Martha Manning, Ph.D.

Published in The Memoirist

·4 days ago

A Wild Ride on the Rollercoaster of Divorce and Death

When your heart breaks, it’s hard to recall that grief is part of living — On Monday, the 26th of September, at 3:15 in the afternoon, I will surrender a significant part of my identity. I will move from being a married woman of 43 years to a divorced woman totally lacking in experience. In one moment, a judge I’ve never laid eyes on, will…

Memoir

8 min read

A Wild Ride on the Rollercoaster of Divorce and Death

Published in CRY Magazine

·Sep 21

My Mother Named Me to Protest the Patriarchy

A little girl’s subversive reinterpretation of the gospels — I grew up in a faithful Catholic family in New York. Every Sunday, my parents, 2 brothers, and 4 sisters (Catholic birth control) dressed in our very best and walked to Mass at Cure of Ars Church. Our stomachs grumbled as we bore the fast before Communion. My parents were…

Life Lessons

3 min read

My Mother Named Me to Protest the Patriarchy

Sep 21

When You Give More Than You Get

How to Handle Uneven Friendships — Every relationship has its peaks and valleys. Times when one person steps up and contributes more to nurturing and growing the connection than the other. But there are many times when the unevenness can feel chronically one-sided, and you can wonder, “What am I getting in this friendship?” Is it…

Relationships

4 min read

Published in The Haven

·Sep 14

A Cranky Old Lady’s Guide to Daily Annoyances: A“Citizen’s Arrest”

Don’t Get into Fights with Offenders. Put Them on Your Own Personal Probation List — A citizen’s arrest is made by a private citizen, instead of the police. Usually it is allowed in situations where harm to another person is imminent and the onlooker can restrain him. While this intervention is attractive to me in the many situations in which I am chronically pissed off…

Humor

4 min read

A Cranky Old Lady’s Guide to Daily Annoyances: A“Citizen’s Arrest”

Published in The Narrative Collective

·Sep 13

Grief in the Beginning

You Never Know the Depths ’til You’re In It — Sometimes there’s a sorrow. It starts out familiar. There is a stillness that allows you to name and feel what is sad. You’ve got this. But then it bleeds into grief, which has its own territory. It has sharp, jagged edges. It makes your eyes sting from weeping, sometimes so…

Memoir

3 min read

Published in The Narrative Collective

·Sep 7

My Mother at Her Last Breath

To Be With the Woman Who Gave Me My First — Last night we encircled her bed, my sisters and I. One stood stoic and stiff, another bent over with words in my mother’s ear Another rubbing her legs, Unable to speak, so we made the noise. We told our silly stories. We thanked her. We took turns crying as if…

Memoir

2 min read

Aug 31

Having a Depressed Friend is Hard

Depression is So Complicated and It’s Hard to Know How to Help Depression is a tough thing to share with someone, especially if you really want to help them. It is a“whole body, mind and person” condition that can interfere with every aspect of a person’s life. We all know…

Advice

4 min read

Aug 31

We Aren’t Grey, We’re Silver

Sexism and Ageism Combine to Make Us Feel We’re “On the Way Out” — I caught the end of the news a few nights ago. The story focused on the firing of a long-standing financial reporter, presumably because she refused to color her hair any more and let it grow out grey. Grey scares us I believe it. We have an aversion to grey. Especially with women…

Women

3 min read

Published in The Narrative Collective

·Aug 30

I Never Knew the Vulnerability in Writing Until I Wrote a Memoir

The process of writing changed me and my story: A memoir of my memoirs — Just putting words on a piece of paper has an element of a high wire act for me. The same questions haunt me. Does it make any sense? Is it interesting enough? Do I have the words? Will anyone read this crap? Memoirs are harder than we think But that’s nothing compared to writing a memoir…

Memoir

6 min read

Published in Unfaithful: Perspectives on the Third-Party Relationship

·Aug 30

Infidelity is Grand Larceny!

Keep Your Hands Off What Isn’t Yours! — What infidelity steals To be on the other side of infidelity has to be one of the most painful events in your life. It compounds so many different kinds of agony, that it feels like you’ve been hit with a number of weapons simultaneously. Sex is the least of it. The experience of…

Infidelity

7 min read