For over two decades, while encouraging and teaching hundreds of people to write "Mother-Memoir" and writing my how-to book, Give the Gift of Story, TellTale Souls' Essential Guide to Tap Memory & Write Memoir in Five Acts, a snippet from a poem by Suzanne Lipsett never ceases to echo through my soul from its nesting place in my heart.  

The following are five stanzas from a 33 stanza poem to her mother that inspired me through the depth of her sensitivity and the lessons of understanding so deftly penned straight from Suzanne Lipsett's heart.  Her words resonate with the often conflicting thoughts and memories we hold when many of us think of our mothers, and, for me,  they puntured my inner-most being to the place where I know Mom resides.

Here are five stanzas from "To Elynore."  The verse in bold font is my heartstring.

"Now, I tell you, there's something to say here.

It's not that I'm happy you died.

It's not that I'm glad

That you left me and Dad.

It's not that I loved the whole ride.

But I learned something from this dark lesson

That showed me why people are strong:

That way down below

Is where love seems to go

And to think that it fades there is wrong.

It's the oldest soft floor of the forest,

The roots of the searchingest tree.

It's the ivory bones;

It's the riverbed's stones.

It's the gift of your being in me.

And the final result of that loving,

That presence of you that I sought,

Is the work that I love

Nearly all things above,

The books that I've rendered from thought.

So I find, after all, I must thank you.

You have been there on that deepest shelf.

You've been one I could use,

You've been my only muse---

And I thought I had done it myself!"

Suzanne Lipsett