82. Loving and Writing About an Imperfect, Magnificent Child featuring Cathy Shields

Cathy Shields joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the role guilt and grief have played in her experience parenting a unique child, how she has navigated her daughter’s diagnosis of severe cognitive disability, writing about complicated mothers and complicated mothering, protecting children in our work, critical mothers, living in the contradiction, and her memoir The Shape of Normal. 

Also in this episode:

-not giving up

-social anxiety

-forgiving ourselves

Memoirs mentioned in this episode:

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan DIdion 

Educated by Tara Westover

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

Raising a Rare Girl by Heather Lanier

To Siri with Love by Judith Newman

Catherine (Cathy) Shields, M.S. Ed., is a retired early childhood teacher. She writes about parenting, disabilities, and self-discovery. In her debut memoir, The Shape of Normal, Cathy explores the truths and lies parents tell themselves. Her stories and essays have appeared in NBC Today, Newsweek, Bacopa Literary Review, Grown, and Flown, 

Brevity Blog, Write City Magazine, The Manifest-Station, and elsewhere. Cathy lives in Miami, Florida. In her free time, Cathy likes to hike, kayak, and explore the Everglades National Park with her husband, to whom she’s been married forever.

Connect with Cathy: 

Website: https://www.cathyshieldswriter.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cathyshieldswriter

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/cathy-shields-88487711b

X: https://twitter.com/Catshields1

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cathy.p.shields.3

Substack: https://cathyshieldswriter.substack.com/

Get Cathy’s Book: https://www.vineleavespress.com/the-shape-of-normal-by-catherine-shields.html

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Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book.

More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com

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Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography

Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers