They Listened To Me: My #LTYMShow Experience

This past Friday, I had the honor of performing a piece that I wrote about my relationship with my mother as part of the Listen To Your Mother series. The national performance series gives women of all ages and all stages, an opportunity to share, intimately, about their mothers, about themselves as mothers. The shows, all across the country, are powerful, and the Philly show was no different. 

There were love stories, sad stories, and stories of hope.  The audience was invited into the lives of the incredibly strong, tremendously resilient and brilliant, brilliant, women.  My piece was second to last, and as I sat and listened to the other writers before me, I pushed the thought that, “I don’t belong here” out of my head and accepted that, yes, “I am a part of this.”  

The next day, after leaving everything I had to give behind that podium, baring myself in front of blogger friends, strangers, my cousin, even a co-worker/good friend who came to support me, it felt a bit as if it was all just a dream.

But then, I checked Twitter, and saw this photo that Liz took of me:

And read a message that Dresden wrote me to check out the tweet that she had just retweeted:

And I realized that indeed, it was all a dream. I just happened to be living it.

Many thanks to Ann for the vision that is LTYM, Cecily, Dresden and Jo-Ann for bringing this show to Philly, and to me. And love and admiration for the brave cast that, in less than 2 hours, managed to take me on an emotional ride that left me drained and happy, so happy, and feeling immensely grateful and blessed to be a mother and a woman.