trauma and its manifestations. So what is the mother wound? The following are some examples of behavioral signs according to experts. Other signs include: Where the Lines Blur: How to Create Healthy Boundaries without Mother Blame For decades, I swallowed platitudes such as, “Your mom did the best she could with what she had.” People talked about how young she was, the toxicity of her marriage to my father, and the difficulties she faced. Statements like these, while true, dismissed the depth of my trauma and made me feel unjustified and ungrateful for my mother’s notable “sacrifices.” The fact that she worked hard and made pot roast on Sundays seemed to absolve her of the greater responsibilities to protect and nurture her children. Only after I allowed myself to assess the past critically, without fear of mother blame, was I able to see that my mother’s age, economic status, relationship struggles, character deficits, etc., were not my burden to bear. The truth is, we are all accountable for our own actions and responsible for our individual healing and growth. With this in mind, I was able to create healthy boundaries for my own wellbeing. A Cultural Shift: The Mother-Daughter Estrangement Trend Since Oprah released videos and intimate conversations with Brooke Shields about the mother wound, I’ve seen the topic go mainstream for better AND worse. The discourse on social platforms and blogs has mostly been thoughtful or reasonable, but I’ve seen overreactions as well– mothers blindsided by children who suddenly become outraged for seemingly minor offenses. In terms of estrangement, the pendulum swings in a dangerous direction, one that readily justifies going “no contact.” Headlines about mother-daughter breakups abound, and it makes me cringe. Whatever the circumstances, mother-child estrangement is always a tragedy to me. As an estranged daughter, I miss my mother in unfathomable ways. I think about her witty comebacks throughout the day, what she might say about this or that, and I ache to share my life with her. Yet, our separation is essential to my wellbeing. And while I applaud Oprah and Brooke for their insights and openness and I encourage women everywhere to find their individual paths to mother wound healing, I will never see estrangement as a cause for celebration. Can we stop the shitty mom memes? Seeing women so deftly share their painful histories and tell their mother break-up tales makes me both paranoid and proud. Paranoid about the popularity of estrangement as a proposed solution to mother-daughter drama. I consider my own motherhood failures, my blunders and bad behavior. Those times I cursed, used candy as currency for child labor, slept late while the kids fetched popsicles for breakfast, forgot school lunches, sprayed Lysol on an unwashed sports uniform, or said hurtful things when impatient or enraged. I lament my mistakes, and there are oh so many. None of us are immune. I hope, pray and appeal to gods of unknown deities that nothing will ever keep me from my sons. That we will never, for any reason, become estranged. According to author Rosjke Hasseldine, “there is an alarming increase of young adult daughters cutting off contact from their mothers.” Hasseldine says when she started working as a mother-daughter therapist in the late seventies, estrangement was rare, reserved only for the most abusive relationships. Hasseldine sees today’s estrangement trend as cause for alarm. I imagine all mothers in the hot seat, and I can only hope daughters and sons are able to see their relationships objectively as they dig down to the root of their pain. If mother-daughter estrangement is on the table, the decision should flow from a place of peace and wisdom rather than resentment or retaliation. In my experience, I needed to feel anger before I could get to a place of acceptance. Anger should come before our ultimate decision making. (Read more on the importance of anger). My choice to cut ties with my mother was guided by therapy and intense contemplation. I’d exhausted all other reasonable avenues and chose estrangement as an act of self-preservation. As noted in the last chapter of my mother wound book: “Mother blame only makes us victims, only prolongs our suffering. But we have the power to create a better life– to make space for love without hatred or resentment. Even if, that sometimes ends in estrangement.” Nobody’s Daughter: A Memoir of The Mother wound

