On Saint Patrick’s Day, as my son’s name is Patrick, I decided to honor his grandmother, my mother-in-law, whom I loved most dearly. I wrote this essay for her when she was 102. When time came for her to accept that her only son would choose a black girl as his wife, I never heard any negative comments. Florita accepted me and Patrick fully and unconditionally into the fold of her family. And that was remarkable in the 1970’s upstate New ...
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In the past few blogs I’ve written about wanting to love my birth mother Rosa, a woman I did not get to know. The mother who raised me, however, I knew and loved dearly.
She was 50 when she decided to keep me. her name was Esther, but I called her Mutti, for she was German. She was born in 1888, while Queen Victoria still ruled in England. Picture being raised by a Victorian woman! I could ...
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Not easy, working on spiritual action. And I don’t know if that is an adequate term for what I am focusing on in my meditations.
I know my mother died early in her life, of a massive stroke. People said she died of a broken heart at having lost me, regardless of her repeated efforts and sacrifice to remain connected.
Once I had learned my story as my mother saw it, based on what my siblings shared with me, I ...
Continue Reading →There are still times when I feel pretty wretched. They are no longer because of something someone said to me. But they come at night or during meditation, and have to do with my relationship with my mother. Not my German mother who in so many areas is deserving of my love and praise, but the mother who cradled me beneath her heart and whose placenta fed me for the months I lived in her womb. I am not ...
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 In Split at the Root: A Memoir of Love and Lost Identity, I tell the story of growing up within a culture and a race that was different to my own. Here’s an excerpt:Guatemala City is only 15 degrees north of the Equator, but at five thousand feet above sea level the altitude allows ... |
In writing my recent book, Split at the Root: A Memoir of Love and Lost Identity (Kindle) or Split at the Root: A Memoir of Love and Lost Identity, I tell the story of growing up within a culture and a race that was different to my own. Here’s an excerpt:
When insulting situations happened, which was seldom, it took time before I realized what was going on; that is if I became aware it was directed at me in the first ...
Continue Reading →In writing my recent book, Split at the Root: A Memoir of Love and Lost Identity (Kindle) or Split at the Root: A Memoir of Love and Lost Identity, I tell the story of growing up within a culture and a race that was different to my own. Here’s an excerpt:
Sometime at the end of January 1968, a few weeks after my return from Guatemala, the phone rang and my friend Gabi hollered excitedly through the receiver. “Hey Girl, listen. I’m ...
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In writing my recent book, Split at the Root: A Memoir of Love and Lost Identity (Kindle) or Split at the Root: A Memoir of Love and Lost Identity, I tell the story of growing up within a culture and a race that was different to my own. Here’s an excerpt:
Established in 1858 and perched on a wide hilly expanse, the school was a dominating U-shaped two-story construction. I don’t know what I was expecting, but the minute I ...
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In writing my recent book, Split at the Root: A Memoir of Love and Lost Identity (Kindle) or Split at the Root: A Memoir of Love and Lost Identity, I tell the story of growing up within a culture and a race that was different to my own. Here’s an excerpt:
I was passing by Vati’s room one afternoon; we still ...
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Here is an excerpt from my memoir Split at the Root: A Memoir of Love and Lost Identity in which I write about having grown up as an exotic child among Whites in Guatemala City.
“On my first day of school, ...
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