Reflections from a Mother's Heart A Legacy for Your Children (Sleeper 54's Re-Write, Write-Off)
Written: Apr 16 '03 (Updated Apr 16 '03)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Wonderful gift to your family, beautiful book, encourages memories.
Cons: Requires lots of memory work, some may object to religious questions.
The Bottom Line: This is a wonderfully beautiful book for women to write about their lives and reveal themselves to their family.
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| kamel622's Full Review: Reflections from a Mother's Heart |
In going through some of my older reviews, in order to participate in Sleeper54’s re-write write-off I was sad to see that a review that I had done in June 2000 had only received very few hits. I feel I did not do Reflections from a Mother’s Heart justice in the review that I wrote and thought I would give it another try. This book is A Family Legacy for Your Children and the cover says that it is a way to tell Your Life Story in Your Own Words.
The original has been deleted so that I could post what I think is a more complete review of this great book.
The Book
The cover of this book is a beautiful padded type of cover with flowers surrounding what looks to be pages tied up with raffia. It has a beautifully feminine look to it and would make a wonderful Mother’s Day gift to present to any mother. The nice thing about giving her this gift is that you will receive the gift of her life when she has it filled in.
The pages are thick and all of them are decorated with pink, dusty rose and maroon flowers. The question pages have borders with flowers surrounding the lines to fill in, so that what you write is easily visible but behind the lines is also a very faint look of flowers. This is a wonderful touch as it gives each page its own unique style and the page has a warm feminine feel to it.
Each page of poetry has a pale orange banner with the month written in and the poem is surrounded by flowers with a basket or vase full of dusty rose colored flowers in it. These pages are very pretty and eye appealing and include such lovely messages as:
Rings and jewels
are not gifts,
but apologies for gifts.
The only gift
Is a portion of thyself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The final pages of the book is four pages for notes and four pages to add photos. These pages could add interest to anyone looking at this book years from now, finding additional personal thoughts and perhaps even a picture or two.
The Book’s Layout
This is not a book that one would sit down and read, but rather a book that requires reaching back into your memory and writing about your life.
When my daughter (chalathra) gave me this book for Easter…many, many years ago (1997 I think) she requested that I try and fill it out month by month and finish up by the next Easter. Well, that sounded reasonable, that is until I started really looking at the questions and realized how many things I’ve forgotten.
This book is divided into 14 sections:
Introduction – tells a little about the book and how to use it.
Personal Portrait – is only one page but has space to fill out your name, date of birth, your parents names and dates of birth etc. There is also a section to fill in many of your favorite things such as flowers, foods, sport etc.
The next 12 sections are the months of the year. For each month there is a specific theme. January is about New Beginnings, February about first loves and dates, June about weddings etc.
Within the months are specific questions to be answered. January starts off with What was your favorite pastime as a child? Did you prefer doing it alone or with someone else?
Other questions are such things as:
Share a memory of your grandparents or an older person you loved.
When did you first start to pray? What do you remember about your early prayers?
What crazy fads do you remember in grade school?
Share a family tradition or memory from the Fourth of July.
What would you do differently in life if you could?
Describe the Christmas that has been the most meaningful to you.
Each month starts out with a poem and has approximately 12-14 pages with a question on each page followed by about 20 lines to fill in your answers.
The final question on page 201 is What advice about life do you want others to remember? My goodness, what a tough question that is . This book has a lot of difficult questions to answer, but passing it on to your children with the pages filled in would make such a wonderful remembrance for generations to come.
Nuts & Bolts
Reflections from a Mother’s Heart© 1995 was published by Word Publishing, Inc. by J. Countryman and edited by Terri Gibbs.
Other books by this author include A Father’s Legacy, The Pastor’s Journal, God’s Promises For Your Every Need, God’s Promises For Singles
This is a great book for any mother who wants to let her children see who she really is and what has been important to her in her life. It would make a great gift for a baby shower, allowing a new mother to start early giving the gift of herself to her family.
Although epinions does not list a price for this book, it can be purchased at Amazon.com for $10.39 new. They also list a used price (?) but I don’t believe that this book should be purchased used unless there is nothing written on any of the pages. After all, who wants to read about someone else’s mothers life? They list used books starting at $2.72 at Amazon.
ISBN: 0849952158
I've rewritten this review as part of Sleeper54's re-write, write-off. Thank you so much Tom for giving me the opportunity to challenge myself to improve.
For other reviews in this write-off please go to:
http://www.angelfire.com/jazz/sleeper54/rewrite/writers.html
The following are those who have joined in, I hope you'll read them too:
dustygold
leveleth
deenaf
msmarques
rianleeann
jilpie
kamel622
lyagushka
DoubleCoog
Moppysl
holli105
Arthur.Rubin
popsrocks
patricknjacob
drdevience
AliventiAsylum
stockholder
LoisLane05
dramastef
lorendiac
jankp
sweetpeach
twunschl
lisaffire
thegeniusx
sleeper54 (the host)
Recommended:
Yes
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