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As a Stanford admissions officer and private college counselor, Irena Smith navigated the competitive and complex world of college applications, essays and teen angst. But as a struggling mother raising three children with developmental delays, her expertise and professional insights did nothing to quell her parental fears. Here, she shares with us the backstory of her memoir The Golden Ticket, which is a stunning mashup of messy motherhood and college prep—a surprisingly fun read, packed with family drama, humor, and wisdom.  The Golden Ticket (Book Blurb) Every fall, millions of high school seniors agonize over how to respond to college application essay prompts. In a timely, incisive memoir that blends humor and heartache, Irena Smith takes a stab at answering them as an adult. Irena is a Russian Jewish immigrant, a PhD in comparative literature, a former Stanford admissions officer, and a private college counselor in Palo Alto, California—a city where everyone has to be good at something and where success often means the name of a prestigious college on the back of a late-model luxury car. But as Irena works with some of the most ambitious, tightly wound students in the world, she struggles to keep her own family from unraveling, and that sharp-edged divide lies at the heart of her memoir. The Golden Ticket is narrated using a form Irena knows best: college application essay prompts. In her responses, Irena weaves together personal history, sharp social commentary, and the lessons of literature ranging from The Odyssey to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Her memoir asks difficult questions—What exactly do parents mean when they say they want the best for their children? What happens when the best of intentions result in unexpected consequences?—and envisions a broader, more generous view of what it means to succeed.  Author Q&A: Irena Smith I was born in Moscow and emigrated to the US with my parents when I was nine years old, so my formative years were pretty evenly split between the former Soviet Union and Sunnyvale, California. As an independent college counselor, I spend a lot of time working with high school seniors on college essays. But while counseling my students on how to tell their best story and gain admission to some of the most selective colleges in the world, I was grappling with the chasm between my professional life and my personal life. At home, my husband and I were struggling to raise three children with developmental delays, depression, anxiety, and learning differences. That disconnect was the catalyst for the book— I wanted to tell our story and to create space for conversations about and for students who aren’t ready for college, or don’t want to go to college, or are struggling with challenges that go beyond deciding which top 20 colleges they’ll apply to.  Writing a book is a process with highs and lows. What challenges did you overcome to get your story written, and what tools or practices helped you achieve the goal?  Finding time (or, more accurately, the motivation) to write consistently was challenging; I tend to write when an idea I’m excited about pops into my head, but the problem with not having a consistent writing practice is that ideas are harder to come by. And then, of course, there was the roller coaster of getting the book published—I got incredibly lucky in that I found an extraordinarily capable agent who loved the manuscript and who showed superhuman persistence in pitching it to 60+ traditional publishers… all of whom turned it down. I’m very grateful to Brooke Warner at She Writes Press for her dedication to providing an extraordinary publishing experience and a supportive community to so many women writers. I wish I could say I have a reliable collection of writing tools in my toolkit, but I think in my case it comes down to persistence, panic-induced motivation, and having a vision for the story I wanted to tell. And while I’m not always the most motivated writer when it comes to first drafts, I’m a committed reviser, and I think that a willingness to revisit your writing and peel away the layers until you get at the crystalline heart underneath is vital. Writing in moderately crowded coffee shops, blank notebooks (with which I have an aspirational rather than creative relationship), long, non-linear conversations with my daughter, wandering around bookstores and libraries, reading.  There’s a chapter toward the end of the book where I envision myself as Odysseus while running errands. In the course of my internal monologue as I navigate the real and perceived dangers and temptations of Palo Alto, where I live, it occurs to me that my husband and I—and so many other parents—were drawn to Palo Alto’s promise of excellent schools, safety, and economic promise only to be disillusioned. I particularly love the moment of realization that closes the chapter:  “In truth, I’m no Odysseus. I’m more of a Circe (not the alluring witch part; the part where I’m stuck in perpetual exile, gathering my herbs, weaving my stratagems, turning things into other things, helping scions of Bay Area royalty gain spots at highly coveted universities). Or maybe it’s not me who is Circe—it’s this cursed town that lured us all in and then turned us into swine.” — The Golden Ticket, Irena Smith I’m working on a collection of stories about literary and real-life journeys and exploring themes of exile, flight, border crossings, and transformation. Author Irena Smith:  Irena is the author of the recently released memoir, The Golden Ticket: A Life in College Admissions Essays. Before she was an author, she was a Russian Jewish immigrant, an English major, a PhD in comparative literature, a humanities and composition lecturer, a mother of three extraordinary children, a Stanford admissions officer, and a private college admissions counselor. She is an inveterate advocate of reading as many books at one time as possible, imperfect but earnest parenting, and the Oxford comma.  Website: Irena Smith Facebook

