Slipper Camp – Grandmothers and Grandkids

I recently posted the piece below on Facebook. I was amazed at the response. Hundreds commented. Dozens shared my post. Until then I thought I was the only one whose life changed when my first grandchild was born. Now I know it’s not so. The bond between grandmas and grandkids goes deep. It’s a life-changer.

So, for the first time, I’m creating a Slipper Camp about that bond. Slipper Camp Grandmas and Grandkids starts October 15th/Ends November 2nd.

In this online writing course we will be writing about our relationships with our grandmothers and/or grandkids. Like the photo above, the child is deep within the heart of the grandmother, the grandmother deep within the heart of her grandchild.

This is for grandmas who are close to their grandkids and those who aren’t. For grandkids who are close to their grandmas and those who’ve lost them. It’s for those who want to write about that bond – the good, the bad, the ordinary.

Slipper Camp will be the same format as always: 10 writers will receive 3 illustrated prompts about grandmothers and grandkids every OTHER morning for 20 days along with daily writing tips and coaching suggestions. If you join you will send me 1,000 words by midnight every other day.

Starts October 15th/Ends November 2nd.
Limit: 10 writers
Please PM me for cost and more info.
Payment will secure your spot.

Thank you.

The piece that led to this Slipper Camp:

“I never had a grandmother or grandfather (Auschwitz) and I honestly never knew what I was missing. Then I became a grandmother ten years ago, when Jazz was born in a bathtub in Bali, delivered into the hands of legendary midwife Ibu Robin Lim.

The candlelit bathtub was filled with frangipani flowers. The room was open to the sky. My son and daughter-in-love were in each other’s arms as Jazz was about to be born.

The midwife asked us to chant prayers. Marcelle’s mother chanted in Hebrew. I chanted in Sanskrit. She asked Evan to say a few words to his daughter as she came into this world, the last words she would remember whenever she left this world.

It had been a long, difficult night. An agonizing labor. Many times I’d worried that this was a crazy plan. That they should have gone to the hospital. That Marcelle or the baby might die.

They were in a brand new house. It had no hot water. And they were having a water birth. “Get huge pots,” my son had instructed the day before. Throughout the long night we’d carried dozens of potfuls of hot water from the stove in the kitchen to the bathtub at the other end of the house. It felt nuts.

Then, in that candlelit bathroom, as Jazz was emerging and we were praying and my son was murmuring to his soon-to-be-born baby, I looked over at an empty corner and I saw them. My ancestors were there. Huddled together, holding hands, women, men, children with golden hair. They, like me, were entranced by this birth. “Here she comes,” they exulted. “Here comes another one!” My ancestors, lost in the Holocaust, lost to me always, were there. I began to sob.

Through my tears I saw Jazz emerge and my ancestors fade. She was cradled in her parents’ arms, then in the midwife’s and then she was handed to me.

In that moment I was changed on a cellular level. My life of lack, of generations lost to the Holocaust, the tragic past of my family – it all changed.

My granddaughter, my golden-haired Jazz, had just brought me the future.”