Ellen Blum Barish

Views from the Home Office Window: on Motherhood, Family and Life Ellen Blum Barish

From Kirkus Discoveries:
A working mother offers insight on parenting and living a rich life. For much of her life as a mother, Barish has worked from home as a writer, crafting columns about parenting based on her own experience as well as conversations with other mothers. This slim volume gathers a selection of those pieces written over more than ten years of being a parent to two daughters. In each piece, the author addresses an aspect of motherhood and family life, ranging from whether she should rein in a daughter who lives for the competitive edge to tackling her older daughter¹s questions about sex. She also covers the needs of others: reconnecting with herself through yoga, claiming time and space for her work as a writer and taking the occasional getaway vacation without the kids. Through these short reflections, the reader follows the author¹s daughters as they grow up and as Barish herself grows as a woman and mother. She describes how just as a parent is feeling comfortable and confident about how to relate to the current stage in a child¹s life, she is already growing into a new phase a cycle that continues even after a daughter leaves for college. Throughout the book, Barish discusses her evolving relationships with her daughters, as what they need from their mother changes over the years. In a later essay, the author revisits the ³mission statement² for motherhood she wrote when the girls were young and reflects on how it has stood the test of time. As a collection of newspaper columns, this is more a series of brief conversations with a mother who¹s been there and who has sought out the experiences of other mothers, than an in-depth examination of Quick doses of wisdom and solidarity for women at all stages of motherhood.
Copyright 2007 Kirkus Discoveries

In this collection of insightful essays, columnist Ellen Blum Barish takes readers on an intimate journey of discovery as she comes to understand herself in relation to her children, marriage, work, friendships and the world. Written over a decade of her life from three home office window views, these columns chronicle her life as a working mother who wraps her career around the pace of her children's lives as both compete for her attention. These lyrical pieces are rich with self-disclosing anecdotes, universal themes and illuminating moments. Barish's ruminations remind us that once a woman becomes a mother, her perspective on life changes, and this can shed light on who she is and what matters most.