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Writing a memoir can be emotionally challenging, mentally draining and incredibly time consuming. Those who make it to the finish line often have help along the way–whether it’s a supportive spouse, friend, book coach or the author’s own unswerving passion for the project. As for Wendy Sandford and Mary Norman, it took 30 years to complete their memoir. These Walls Between Us came by way of a spiritual nudge, the compulsion to trust their own hearts and believe in the strength of their message, even when faced with criticism.   In These Walls Between Us, Mary, a 15-year-old Black domestic worker, and Wendy, a 12-year-old privileged white girl, forge a bond that becomes its own footprint on a path riddled with obstacles and racial divides. In this author Q & A, Wendy shares her journey through the memoir, and describes how her need to nurture the friendship with Mary called for a painful exploration of white supremacy culture and honest self-examination. The raw and unflinching story holds the power to transform readers.    These Walls Between Us: From an author of the women’s health classic Our Bodies, Ourselves comes a bracingly forthright memoir about a life-long friendship across racial and class divides. Wendy Sanford, who is white, and Mary Norman, who is Black, have created a sixty-five-year friendship and – at Mary’s suggestion – the award-winning book that mines its riches. Vivid stories lift up the obstacles, in society and in Sanford herself, to this lifelong friendship. Sanford explores her formation in a narrow world of class and race privilege, lifts up the writings and social movements that changed her views and her life, and reveals realities of domestic service rarely acknowledged by white employers.  She offers lessons from her oft-stumbling efforts to see Mary Norman more fully and to become a more dependable friend in a context of white supremacy. Now in their eighties, Norman and Sanford have co-created a friendship and a book. Their story sparks conversation and change.  A white woman’s necessary learning and a Black woman’s resolute evolution make These Walls Between Us a “tender, honest, cringeworthy and powerful read.”  (Debby Irving, author, Waking Up White.)   ●      What sparked the idea for These Walls Between Us? When Mary traveled North from rural Virginia as a summer domestic worker for my mother on the island of Nantucket, she was 15 years old, and I was 12. In the context of Mary’s work for my parents over many summers, we had a friendly connection limited by our different positions as Black domestic worker and favored white daughter. Change came in the mid-1980’s, when Mary worked full-time as the first woman to reach officer status in a male corrections facility in Mercer County, New Jersey, and I was active as a feminist and a co-author of Our Bodies, Ourselves. We were both in our forties, both divorced single parents, and both very lonely out there in that vacation enclave for affluent and conservative white people. We began to walk together, after nightfall, on the secluded beach where Mary wasn’t welcome in daytime except in the uniform of domestic service. We began to talk more openly about our lives. Soon, we made time to visit in other seasons. Then Mary had the idea that we should write a book about our friendship. No one would believe it, she said. The story might even get us on Oprah!  These Walls Between Us took thirty years to write and became the story of our friendship of 65 years; how we both negotiated the alcoholic family that I grew up in and Mary occasionally worked for; the many missteps that I made in our friendship, as a pretty clueless white person; also Mary’s humane and progressive-minded work in corrections at a time when the tide was turning away from rehabilitation and towards punishment, and her deeply community-based ethic of caring. ●      Writing a book is a process with highs and lows. What challenges did you overcome to get your story written, and what tools or practices helped you achieve the goal? Mary named one of the challenges in creating the book when she said to a book group we Zoomed with recently that, although she suggested we write a book together, she worked two or three jobs at all times through the following decades, and had no time to write. At first, I jumped in to write “our” book on my own, based on conversations between us, but I had to face the fact that, as a white person, I could not actually write “our” book. There was never enough of Mary in it. When we reached the era of smartphones and texting, Mary said, “Ask me anything, and I’ll text you the answer.” Mary’s voice and life experiences entered These Walls Between Us more fully then, and the love that grounds our friendship became more palpable. But the author’s voice is still mine.  We decided to aim the book towards well-intentioned white readers who might benefit from my being utterly honest  about my missteps and micro-aggressions towards Mary over the years, all I needed to unlearn of white supremacy culture in order see Mary more fully and to become a more reliable friend.   I think the practice that helped me most was what I came to call “restorative reading.” I began to focus more and more on works by Black authors. Their writings increased my understanding of Black American history and culture and of white supremacy culture as well. I think of restorative reading as an ethical practice, allowing me to access crucial information without burdening Black colleagues or friends with my blunt deficits. Restorative reading allows a white reader to become more responsible and accountable in the real world. Restorative reading helped me to become—gradually, awkwardly—a more informed and dependable person in Mary Norman’s life. Naps are another practice that helped. Writing this memoir was emotional. The honesty I asked of myself was searching. The family scenes I remembered were often painful, as was realizing the ways I hurt Mary during all my clumsy learning. Often, in the middle of a writing session, a nap would take me over. Sleeping replenished my emotional reserves and often sifted my thoughts and feelings into new understandings. Oh yes, the highs were there, too. The arrival of texting into Mary’s and my co-creation process was one. She had always thought of herself as hating to write. With texting, this changed. A high, for us both I think, was when Mary’s sons read the finished book and encouraged us to go ahead and publish it. I’d had to be prepared for them, or for Mary, to say no.The green light felt wonderful. A recent high has been creating the audio book, with the opportunity to add bonus content in the form of a conversation between Mary and myself about our friendship and our lives. Finally, Mary’s voice is literally present in the book! ●      Tell us about the people, places or things that inspire your creativity. I wrote These Walls under what we Quakers call a “leading,” which is a spiritual nudge towards an action that may seem daunting or impossible but that one is “meant” to tackle. All the times my vision or energy faltered over the thirty years, especially criticism came from people whose judgment I trusted, this “leading” was there in my heart, inspiring me to keep at the project of honoring Mary’s and my friendship and offering its fruits to readers.   ●      Is there any section chapter or line from your book that you’re most proud of? I love the chapter about the ways that multi-racial feminism changed me and opened up Mary’s and my friendship. I love the trip we took late in our lives to learn what we could of Mary’s birth father. And I love how our story “lands” in the Epilogue. Here it is: EXCERPT:  Phone Call, November 2020Mary: We couldn’t have said “friend” at the beginning. It took years to get where we are. If you hadn’t been a curious person, you still wouldn’t know my world. You would just now maybe be trying to figure it out, wondering “what do they want?” If you had been different, we would never have been good friends.Wendy: If either of us had been different. Mary:Yes. ~ These Walls Between Us What are your next projects, writing or otherwise?   I am such a neophyte at promotion that my main project since publication has been figuring out how to let people know about the book! In a spiritual sense, I guess I’m waiting for “further instructions” about what to write next. Bio:  Wendy Sanford grew up in a white suburban family in Princeton, New Jersey. During the socially turbulent time of the 1970s, she became a feminist, a lesbian, and a Quaker. A founding member of the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, Wendy co-authored and edited many versions of the women’s health and sexuality classic, Our Bodies, Ourselves. In her fifties, she began to reckon with her own white skin and the benefits that came to her through being white. Wendy and Polly Attwood, her spouse of forty-four years, are members of Friends Meeting at Cambridge in MA.  Mary Norman grew up in rural southwestern Virginia during the years of Jim Crow threats to the life and wellbeing of African American citizens.  She joined the Great Migration, traveling north for work.  Mary worked as a part-time domestic worker for affluent white families over several decades. During a long career in corrections, Mary became the first female officer in a male facility in the Mercer County New Jersey correction system, and rose to the rank of Lieutenant. She later mentored several women who, with her support, followed her path to officer status.  These Walls Between Us – Website: Wendy Sanford

