Mother's Day movies

Friday, May 6th Jumping the Broom premiers. It's written by Elizabeth Hunter, who also adapted my novel for the movie Sins of the Mother. The trailer looks great and I've heard good things about it from people who've already seen it. I will be first in line here in Denver, and I hope you too will go out and support this movie!

FYI, Saturday, May 7th at 9 pm EST Lifetime will be showing Sins of the Mother again. (Here's a recent interview I did about the book being made into a movie.)





Happy Mother's Day!

To you, Mom

Monday is the anniversary of the day my mother was born.  Every year around this time I get a little melancholy, but this year is even more emotional. My mom LOVED TV. Loved it, loved it, loved it! She had 2 subscriptions to TV Guide, one for the bedroom TV and one for the living room. She loved to read too. She is the reason I loved to read. So I can't even imagine how thrilled she would be with a television movie based on a book that her daughter wrote.

(This is one of the last pictures we took together. I was about 25 and she was around 41. She was visiting me here in Denver, and we were about to go out on the town. We hit a comedy club, then went to a dance club and heard a band. She flirted from the audience with the lead singer while I whined about wanting to go home. "You can sleep when you get old," she told me. Dig my glasses! And I'm pretty sure those are freckles above my lip, not a stache!)

My mom took me to the club (once telling a bouncer, "I'm her mother, would I lie about her age to get her in a bar?" Answer: yes). Jill Scott's mom took her to the ballet. Jill, who plays the mom in the movie, pays tribute to her own mother.

Speaking of mothers, mommies might like this interview with me about the book and the movie on the Sun Kissed Mommy blog.

Catch me on From Cover to Cover chatting with authors ReShonda Tate Billingsley and Pat Tucker.  On Monday evening I'll be on the Black Authors Network talking with Ella Curry and the Go On Girls Book Club!

For the motherless ones

I started this post with very different intentions, but this is what came out: I want to pay tribute to those of us who are motherless. For all of us who have to mother ourselves. Maybe our mothers have passed away. Maybe they live still but abandoned us. Or maybe they stayed but can't/don’t/won’t give us what we need.

I am a motherless child. I was birthed by a teenage mother who did the best she could, but sometimes it wasn’t good enough. Sometimes even though she was around, I was on my own. In some ways I raised myself (and her too).

Then when I was 28 she died, and I missed her best-that-sometimes-wasn’t-good-enough. I still do.

Whichever is your situation, here’s to all of you who parent yourselves. Who raised yourselves up from child to adult. Who learned how to be from books, movies, tv shows, teachers, pastors, shrinks, the streets, from whoever and whatever would teach you. Who have found others-play mamas, girlfriends, boyfriends, husbands-to give you what you didn’t/couldn't/won’t get from your mother.

I'm lucky. I have a beautiful stepmother, a loving grandmother, a great stepmother-in-law, wonderful girlfriends. I thank them all today. But on this day of mothers I have to say I miss the one I had and the one I wished I'd had.

And I pay tribute to all the motherless ones out there. For us: