Archived Letters

Dear Readers (especially to those of you interested in writing family history),

It has been funny to me as I hear back from people who never knew my mother, comment about what an amazing person she was, to find myself wanting to say, But wait a minute, sometimes she was a loon! Now that she speaks for herself, you will form your own opinion.

I was born when my mother was forty-one. She died when I was forty-four, before I’d grown up enough to respect her as a person. She was just my mom; I loved her; I told her I loved her; I told her how much I enjoyed her history and how glad I was that she wrote it; but now, all of those feelings are ten-fold. Currently at sixty-two, as I’ve re-lived and studied her history, I see her as a person much more clearly. She really was the person she describes in her history. I don’t believe “white-washing” was in her nature. She is honest in her writing and was honest in her life—completely transparent. I wish I would have taken more opportunity to ask questions while she was alive. Normal regrets, I suppose. I think we often don’t appreciate what we have until it is gone.

Mom's unnerving honesty resonates with readers of all types. They get her. And she gets them. Mom not only shares really interesting detail but also phenomenal insights into herself and people in general—their hopes, fears, and strength. She helps people to see that faults are okay, and it is a good thing they are okay, because we all have them. I saw myself very, very often in the stories she wrote. I recognized my thoughts in her thoughts, and realized that all my life she taught me gently by example, and then let me figure it out and discover my own truth, which I find now to be very similar to hers.

I feel honored to have completed this part of Mom’s biography for her. I hope and pray that you will find connections with the people you are blessed to have in your lives and that maybe you will take the opportunity to learn more from them, and perhaps preserve their histories, or your own, to build new connections.

Love from Kim