The photo is the genesis of A Mother's Prayer.
After my youngest son graduated from high school, I decided to take a sabbatical and study creative writing and cultural studies. I wanted to write about my experiences in the small country of Rwanda, Africa, because I was fascinated by their recovery efforts from genocide. I wanted to spend my time thinking and writing about notions of forgiveness and restorative justice.
One evening, halfway through the program, I was packing up my bag at the end of a class called Telling True Stories, a classmate turned to me and asked, "What are you doing for your thesis?"
"The genocide in Rwanda," I blurted out.
"No you're not," the professor said, listening to our conversation. "You're going to write about your mother."
I had just shared a story of my mother. It was an epistolary—a letter to my children about their grandmother, whom they never met because she passed away many years before they were born. There were some emotional moments in the fifteen-page epistolary. I was channeling my inner James Baldwin, vastly different content, yet poignant reflection at times.
I smirked when the professor suggested writing about my mother. My first instinct was to shrug it off. But over the course of one weekend I decided to ask the professor, Tom Powers, for coffee one day.
"I am not going to write about my mother unless you are my first reader [the main mentor for the thesis]." I said immediately after sitting down.
"Of course." He smiled winsomely.
...
I was blessed to have Tom as a mentor, as well as Barbara Kreiger, Gary Lenhart, and Nancy Welch. Writing does not come easy to me. I have to work hard at it. And it helps immensely when people believe in your work. I tried my best to convey this in my own students. No matter who you are, you need people to believe in you.