It Is Hard To Hold On To

Most Of Us Don't Have Mothers Who Blazed A Trail For Us--at Least, Not All The Way. Coming Of Age Before Or During The Inception Of The Women's Movement, Whether As Working Parents Or Homemakers, Whether Married Or Divorced, Our Mothers Faced Conundrums--what Should They Be? How Should They Act?--that Became Our Uncertainties.

I Have Two Writer Daughters, And A Psychoanalyst Daughter, And A Lawyer Daughter, And They Wish We Didn't Write, I'm Sure, But We Write. If We Were A Painting Family, We Would Paint.

We Have To Recognize That It Is A Very, Very Painful Thing For People To Be Exposed To Their Social Community, To Be Exposed In The World, As Not What They Would Have Wanted To Be Seen As. This Is Very Painful And Difficult For People.

Decay Is Quiet But Ghastly, Explosion Is Dramatic And Dreadful. There's Not Much To Choose Between The Two Of Them In Reality, And Most Of Our Lives Have Sufficient Of Both.

A Person Who Has No Secrets Is A Liar. We Always Fold Ourselves Away From Others Just Enough To Preserve A Secret Or Two, Something That We Cannot Share Without Destroying Our Inner Landscape.