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(Purchases made through links on this page help support this blog, but reviews are honest and unbiased). The Heart is a Star By Megan Rogers: Synopsis I received “The Heart is a Star” as a lovely gift from Megan Rogers, an author I only know in the Instagram world. And while she lives and writes on another continent, her words bridged the distance between us, as words so magically do. Before I dive in with my thoughts, here is a brief synopsis from the publisher: Layla Byrnes is exhausted. She’s juggling a demanding job as an anaesthetist, a disintegrating marriage, her kids, and a needy lover. And most particularly she’s managing her histrionically unstable mother, who repeatedly threatens to kill herself. But this year, it’s different. When her mother rings just before Christmas, she doesn’t follow the usual script. Instead, she tells Layla that there’s something she doesn’t know about her much-loved father. In response, Layla drops everything to rush to her childhood home on the wild west coast of Tasmania. She’s determined to finally confront her mother – and find out what really happened to her father – as well as untangle her unravelling life and lay some demons in her past to rest. My Review: Some books show you the fabric of a story, the intricate colors and patterns. The best ones, however, wrap you up in the warmth of that fabric.  The Heart is a Star did that for me. Initially, the suspense of Layla Byrnes’ mother’s secret kept me turning the pages, but I soon began to see the more complex layers.  Perhaps this story touched me because of the many ways it parallels my own. Like Layla, I am an adult daughter who has felt tormented by her mother’s hot and cold love, and her refusal to acknowledge my childhood trauma. I understood Layla’s frustrations, how she wrestled with a sense of daughterly duty, her intent to be loyal and loving to her mother while coping with the rage of betrayal. There were lines that gut-punched me throughout the book:  “Who mothers the mothers with absent mothers?” “You can be abandoned without being left.”  And as one who knows the healing power of validation after abuse, I was relieved by the vulnerability in her mother’s  acknowledgement: “There are things we often know but choose not to.”  Having longed for such a conversation with my own mother, this dialog felt profoundly important. It was beautiful to hear it from a character who had otherwise been elusive, self-serving and defensive. I began to see Layla’s mother more empathetically, her duality as a victim as well as a perpetrator. How broken people sometimes perpetuate brokenness, too hollow to fully love. At times I felt The Heart is a Star read more like a memoir than a novel, but that’s a testament to the author’s ability to create characters with nuance and dimension–like actual people! Megan Rogers did a wonderful job of showing their humanity as they fumbled and failed, sometimes making egregious mistakes. As a daughter suffering with the mother wound, I know it can be difficult to find balance as we straddle the line between blame and compassion in fractured relationships. Our need to feel heard can hinder our ability to listen.  Ultimately, we learn there are no lines, because people and life are messy. Our actions are not straight forward; they flow from a well of personal history, fears, insecurities and a lifetime of experiences. Sometimes the truth we hold dear is not fact, because we fail to see the spectrum of other truths—the perspectives and experiences of other characters within our story. As Layla’s Aunt Dawn explains in Megan Rogers’ book, “Nothing is ever one thing or the other. You have to let the joys and tragedies coexist.” Yet another line from the book brought this further into focus as it highlighted the burden of healing we face when our lives have been upended. “Sometimes, when you spend years going down one track, it’s very hard to turn around and walk another way.”  As I pondered the lives of the author’s characters, I saw the pain of invisible daughters who carried the void of unresolved trauma into adulthood. And while their experiences of abuse and emotional abandonment may be unfamiliar to some readers, I believe this book will resonate with a broad audience. Because if we are honest, we have each failed at love in varying degrees. Final Thoughts: The Heart is a Star probes the many facets of love, the lessons we learn in the dark, and the ways we chose to hide or let the light in. See The Heart is a Star on Amazon

