Sponsored by KSL Radio and Deseret Book

Date of Interview: October 12, 2008

Host: Doug Wright

Welcome to the program. It’s great to have you along on “Everyday Lives, Everyday Values.” I have a beautiful new book from Deseret Book called The Mother In Me: Real World Reflections on Growing Into Motherhood, and we’re delighted to have the editor of this book, Kathryn Lynard Soper, with us. And there is a foreward by Beverly Campbell, who has been a guest often on this show as well. Kathryn, what a pleasure to have you join us on Everyday Lives, Everyday Values. Thanks for being here.

KS: Thank you. It’s an honor to be here.

DW: I was just talking with you about the legacy of the book; how long you’ve been working on it; how long it’s been in the process; this has been at least a two year project for you.

KS: That’s right. We began a little over two years ago. It took a year to have the contributing authors put together their essays and their poetry, and we went through the revision process, polishing up the writing and then compiling the manuscript. And it took another year once Deseret Book acquired the manuscript for it to finally be published. So we’re thrilled to actually have it here.

DW: It must be fun and quite rewarding after you put so much of yourself – and so many other people have put so much of themselves into this – to actually see it, ready to go. And so nicely done.

KS: Yes, it’s a little bit like having a baby, as a matter of fact.

(Laughter)

DW: You know, I was just reading a little bit about you, and maybe I could share this from the book: mother of seven children, teenage to toddler – you’re a busy woman.

KS: Yes.

DW: Editor in chief of, and I hope I’m pronouncing this right, Segullah.

KS: You can say it several ways. It is a Hebrew word for “peculiar treasure.”

DW: Oh, I see. I was going to ask you the definition of that. I was wondering if it had something to do with seagulls or something but there’s not the “a” in there to make it operative. But writings by Latter-day Saint women and there’s a website, too, that we’ll talk about. And the editor of Gifts: Mothers Reflect on How Children with Down Syndrome Enrich Their Lives. This was published by Woodbine House in 2007?

KS: That’s correct.

DW: And then also a memoir, The Year My Son and I Were Born will be released by another press in March of 2009. You have been extremely busy.

KS: I have been. Maybe a little bit too busy, but it’s all bearing such wonderful fruit that’s really exciting to see.

DW: Let’s talk a little bit about Mothers Reflect on How Children with Down Syndrome Enrich Their Lives. Let’s talk about your personal experience there.

KS: Sure. My son, Thomas, is about to turn three years old. He was born in October 2005, my seventh child and he was diagnosed with Down Syndrome shortly after birth, and it was a trying year for me, especially the first few months. Thomas was born 10 months – 10 weeks premature, not 10 months.

(Laughter)

DW: That’s an early kid.

KS: That would be – that would be something. He was born 10 weeks early and was in the hospital for six weeks, came home with fragile health, and so it was a very difficult time for me and for the family adjusting to his diagnosis and also to his medical issues. Later on that year, once things began to settle down a bit, I realized that there was a need for a book that contained experiences shared – not by experts as in professionals, doctors, therapists – but by the parents themselves.

DW: Real folks.

KS: That’s right. That was what I wanted to know most when Thomas was born is, what will this be like? And so, I gathered together a group of 63 mothers of children with down syndrome and they each wrote a chapter for the book.

DW: Wow. Wow.

KS: And it’s just been a marvelous experience. We’ve been distributing copies to genetic counselors, and to obstetricians and gynecologists, hoping to spread the word that the life of a child with down syndrome is something to celebrate.

DW: Right. How is Thomas doing now?

KS: He’s doing great. He’s just about to start preschool. He learned to walk a few months ago and he’s been staggering around the house like Frankenstein. He’s a delightful little boy.

DW: The Year My Son and I Were Born – does this also have something to do with Thomas?

KS: Yes. This is my own story about my first year with Thomas and the process I went through of accepting his diagnosis. The book is about expressing the emotional and spiritual transformation that I experienced over the course of that year.

