Mother Talk: Seattle, 1.10.06

The Seattle Mother Talk, like last year's event, was so much fun. Marjorie hosted it again, in her lovely home, and about 30 women came -- some of whom I recognized from when we were there last spring. Marjorie supplied quesadillas, beer, and chips and salsa, and other guests brought cookies and wine and other yummy things. Marjorie also set up a table for donations to a local organization, ChildHaven, and women brought with them baby clothes and toys to donate to the group.

We had four readers: Marjorie, who introduced us all and read a sweet, sweet piece about her son and finding community in coffee shops; Heidi, who read excerpts from her new book; myself, who read my essay from the LM anthology; and Martha, who read her great essay from "It's a Girl." We had a bit of discussion in between each of the readings -- Heidi's excerpts sparked fun conversation about post-baby sex and marriage; after my piece we talked about how as mothers we are often so stoic about pain and can only really discuss pain and difficulty in the context of one-upsmanship or powering through it; and after Martha's we talked about growing up as girls, which led to talk about raising sons and daughters, which eventually led to a great discussion on work and motherhood.

In that sense this Mother Talk was a kind of a blend of other Mother Talks I've done -- it was the gender talk of the recent Mother Talk in Philadelphia, the discussion of maternal judgment that comes up in every city and every Mother Talk, and the work/career subject that was the focus of our November Mother Talk with Miriam. The women in Seattle shared everything from their experience with the way parenting was viewed in their corporate environments (we had several surprisingly inspiring stories, one sadly familiar story) to the ways in which they had created their own work for themselves while they balanced early motherhood (starting a small business employing other primary caregiver moms) to their stories of shifting completely out of the workplace into home life. There were women there who had tiny babies; women whose children were grown and in college; women who worked outside the home, women who worked inside the home, women who did a little of both. The common ground among all the mothers there was, like it is at every Mother Talk, a fundamental interest in discussion -- in talking about these kinds of things with other women, in connecting.

You can view the slideshow here for a visual taste of what the night was like.