Storytelling is one of the most ancient traditions among us. Stories form connections. Whether passed down from generations or an anecdote from the grocery store, stories help break down the barriers between shared human experiences. It’s through their stories that the cast of Listen to Your Mother hopes to bring people together.
“The stories in the show are about humanity. It’s not just about being a mom or having a mom,” says the show’s co-producer Pam Moore. “It’s about how everyone can relate to all these crazy emotions that you’re feeling. Motherhood is the lens we’re looking at this through, but really it’s just amazing stories.”
Listen to Your Mother, playing at the Dairy Center for the Arts on Saturday, May 9, features readings about motherhood from local authors. The LTYM organization was born six years ago in Madison, Wis., when founder Ann Imig assembled community members to share their various experiences. Since then, the show has spread to 39 cities across the country.
Three years ago it came to Boulder with the help of Moore and fellow producer Joelle Wisler. They are both writers and bloggers, and while they both write about other topics, Wisler says, they’ve encountered a plethora of stories emerging from being a mom.
“[Motherhood] gives you a lot of emotions,” she says. “It gives you the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, so it piques your imagination, for sure.”
The show also welcomes non-writers. Moore and Wisler say it’s for anyone who has a story to share, such as Elyana Funk. Last year, Funk attended the show and knew she wanted to get involved. She says she’s not a writer, she just wanted to tell a story other people could relate to. In her piece, “The Chicken Mirror of Motherhood,” she talks about learning from certain mistakes she’s made along the way, including using a certain F-word and hearing it come out of her child’s mouth.
“Here I thought motherhood was going to be about the kids and learning about them and who they were,” Funk says. “And what I didn’t realize was that I would be learning about myself a lot more than I had ever before, and that I would look at myself more than I ever had. And part of that is because I’m reflected in my kids. The good, the bad and the ugly — you see that come out in your kids.”
Participation in the show is not limited to mothers. One of the most popular monologues from a past show was Eddy Jordan’s tribute to his mother, whom he lost to breast cancer. In “My Mother the Protector,” Jordan tells the harrowing tale of her saving him from the tea cups ride at Elitch Gardens as a child and how even in her final days of life, he knew she would always be there for him.
Sharing these stories comes with a certain level of raw emotional truth. Tracy Ross, one of this year’s participants, is reading an excerpt from her memoir, The Source of All Things, about giving birth as a survivor of abuse. Ross says while it’s nervewracking to bare your soul, it’s gratifying to write such personal stories, especially if they’re universal. By sharing the dark parts, Ross says, the stories become more substantial.
“I think if it was all, ‘I’m so happy to be a mommy, and look at this cool new teething ring’ that would be so boring,” Ross says. “These stories are more honest.”
One of these honest stories was shared by Wisler at last year’s production. After her first child, Wisler struggled with painful breastfeeding and postpartum depression. In “When a Mother Needs Mothering,” Wisler talks about suffering “the mother of all panic attacks” on an airplane sitting next to her husband while holding her 14-month-old son. She says she began to unravel and lost sight of herself as a person and as a mother. She then decided she needed a break and, along with her son, went to live with her parents for a few months. In that time period, Wisler says, she slowly found herself again, and she received the space she needed to take on her new role.
“I had struggled with my shifting identity with being a mom,” Wisler says. “And I just needed this steady schedule. I needed my mom, and I needed someone to take care of me. Maybe it was selfish, but it worked and made me a happier person.”
Along with sharing personal stories comes support from the LTYM community. Moore acknowledges Wisler’s strength for telling her story and for putting a face to the very real problems mothers face.
“One of the reasons I really love [Wisler’s] essay is that it makes her vulnerable,” Moore says. “Because she talks in detail about the anxiety. It’s one thing to hear from people, ‘Oh yeah, it’s hard.’ But to be in a room and somebody that you don’t know is baring her soul and saying, ‘This was terrifying and this is exactly what it was like’ is powerful.”
Writing can also help to work out emotions. Ross says writing has provided understanding and insight into her past, and she hopes working through her own stories could prompt others to do the same.