DW: Was it hard to write? Was it hard to be that open and kind of invite the world into your family?

KS: I’m a little nervous about it now that the book is about to go to press.

DW: Because it’s not out until next year.

KS: That’s right. It will be out March 3^rd of 2009, and the thought of it being there in black and white for anyone in the world who cares to read it is a little bit unsettling because it is a very intimate and personal story. But, I believe that the benefits of such a story are commensurate with the risks of telling it and that the nervousness that I might feel at having such a personal story being made public is outweighed by my hope of the good that the story might do.

DW: Right. What about the rest of your family? You’ve got kids and your husband and everything else. How do they feel about the projects?

KS: Well, they are especially happy if my projects don’t unduly interfere with what they need from me. So that’s a balancing act. That’s a day-by-day thing. But they’re very supportive; they’re excited for me; my two daughters have been coming with me to my book signing events for The Mother In Me and I hope to do the same when my memoir comes out. They wish they could come with me on my speaking engagements – that’s when I travel to Down Syndrome conferences – but so far that hasn’t been a possibility. But they are excited to see the benefits, the fruits, of these things that I spend so much time on.

DW: Sure.

KS: It can be difficult for them when I’m in the middle of a big project but then they see the outcome and they’re excited.

DW: It is wonderful when someone has extraordinary opportunities and blessings and challenges and whatever, when you can help others by sharing it.

KS: Exactly.

DW: It really, really makes a difference. I want to focus on this book now, The Mother in Me: Real World Reflections on Growing into Motherhood. This isn’t just your good old average, hey let’s help you be a Mom book.

KS: No, it’s not. It’s not a book about raising children, per se. It’s a book about the growing experiences that women have alongside their children. It’s about women, moms, writing to other moms about the ups and downs of raising young children. It’s an extraordinary book, and I can say that because I didn’t write it myself. It’s an extraordinary book in many ways. In fact, last week when Elder Uchtdorf gave his address to the general Relief Society, he spoke about creativity and compassion as two things that are very important to women, for them to develop. And those two things really capture the essence of what this book is about. It is about creativity, inasmuch as it’s a book of creative writing; it’s a book about the creative process of raising children, and also about the creative process of becoming a mother. Because we find when we begin to have children that we need to reinvent ourselves, so to speak, and learn how to become a mother. So the creativity featured in the book, there’s multi-facets to that.

DW: You mentioned a word in the introduction a little while back that caught my attention because I am a lover of poetry and I am a believer that it is becoming a lost art.

KS: It is, sadly.

DW: Kind of like the short story. And I couldn’t help but pick up on that word and as I have perused the book I’ve seen some of the poetry in here. “Ultrasound,” for example, by Emily Milner and some others. How much poetry is actually in the book?

KS: There’s over a dozen poems in the book and this is one of the amazing things about the book. It’s not often that you get to have poetry in a mainstream publication such as this, and we’re very proud of the poetry. It’s one of the book’s greatest strengths and it’s receiving a very, very warm response from our readers. We have a couple of star poets including Darlene Young who won a prize for the Best Poem of the Year last year, and she, along with others, have written some truly beautiful poems that are poignant without being sentimental and are artistic while remaining accessible to general readers.

DW: Yeah. The one I enjoyed by Darlene was “Big Brother.” This is on page 281 of the book, and there’s also one and I hope I’m pronouncing this right, Johnna Benson Cornett?

KS: It’s Johnna.

DW: Johnna. Okay, here I’m trying to be exotic here, but I’ve never had the opportunity of meeting her. But “Origami Birds,” that’s an interesting one, too. I just love poetry and I’m so glad it’s included here. I want to find out how this incredible mix came together, how all of these talents came together, and basically how you brought this book about. We’ll talk about that, and maybe you can tell us some of – I hate to use the word “favorites” – but maybe some features of the book that immediately pop to mind.

KS: Sure.

