We're Moving!

Friends, the time has come for us to say goodbye to SheWritesandRights.blogspot.com...

Because I have a brand-new blog : BethanySuckrow.com! 

It's been really hard to keep this a secret from you for the last few months while Darrell and I worked on this, but it's finally up and running and ready for you to explore. It's newer and cleaner and much more functional, but it will still be what you've come to expect from me - reflective writing on all things literary, bookish, poetic, and creative. 

So head on over and read my latest post on the concept of "She Writes and Rights."

Of Life, Brief and Beautiful.

First Mother's Day, and I had to choose to stand at the grave of the gone or celebrate the here and now, who we are today and how am I blessed in this moment. So I chose to eat brunch with my mother-in-law and later wander the art institute with my best friend, where we explored beauty, ancient and new and twisted and refined and it was there that I felt all the longings of our mortality. 

This is the story we are asked to tell : of life, brief and beautiful. 

To find it carved in marble, stroked in oil and acrylic, woven in the fabric of our collective creative conscious over centuries, seems the only true comfort, the only way to celebrate our legacy of love and loss. 

[Photos : 1, 2.]

Poem : What the Living Do

Marie Howe is another one of those poets whose words and tone cling to me for days after reading her work. I first discovered her when I found this poem awhile back, but then I heard her interview with Terry Gross last October, driving home to Michigan to visit my mother. It felt divine, purposeful, that I happened to be in the car and listening to my radio right then, because it was exactly what I needed to hear. Reading poetry is one thing, but hearing the author read the poem as it was meant to be read, hearing them talk about where the poem came from, takes you so much deeper into the moment that they're describing. Read this poem, but if you're really wanting to be moved, listen to her interview on Fresh Air. 

What the Living Do
by Marie Howe

Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there. 
And the Drano won't work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up

waiting for the plumber I still haven't called. This is the everyday we spoke of. 
It's winter again: the sky's a deep headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through

the open living room windows because the heat's on too high in here, and I can't turn it off. 
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street the bag breaking,

I've been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those 
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve,

I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it. 
Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.

What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want 
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss -- we want more and more and then more of it.

But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass, 
say, the window of the corner video store, and I'm gripped by a cherishing so deep

for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I'm speechless:

I am living, I remember you.

book·ish : Curtner's Textual Collages.

There are many different ways to create art from words, and writing is only one form. But Richard Curtner takes word art to a new level with as a talented Textual Collage artist in Palm Springs, Calif.

Collages can look messy, but Curtner's pieces are as vivid and emotional as paintings. A particularly bookish one I loved : "Better than Fiction."

~

book·ish/ˈbo͝okiSH/Adjective

1. (of a person or way of life) Devoted to reading and studying rather than worldly interests.

2. (of language or writing) Literary in style or allusion.

3. (of art and all manner of lovely things) devoted to the written word as a form of art and as a way of seeing the world.

4. (of SheWritesandRights.blogspot.com) anything of the aforementioned characteristics as they arefound on the interwebs and reposted by Bethany, because bookish and writerly things always give reason for amusement.

Inspired By.

If I really think about it, I was never blessed with just one mother. I think that when we celebrate Mother’s Day, we’re not just celebrating flesh and blood, but the role that mothers play in our lives - to nurture and guide and encourage us, to create space for us to grow into the people we were meant to be. 

And so, yes, my mother knew me better than any other person on the planet, in a deep and intimate way that could only have happened because I grew out of her very being, an honest to goodness miracle. But this Mother’s Day, I’m learning to see beyond the label of mother and think in terms of the abstract, the larger sense of motherhood, the legacy that spans generations whether you came from her womb or not. 

And so I dedicate this post to my Mother, the one that grew me and birthed me and raised me and knew me for 25 years, and also to the women that will be with me in the years to come, helping me navigate the next 25(+). You know who you are, and I feel more gratitude for each of you than I have words for. 

Happy Mother’s Day, with all my love. These sweet links are for you : 

Give her a name.

Like mother like daughter.

"We pray for sleep, for poop, for patience, for energy, for forgiveness." The real story of motherhood.

Mama for a Moment.

Tina Fey's "A Mother's Prayer for Her Daughter."

Every Mother Matters.

A healthy diet of bread and words.

"For every house you enter, you must offer healing..." A favorite poem for anyone who has ever loved their mother.

[Photo : coming soon to my Etsy shop.]