Cornelia Maude Spelman is the author of the new memoir Solace. Her other books include the memoir Missing. She is also an artist and a former therapist.
Q: What inspired you to write this new memoir?
A: I wanted to share all that I have learned in my two-years-from-80 life about mothering, marriage, friendship, writing, and sobriety, and my realization that deep listening to others’ pain and talking of our own brings about healing.
Q: How would you compare this memoir to your previous memoir, Missing?
A: In my previous memoir, Missing, I sought to understand the pain that my own mother never was able to share, and how I realized that I had inherited that emotional legacy and did not want to pass it on to my own children.
Q: The writer Naomi Shihab Nye said of the book, “I admire deeply what I have always loved about Spelman’s writing- her willingness to tell an honest story, create moods, then gaze thoughtfully into them, weighing what one does next, or figuring out how it all goes together.” What do you think of that description?
A: Naomi’s lovely comment could be a description of all that I have learned from writing a daily diary for over 40 years, because those qualities of honesty, thoughtfulness, and weighing what to do next have become a way of life. I was glad that she named that.
Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book?
A: I want readers to be able to say, “Oh! I, too, have felt that way!” and be comforted by our connection as human beings and especially as women.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I continue to write my daily diary (in Clairefontaine notebooks which have such nice paper for my fountain pen) every morning with a cup of tea, and am putting together a collection of essays tentatively titled Here in My Somewhere.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Diary writing is my listening friend, my counselor, my lamp, my solace.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Cornelia Maude Spelman.
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