“For me, the writing is my motivation to figure it out. When you put it down on paper, there’s a way that you distance yourself from the things you’re writing about. I can look at myself almost as a character in a story and feel a compassion for myself that I don’t feel otherwise,” she says. “And it’s just trying to answer questions and hoping my answers will shine light on these difficult topics for other people.”
Healing through writing is also an essential practice for Christine Kahane, who will be reading in this year’s production. While working on her recent book, Kahane went on a journey through her and her mother’s past. More than 20 years ago, in the few months before her mother’s passing, Kahane discovered that her mother, a Viennese Jew, had lost her entire family in concentration camps during the Holocaust. Then began Kahane’s mission to piece together her mother’s past. In her essay, “My Mother the Book Thief,” Kahane talks about her own self-discovery by learning about her mother’s shortcomings.
“I gained a huge understanding of how out of sync my expectations were of her ability to love me in the way that I wanted,” Kahane says. “She didn’t get up every morning saying, ‘Hmm, how can I mess this kid up,’ but she got up every morning and met the walls of the prison that she lived in.”
Kahane says she’s still learning from her mother and working on her own issues, including the regret she feels for never having children of her own. But through learning about her mother, she says she better understood the intricacies of being a daughter.
“There’s an innocence between mothers and daughters, and my mom was terrified of it. We didn’t express a lot of between us,” she says. “I’m finding that touchstone, that lineage from grandmother to mother to daughter. There’s something really holy and sacred about that lineage we all carry. It’s in our DNA, and I think that’s what my mother gave me.”
Along with forgiving her mother, Kahane gained acceptance as well — the acceptance many people have to face when they realize they’re becoming their mother.
“In my 20s and 30s, I was living a life of defense,” she says. “We all do this, saying ‘I’m nothing like my mother,’ that I’d never do this or be that. But I was finding in so many ways that I was, and that I had lived out so much of her own heartbreak and fears of diving into life.”
Along with noticing the parallels with your own mother can come understanding. When having her own child, Moore says, she realized how much love her mother must have felt for her when she was born. And now, she says, she finally gets why later in life her mom would wait up for her until she got home safe and sound. Wisler says she also recognized that sometimes painful, but universal, truth that mom is usually right.
“I find myself saying things that she used to say like, ‘If you don’t stop messing with that you’re going to break it and you’re not going to have it anymore,’” Wisler says. “You open your mouth and your mom comes out, and you’re just like, ‘Oh my God, that’s weird!’”
Sharing and listening to these different experiences, Moore says, is a great way to reach out, especially since motherhood can at times be lonely and a little maddening.
“It can be isolating to be a mom,” Moore says. “When you’re at work, you feel like you’re in the world, and when you’re at home you’re in the world in a different way. And your to-do list keeps regenerating itself — change a diaper, change a diaper, change a diaper again. You can’t ever cross something off.”
“And being with irrational people all day can drive you crazy,” Wisler adds. “I mean, toddlers can make you feel like you’re losing your mind. So it’s nice to have some outlets like this show where you can complain about things and celebrate things.”
“And to just be a human outside of being a mom,” Moore finishes.
The women also point out a bond they feel with fellow cast members. Despite only having met a few times, Ross says, she’s found an intimacy with these women through their similar experiences.
“There is nothing more human than procreating. It doesn’t matter where you come from or what your social position is or how much money you make or what your career is. This is what binds everyone together — everyone has a mom or is a mom,” Ross says. “There’s such a huge pool of experiences and perspectives and depths of feeling [in the show] that it’s a great community.”
That community comes in handy when trying to navigate the tricky territory of parenthood and everything that life has to throw at you. In the end, Moore says, she hopes the show helps the audience feel more connected.
“We can all learn from each other and know that we’re not alone,” she says. “That’s what it all comes back to. We’re all in this together.”
ON THE BILL: Listen to Your Mother. 4 p.m and 7 p.m. Saturday, May 9, The Dairy Center for the Arts, 2590 Walnut St., Boulder, 303- 440-7826.
Listen to Your Mother Book Reading with Ann Stewart Zachwieja, Katie Wise, Yoon Park and Eddy Jordan. 7:30 p.m. Thursday, May 7, Boulder Book Store, 1107 Pearl St., Boulder, 303-447- 2074.
