Listen to Your Mother, PVD 2016

As a Providence Listen to Your Mother Show producer, I was honored to write few, but powerful words on our site upon the release of our videos.

The world is in turmoil, and we need unity. We need peace. We need love, connectedness and we need to listen.

But it is more than that. It’s more than the world needs our stories- of triumph and struggle and laughter and novelty gone awry. It is more than men and women and children coming together for one telling of these stories on a night in Spring. It is the raw emotions, and the depth we dig to share them.

We all have a story. We all have a voice. And we are so blessed to have heard these voices in our 2016 Providence Listen to Your Mother Show.

But blessed isn’t the whole story. It takes us hours to write and rehearse. To feel comfortable in a room with 12 other people to practice sharing in front of a few hundred. It takes commitment to our retelling, heart to find our story, and a bit of cray-very (which is my “tword” of crazy + bravery) to stand under hot lights and share.

My Listen to Your Mother story:

This year I felt the need to share something I wrote last year… something funny, which, if you know me, is not my typical genre. But funny I can be, and laughter I received.

My story wasn’t just to be funny, but to empathize.

I taught my brothers the word fuck when they were just 5.

My daughters both correct my use of the word damn.

And Addie has a way of describing wedgies that makes me [almost] pee my pants with laughter every time I recall that morning of, Please help me, my butt is full of underwear, that prompted my piece.

Motherhood is in fact, a point between the middle and the end that sometimes makes one say stuck.

The video:

Listen to Your Mother has been an amazing experience for me over the past 4 years, and though I am sad for this season to have ended, we are already planning 2017.