(Commercial break – return to interview)

DW: The Mother In Me is the title of the book that we’re exploring right now, Real World Reflections on Growing into Motherhood. There is a forward by Beverly Campbell, and Beverly’s been on this program before and I’ve always enjoyed our conversations so it was great to read her forward. And the editor is here in the studio with us right now – Kathryn Soper. Kathryn, how in the world did you bring this collection of talent together? How did that work?

KS: Well, it worked beautifully.

(Laughter)

DW: Obviously.

KS: Almost miraculously. All of the contributors to this anthology – we know each other, because we work together on the staff of a literary journal called Segullah which you mentioned in the first segment, and that’s a publication that was founded in the Spring of 2005 as a way of creating an outlet for LDS women writers and also a way to foster connections between LDS women and promote greater faith and understanding between LDS women. And what happened was when our debut issue came out, the only criticism we received was: there’s a lot in here about mothering young children. And, don’t you have anything else to talk about?

And we realized that since so many of us on the staff were in that particular season of life, that we had a lot to say on this topic, that we were passionate about it and we wanted an opportunity to be able to explore the many facets of motherhood, and we didn’t want to take up every journal issue of Segullah with the same kinds of stories. So, we decided to pursue a book instead. We hadn’t seen any book on the market that was similar to what we intended to do. We wanted it to be very candid, a realistic portrayal of what life with young children is like, but ultimately uplifting and positive.

DW: Sure. When you came up with the idea, did everyone just scurry off and write something original and new and fresh? Or did they pull things out of the archives?

KS: Well, it’s been a mixture. There were a few pieces that were published in the early issues of Segullah that we included in the book because at the time our readership was quite small and we knew most people picking up the book wouldn’t have already read those pieces. We also had a great deal of new material written specifically for the book where we got together and talked about what topics we might each want to write about.

DW: Okay.

KS: And I’ve made some specific requests of some authors. But for the most part, I just asked them to write whatever they wanted to write.

DW: Yeah. There’s always a danger in that because some people will kind of overlap.

KS: That’s right.

DW: So I’m sure as editor there must have been some coordination on that.

KS: Yes. Yes. There’s a lot of behind-the-scenes work. It’s not just a matter of receiving a pile of essays in your inbox and passing them along to the publisher. It’s a lot of work to put an anthology together but very rewarding.

DW: I can’t imagine shuffling this deck when you get this kind of talent together and these gifts all flowing in and you do end up with a stack of things you intend to include, and then how do you sort it out? And how do you decide, as I mentioned, to shuffle it and make sure that there’s a flow and a good mix?

KS: Well, I received a range of submissions starting with a woman experiencing her first pregnancy that became the first story in the book. And I arranged the stories roughly chronologically after that. So we moved from a pregnancy to experiences with infants, toddlers and preschoolers, and the final essay in the book is about sending a child to kindergarten. So that was the framework that I used to order the stories, and within that framework, of course, you try to arrange them so that one leads nicely into the other, kind of segues into the other.

DW: One thing that is a natural question to that since this does take us from a Point A to Point B which is kindergarten, there is much that follows. Will there be a Part 2?

KS: Yes.

DW: Well, good!

KS: Yes, in fact, I’ve been working on it this week. It’s about half-way done. The sequel volume will focus on mothering children in grades 1-12. So it will take us all the way through the school years. And I have just been stunned by the beautiful writing that I’ve received for this book. It’s going to be a marvelous sequel to The Mother In Me.

DW: Oh. That is exciting. And I look forward then to sometime in the future to talk a little bit about that. Because when you talk about the seasons of life in life in a woman’s life and the relationship with the children. Boy, the seasons of the family. Dee and I are a little farther down the road now to the point where all of our kids are now in their early 20’s and oh, my goodness, everytime you think you’ve seen it all (laughter). And you’re always a parent. I don’t care how old they are, you’re always a parent.

