A Mother’s World: Journeys of the Heart edited by award-winning author Marybeth Bond and radio personality Pamela Michael, celebrates true stories of “mother love” just in time for Mother’s Day.
A Mother’s World illuminates what it means to be a mother on the road, dispelling the notion that motherhood and travel are incompatible. When a woman becomes a mother she assumes (joyfully or begrudgingly, or both) a bundle of responsibility, duty, and delight that is universally understood by other mothers, one that offers immediate and fruitful ground for sharing. In fact, establishing motherhood “credentials” is often the most meaningful connection a woman will have with others she meets on the road.
These “journeys of the heart” examine a rich panoply of human experience, often exploring terrain not usually covered in travel literature-
- a joint decision made in Italy to conceive or not conceive;
- camping alone with a one-year-old on the rugged Northern California coast;
- realizing an aging mother’s mortality while trying to navigate a Cairo marketplace;
- questioning oneself while cradling a dying child at Mother Teresa’s orphanage in Calcutta.
Dealing with the pain of leaving a child behind while traveling for business or the hassles of taking a toddler along to a New York Museum also find their voice in these tales. And finally, mothers speak of the pain of letting go, separation, the empty nest and “the last good-bye.”
The combined voices in A Mother’s World remind us that traveling-like motherhood-is not always easy, but certain to be an endlessly fascinating and challenging experience!
About the Authors:
Marybeth Bond and Pamela Michael have almost a century of combined experience-covering a wide range of global travel, mothering, and writing. Marybeth, an “older” mother, had her first child at age 36. Pamela, a “younger” mother, married at 18 and was divorced and raising a child alone at 21. Today Pamela is a grandmother. Both authors work two jobs-Marybeth to feather her nest, and Pamela to finance frequent flights from her empty nest.
Marybeth Bond traveled solo around the world for two years at age 30. She has trekked the Himalayas, the Andes and the Alps; she has ridden camels across the Thar and Sahara Deserts and elephants through the jungles of Asia. Today she is married to a fellow traveler she met in Katmandu, has two children, two mortgages, a dog and dozens of rose bushes. She lives in Northern California where she writes, is a consultant, and keynote speaker. Marybeth’s first book,Travelers’ Tales: A Woman’s World, won the Lowell Thomas Gold Award for Best Travel Book of the year from the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation. Her other books include Gutsy Women and Gutsy Mamas, which were featured on the Today Show. She has appeared extensively on network television (CBS, ABC, NBC) and cable television (CNN, CNBC) as well as National Public Radio.
Pamela Michael is a freelance writer, radio producer, and curriculum development specialist who began travel writing just a few years ago. Her first-ever travel story, “The Khan Men of Agra” was published in Travelers’ Tales: A Woman’s World. Since then, her travel pieces have appeared in the San Francisco Examiner, Odyssey magazine, Maiden Voyages, and other publications. She is the author of The Whole World Is Watching: An International Inquiry into Media Involvement in Education. Currently, Pamela is the director of The River of Words Project, an international children’s environmental poetry and art contest, which she co-founded with U.S. Poet Laureate (1995-1997) Robert Haas. She is the editor of the upcoming Travelers’ Tales Rivers. Her story “Apron Strings” about traveling with her diabetic son in Mexico, openedA Mother’s World: Journeys of the Heart
A Mother’s World: Journeys of the Heart
Edited by Marybeth Bond and Pamela Michael
$14.95, 233 pages
ISBN: 1-885211-26-0
Publication Date: May 1998