Inside my skin there is this place
Two friends hanging out~thinkingPink
Mother and daughter~For Jeanne Marie
From Michelle Marie, my talented, creative friend, a very precious gift. Thank you…
What are “the ties that bind,”
what forms the substance of the
invisible umbilical cord that flows
between a mother and daughter?
What joins us together even when we’re apart?
Why does my daughter’s heartache bruise my heart,
why do I feel her pain, how do
I know before she even tells me?
Jeanne Marie
Baby girl, flowers, photos and quote by Jeanne Marie~
Wings
My poor butterflies…
Their tiny backs contorted
Under the weight of your secrets
You thought whispering
To the wind was a solution
But you forget the winds messengers
They pluck each secret from your lips
Absorb the words you utter
Their colours dim according to
The weight of your words
Bright yellows, sky blues
Turn to ash and storm clouds
Write your secrets down
Burn the evidence,
The butterflies can only handle so much.
Find your safe place…and go there in your mind when things are rough…
The Gift
Happy Mother’s Day Mom…
Women Who Think Too Much by Jeanne Marie
She picked up the book
and placed it back on the shelf
when she saw the price.
But…then she thought of her daughter
to send her this treasure, would be a delight.
She lovingly touched the glossy roses
she’d wanted this kind of book for ages.
She pictured her daughter’s garden, then
she paid the price and mailed the pages.
As she weeded her own, she softly smiled
imagining the distant flowers in full-bloom
and she thought of her daughter all the while.
Little did she see that the greatest gift
she’d sent was the bloom of her love
carried on the petals of a book
delivered by the sliver of a mid-summer’s moon.
To give her child what she herself desired
seemed to be the mother’s greatest pleasure.
God made this woman quite special
and then He doubled it twice over
beyond her daughter’s measure.
by Jeanne Marie
Mothers and Daughters
Mother’s Day. “Do You Remember When You Used To Call Me Grace?”
Women Who Think Too Much by Jeanne Marie
The scent of fresh coffee lured me from my bed. As I filled my birthday mug, (“I’ve got it all, a career, a family and a headache!”) the coffee’s aroma triggered a flood of memories. I closed my eyes and I was standing in front of my father’s wood stove, offering my small shivering body up to its’ warmth, as I watched the percolator pop coffee into the glass knob on the top of the pot. The ancient farmhouse kitchen smelled of yesterday’s baked bread and stale tobacco, the morning’s burning wood and fresh coffee.
I didn’t want to open my eyes because I knew that the reality of last night’s supper dishes and my dog’s wet pee papers would rush up to greet my eyes. It felt comfortable to feel eight years old, to revisit my childhood, if just for a few moments.
I could see my mom as…
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Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. I Am She
Women Who Think Too Much by Jeanne Marie
I AM SHE
There was a time when my mother was middle-aged and me?
I was young and naive, not a care in the world; the arrogance of youth was on my side,
I was a footloose hippie girl and I thought love was free.
Her skin was firm and tanned, black waves of hair fell to her shoulders,
softly surrounding her fair face, bosom quite generous,
legs as fine as any model, she was my mother,
but with flower child simplicity, I used to call her Grace.
She was spirited back then, although she seemed quite old to me,
and how did I become imprisoned while she has learned to fly–a butterfly set free?
Tonight, as I glance into the mirror, my middle-aged face stares back.
Have I become her, and she, the child I used to be?
At seventy-three she’s still a beauty, but time’s fire has burned…
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Daughter, Mother and Grandmother…
From the newsletter, Women who Think Too Much, 2000
DAUGHTER, MOTHER AND GRANDMOTHER. ALL WROTE ABOUT AGING, WITHOUT DISCUSSING IT WITH EACH OTHER.
A COINCIDENCE OR THE TWILIGHT ZONE?

THINGS I LEARNED THE HARD WAY
1. Johnson’s Stretch Mark Cream doesn’t really prevent or remove the one million stretch marks motherhood is bound to deliver, although it does keep each and every stretch mark incredibly soft!
2. When the man in your young life tells you that you’re much too pretty to wear make up, he’s really saying, “Go scrub your face or someone may actually take a second look at you!”
3. Never call your mother for a ride home, from the 24 hour Wal-Mart, because you locked your keys in the car. Not unless you want a lecture about shopping alone after midnight!
4. Don’t call your mother when she’s writing in Computerville; she won’t even remember the phone call!
5. If your mother is a writer, choose your words very carefully, because if she’s like my mother, she’ll hear a story in every syllable!
6. Never tell her she’s too old to have a life!
LOVE YA MOM, JODIE

TIME
An old woman
Sits by herself
Staring at her past
Arranged on a shelf.
Time is money
Or so they say
Time stands still
Then slips away.
A baby is born
His first sound
An angry cry,
A rose in bloom
is ready to die.
Time waits for no one
Then just marches on,
It goes by too fast
Then it takes too long.
by Jeanne Marie

THOUGHTS ON GROWING OLDER
With a smile on my face I meet the dawn
Tomorrow’s not here and yesterday’s gone.
I have just today to live my life
So I’ll try my best to keep out strife.
I’ll count my blessings, one at a time
And the first, and the best, is that
today is mine.
My youth has gone into the night
And old age is no longer a fright,
I face the mirror with eyes away
And don’t see the wrinkles or the hair
that’s gone gray.
I only see the life within
Greeting this old face with a grin,
I say “Old girl, you’ve tried your best,
so relax, and let God handle the rest.”
by Grace (my Mom)
Unconquered Guilt by Jodie Lynne (1994)