When you were putting this together, and again I always hate to use the word “favorite,” so what I’ll use here is, as you just quickly reflect on the book, are there any that immediately pop to mind or that were particularly poignant to you that you would like readers to be aware of?

KS: Yes. There’s – well, every single essay in the book has something marvelous about it. Some that stand out are those that address topics that we don’t often hear a lot about. We have an essay about miscarriage written by Melissa Young. We have an essay about stillbirth written by Megan Davies. We have two essays about infertility written by Heather Oman and Courtney Kendrick. These are topics that are part of the season of motherhood that we don’t often hear a lot about.

There are also essays in the book about a mother who has a chronic illness and she’s struggling with her inability to be the kind of mother she once envisioned to she might be. There’s also an essay written by a mother who started with two cherubic baby boys and one grew up to have behavior issues and one with health issues. So she’s struggling again with the clash between expectation and reality. So those stories are especially meaningful because they address challenges that women really need to feel supported in. There are other stories in the book that are about the everyday experiences that most women have as mothers of young children and several of those essays stand out simply because they express so poignantly the internal struggle that women go through when they are reinventing themselves. As I mentioned earlier, there is a story called “Angel Mother” by Angela Schultz and Angie was a woman who went to work and supported her family and her husband stayed home to nurture their baby until the Spirit prompted them very strongly that there needed to be a role reversal. So she returned to the home and didn’t know how to go about this motherhood business. She was especially discouraged because at the time she was growing into activity in the church and she was reading about Joseph Fielding Smith’s mother and his great praise of her, calling her his “angel mother.” And she felt this tremendous guilt that she was not an angel mother, and might not ever be.

DW: (laughter).

KS: And so there are other stories that run along similar lines. We have the ideal; we hear about the ideal all the time and it’s important to hear about the ideal so that we know what to shoot for. But then there is the reality of ourselves as human beings and our children as human beings, and there’s a gap between the ideal and the real that women can become very discouraged trying to navigate if they are the only ones who struggle with it sometimes.

DW: I was so touched by the fact that you address some of the more difficult things. And this one hits our family – stillbirth. Boy, I’ll tell you, knowing first of all how to cope with it, and also I noticed that since that was an experience that Dee and I had, how people relate to you. And oh, boy, I have a list of what not to say.

KS: I’ll bet.

DW: And I have some high praise for some very, very kind individuals. And I’m really impressed that you would include some of the tough stuff here because sometimes, you know, you go oh, this is going to be the ideal, and you feel guilty, and it’s nice that you got into some of those tougher issues that many of us have had to deal with.

KS: Absolutely. And I think one of the most valuable things about the book is that it doesn’t wallow in the difficulty, but it doesn’t gloss over it, either. It goes deep inside all the aspects of motherhood – both the joys and the difficulties and sorrows – and shows the deep significance in all of those different aspects of motherhood.

DW: I can’t believe this time has gone by so, so quickly. I hope that we have at least whetted the appetite of people to pick up this beautiful book, The Mother In Me: Real World Reflections on Growing Into Motherhood and edited by Kathryn Soper.

Just a final thought from you. What do you, more than anything else, hope that people get from this book? Or enjoy in this book?

KS: I want mothers to feel that they are in good company. I want them to feel encouraged and inspired in their work as mothers. I want them to come away from the book with a greater sense of confidence and joy in what they do. And I want everyone – any reader – to realize just how challenging this season of life can be but also how significant and meaningful it is.

DW: What a joy to chat with you and to become more familiar not only with you as its editor and of course, as an author but also I’m looking forward to really digging into this book. And I’m already looking forward to the next one.

KS: I am as well!

DW: Go home and go to work on that, will you?

KS: I’ll do that! Thank you.

DW: Kathryn, nice to get to know you.

KS: Thank you.

DW: Thank you for sharing your talents and this special book with us. Again, it’s The Mother In Me published by Deseret Book here on “Everyday Lives, Everyday Values.”