Hi all. My name is Elizabeth and I recently signed with She Writes Press to publish a memoir called "My Mother's Cross: Cancer, Kink, Sex, and Death," which tells the story of taking care of my mother during her terminal cancer after helping her navigate a late-life sexual awakening as a woman who enjoyed dominating men. After two divorces, the second one in the mid 1980s, she stayed single and celibate (essentially swearing off of men) until the early 2000s when she discovered erotic domination. Shortly after that she got kidney cancer and though things didn't look good for a few months, it turned out that dialysis only emboldened her. She lived an exciting several years enjoying a number of interesting partners until she met the one who would be the love of the end of her life. In 2012 she contracted a terminal cancer. It's those 8 months that I narrate in the memoir, with critical insights into a health care system that often fails to see the person behind the disease, poignant reflections on our unconventional mother-daughter relationship, and a plea that we recognize the need to talk about aging, illness, and sexuality because the quality of our lives - and our deaths - may depend on it. Mary, Virginia, it sounds like there are several of us writing about death, love, family, and caregiving albeit from different perspectives and experiences. I'm glad to find such a sisterhood here and if I'd be glad to offer support or share experiences if that's ever useful.

Hi Mary, Welcome to the group! Your memoir sounds amazing and is much needed. I am also glad you have connected with the National Association of Memoir Writers and have taken advantage of the resources there. I am in Massachusetts. Glad to have another New Englander in the group! Thanks again for joining our group. I look forward to hearing more about your book revisioning process. Please feel free to share your progress with the group. --Phyllis

Hi I just joined the group. My name is Mary Chris Bailey and i divide my time between Florida and Maine. I finished the first draft of a memoir about the impact on my family of my youngest son's chronic illness and death in February. It has been hard to write and the editing and re-writing remains difficult. My goal is to help parents of children with chronic illness feel comfortable with not being a perfect parent and to come a place of forgiveness for this imperfection. I made mistakes along the way and still struggle with self forgiveness. The take home message is we can only do our best and that has to be enough. I took Brooke Warner and Linda Joy Meyer's course Write Your Memoir in Six Months. I was a great place to begin to understand the genre and a good place to spur on your writing.

Welcome, Virginia! I look forward to hearing more about your new memoir projects in the near future!

Hi, Phyllis. My name is Virginia A. Simpson and my friends call me Ginni. My first book, The Space Between: A Memoir of Mother-Daughter Love at the End of Life was published by She Writes Press in April 2016. I'm delighted to share that it has won a number of awards. I'm currently working/avoiding/procrastinating/writing two new memoirs. I look forward to connecting with members and hope we can help each other achieve our goals.