Author shares mothers’ stories in JFS series
In the mid 1990s, native Milwaukeean Linda Blachman faced two life-altering challenges. Around the same time that she suffered a serious back injury that left her severely disabled for three years, her mother died.
And Blachman, a personal historian, public health consultant, counselor, and mother herself, realized then that the most heartbreaking part of her mother’s death was there were so many questions she hadn’t asked about her mother’s life.
It was also at that time that Blachman “started thinking about mothers going through much more serious things than I was going through” and “how meaningful it would be, how healing it is for the person if they were asked to tell their story.”
That was when Blachman, who now lives in Berkeley, Calif., said she discovered the power of “stories and the healing power of life review.”
Blachman is author “Voices of Truth and Hope from Mothers with Cancer” (Seal Press/Avalon, paperback, $15.95), a “tapestry” of personal histories collected over 10 years from 70 mothers who are have been diagnosed with cancer.
Blachman will talk about her book during the first of three presentations in the “Healing Power” lecture series by Jewish Family Services’ Pathways to Healing program. The lecture, titled “The Healing Power of Story, Listening, and Legacy,” will be held at Gilda’s Club, 4050 N. Oakland Ave. in Shorewood, on Tuesday, June 6, from 6-8 p.m.
The stories from the Blachman’s book came from “Mother’s Living Story Project,” of which Blachman is founder and director, a non-profit project that helps mothers living with cancer record their life stories and legacies for their children.
Blachman said she had a particular interest in the topic because there is history of cancer in her own family and because “cancer is the disease that people fear most. I wanted to do this work with people who were feeling that others couldn’t listen to them.”
In addition, “there is so much fear around death,” Blachman said, as well as “a kind of silence around the darker aspects of motherhood…. People get so emotional they find it difficult to help and listen” and, as a result, these ill mothers become silent and invisible.
Blachman said though it may seem like it would be, her work “doesn’t feel depressing. Depression is a greyness [but] these women were alive and vital … the most extraordinarily alive people I ever met. There is something very life-giving about being with people who are at the life-edge of existence.”
Blachman added that the book is a form of bikkur cholim, she said, referring to the mitzvah of visiting the sick.
The other two lectures in the series are:
• “The Healing Power of Laughter,” with therapist Diane Kane — June 20.
• “The Healing Power of Positive Thinking,” with Michael Luber, Psy.D., program coordinator of the Pathways to Healing program — July 18.
All of the lectures are free and open to the public. For more information, call Luber, 414-225-1385, or email mluber@jfsmilw.org.
Pathways to Healing is a joint venture between JFS and the Jewish Outreach Institute. The program supports individuals through illness or crisis by addressing issues of the mind, body, and spirit, while drawing from the Jewish tradition.
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