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Songs about narcissistic relationships and emotional abuse have a way of cutting straight to the heart, exposing our wounds while offering healing medicine. As a writer, I use language as a tool for self-discovery and self-expression, but songs can function the same way– for the artist as well as the listener. Like most people, I’ve had many favorite songs over the years, songs that spoke to me intimately and helped me find clarity or peace. The following songs about narcissistic relationships or emotional abuse have helped me tap into the deepest places within, where healing begins. Songs to Empower Women in Narcissistic or Emotionally Abusive Relationships The Healing Power of Music Keep in mind that my interpretation of these songs about narcissistic relationships may differ from yours or even that of the artist. But I believe this is part of the magic—the subjective nature of music (and art in any form) allows it to uniquely capture our attention and provide personal meaning. In my books, I’ve described my struggles with narcissistic loved ones. Petals of Rain highlights my years as a naive young woman trapped in a unhealthy marriage. In hindsight, I see many instances of emotional abuse, manipulation and gaslighting– the common tactics narcissists use to maintain control. Freeing myself from that toxic relationship was the first step on a healing path that led me to face other traumas I’d experienced throughout my life. In my second book, Nobody’s Daughter: A Memoir of Healing the Mother Wound, I peeled away the layers of conflict surrounding the difficult mother-daughter relationship, and explored the deep impact of narcissistic mothers on their daughters. Navigating the healing process isn’t easy, but I have learned how to nurture my heart, create essential boundaries, and use self-love practices to strengthen my resolve. Here is an additional playlist of songs that have helped me find balance (as well as my inner bad ass). Songs about narcissistic relationships and emotional abuse can help us offload our suffering. Music, like books, sparks conversation and contemplation, and can be incredibly comforting to women in toxic marriages, difficult mother-daughter relationships, or other stressful life situations.

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Finding the best self-discovery books for women is a tall order, given the many empowering titles that have topped the charts throughout the years (and graced my bookshelves, too). And while personal development is an individual journey, I believe we travel life’s paths together when we connect through our sacred stories and intimate truths. The …

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Whether you’re a writer, painter, performer, marketer or artist in the making, you’ve no doubt wondered how to get creative juices flowing.

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After much frustration, I’ve compiled a curated list of unique gifts for grown sons (and men who have everything). As the mother of two hairy heathens, I know the struggle that comes with every holiday, birthday, or gift-buying occasion. You optimistically ask a man that loaded question, “What would you like this year?” Purchases made …

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When December brings winds and chills, you’ll find me burrowed inside my off-brand Snuggie blanket. It’s a delightful time of year for introverts, authors, book lovers and anyone who might benefit from a warm, cocoon experience. So in the spirit of getting cozy, I have compiled a short list of Christmas books for adults. These …

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Writing a book takes loads of time, motivation and inspiration. In my experience, there are also significant servings of coffee, which also lead to bathroom breaks, but let’s not get sidetracked… In this interview with Suzanne Simonetti, we learn what fueled her writing journey, how she managed her time in order to meet essential deadlines, …

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