UNCONQUERED GUILT
She wearily stumbles on past
Blinded as survival fogs her path.
Her broken soul aching to reach
Beyond this endless haze,
Desperate to free
What she can no longer see.
Burning with pain
Her aimless arms reaching,
Pulling together strength enough
For one last try.
Fear takes over, for at last
She has felt beyond her gaze,
Fallen into a piece of past.
Even as a small hand clings to her own
Ever so quickly fear becomes shame
As the soft little hand slips from her hold,
Letting smoke turn to roaring flame, and
Still, the shadowed room remains so cold.
As her worn body falls
With unexpected relief
She gives in to the memory
Lies down with the unconquered grief.
One last tear streaks her face
As a terrible blackness drags
Her broken soul to another time,
Another place. A woman-child,
An abusive man, three years dead
Who lives on in nightmares,
That dance through their heads
A little boy, his crying face,
Another time, another place.
Jodie Lynne, 1994
A Thousand Voices by Jodie Lynne (2008)
Women Who Think Too Much by Jeanne Marie
A Thousand Voices
by Jodie Lynne
I-am-alone, yet a thousand voices surround me,
ricocheting off the sounding board that is my mind.
I take a deep breath only to feel the weight of time
as if the world rests upon my shoulders.
Tall dark fences build the walls that close me in
as the sound of freedom, close enough to touch,
is really a million miles away,
a soft breeze flows through my very core, like a crisp winter wind.
I taste his kiss on my mouth, as my head hits
the hardness of a rubber pillow, just as I do when I rise.
Places and spaces blend together in the chaos of this insanity
that I alone have caused.
Pressure builds, yearning to combust amongst the ashes of my yester years.
Their faces stop the explosion, their eyes filled with the pain
I have inflicted, still, they plead for…
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Mother’s Day. Thank You For The Mother’s Day Gift
I wrote this in 2007…
Women Who Think Too Much by Jeanne Marie
When you were in the first grade you pressed your tiny hands into finger paint. I still have your red handprints on the faded yellow construction paper. Your teacher helped you to paste your picture beneath the handprints and you gave me the gift for Mother’s Day. The gift hung on my wall for so many years and then I tucked it away in your box.
There are mementos of each year we’ve been together in your box. Your pink cotton prairie dress which was your hippy mom’s idea of suitable attire for a christening, the crafts you made me at summer camp, the yarn rugs, the pot holders, the blue pottery teddy bear that Nana helped you make for me, the Christmas ornament with the picture of you that you hate (you were in that awkward stage) and just about every card, note and gift you’ve ever given me…
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Jodie Lynne
Women Who Think Too Much by Jeanne Marie
You can’t keep a fairy angel
on the ground
You can imprison her
Take away her ability to fly
Hold her down, for a while.
But as soon as the light hits her face
She will shake herself free.
She will fly
She will laugh
She will love
She will leave her addictions in the dust
Cause you can’t keep a fairy angel on the ground.
by Jeanne Marie
Middle Child (Jodie Lynne)

Middle child, where do you fit in?
You fought for my attention
but did you ever win?
You surely have it now
although painfully gained.
You capture me with crisis
then, I shake loose again.
Middle child, I know you well,
you speak to me of your dreams
your fears and your babies lost.
People judge you harshly
but once you lived beneath
my heartbeat…
so, together we pay the cost.
I can’t catch you when you fall
but I’ll bandage up your knees
just like when you were five
and asphalt tore through your jeans.
“Don’t run,” I’d holler out the door
as off to play you’d tear.
You never heeded my warnings
took on the world without a fear.
Twenty-two this month and still…
my warnings fly into the wind
blowing every which way
following you aimlessly around.
Perhaps you’d stop to listen
if you knew that my heart bleeds
each time your knees hit the ground.
My daughter, my middle child
I loved you when you didn’t know
when my hands were full with others
or when my feelings didn’t show.
We’ve had our ups and downs
but I’ll never let you go.
Middle child, where do you fit in?
My quintessence has a
special niche for you
tucked beneath my ribs
right where you’ve always been.
by Jeanne Marie, 1997
breath of heaven~breathe down on me
photo & flowers by jeanne marie/art my michellemarie

breath of heaven~breathe on me
as I struggle to respire
I am still waiting
to feel renewed
breath of heaven~breathe on me
Mothers and Daughters
Women Who Think Too Much by Jeanne Marie
A Few Disorderly Thoughts From A Daughter Who Became A Mother
What are “the ties that bind,” what forms the substance of the invisible umbilical cord that flows between a mother and daughter? What joins us together even when we’re apart? Why does my daughter’s heartache bruise my heart, why do I feel her pain, how do I know before she even tells me?
A mother loves her son, but she knows from the day he’s born that he’ll only let her nurture him, hug and kiss him, until he starts to become a man. His first day of school, he tells her, “Don’t walk me up to the door Mom, I don’t want the kids to see me with my mother, they’ll laugh at me.” And this is kindergarten! She walks home in tears; he has begun to cut the cord. It hurts, but she realizes that he only…
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Happy Mother’s Day!
Hello Lovely~You make life beauitful
Angels surround you today
Yes they do!
In the flower garden of life
This little light of mine
Awesome!
When I grow up~I’m going to be as big as this flower
jeannemarie/michellemarie
When I grow up~I’m going to be big as this flower and sprinkle happiness on everyone!
Oh Hello~I’m waiting on the Fairies
So beautiful…
jeannemarie/michellemarie
Oh Hello~I’m waiting on the Fairies~Have you seen them? I heard they hang out here1



















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