Margaret Slifer

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Death Was All Around Us

May 10, 2024
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Life Stories, Personal Writings, Writings

-written 3/9/24 to 5/10/24 Coming up with titles for blog pieces is a significant part of my writing process. Especially when my thoughts run deeper on an expression, I feel the title needs to somehow encapsulate the essence of my thoughts. Tonight, I’ve been listening to Band of Brothers episodes for the first time in a long while, while doing some other work and musing in the back of my mind on this piece. In one of the interspersed interviews...

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By eileenslifer
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How I Fell in Love With My Mother

May 14, 2023
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Family Outlines and Assorted Collectibles, Life Stories, Personal Writings, Writings

It took me nearly sixty years, but I think I finally have fallen in love with my mother. I will never be as much in love with my mother as I was with my father, but I had an unusual breakthrough. What woman isn’t ‘in love’ with their mother? It’s why they shop together and bake together, and share women stories and woman jokes. It’s why they fix each other’s hair and eat chocolates together and put on nail polish...

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By eileenslifer
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Various Thoughts About Generational Blessing and Cursing

May 9, 2023
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Family Outlines and Assorted Collectibles, Life Stories, Personal Writings, Writings

I’ve been thinking on these things for quite awhile. Those who have been in various Christian settings have likely heard references to a number of scriptures that indicate that both spiritual blessing (legacy) and spiritual cursing (legacy) can flow through families in a variety of ways. It feels daunting in my mind to lay out too many different scriptures (let alone connect them to family specifics) that one should seek to better understand regarding these things, so I will try...

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By eileenslifer
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I Wish I Had Never Conceived You

July 13, 2022
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Illustrated Short Stories, Life Stories, My Poetry, Personal Writings, Women's, Family, and Recovery Issues, Writings, Writings on Violence in its Various Forms

I was standing in my mother’s kitchen, in my childhood home. I was in the same kitchen where my father had stood over the sink six years earlier on a Friday evening in early May, arguing with my mother, while having a heart attack. I was trying to get past my mother and out the back door, and she stood on the step or two between the kitchen and the back door landing. She was holding the wrought-iron railing and...

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By eileenslifer
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Carter Was Particularly “Violent” Toward Me

July 13, 2022
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Family Outlines and Assorted Collectibles, Life Stories, Personal Writings, Women's, Family, and Recovery Issues, Writings, Writings on Violence in its Various Forms

Eventually I will be writing and elaborating more on the contents of my mother’s 1945/1946 diary. I took some of her diaries with me on my getaway to Buckhannon in case I wanted to study them more closely. On Sunday evening, after taking a drive out to the old Weston Hospital (now the Trans-Alleghany Lunatic Asylum) and taking some photos and going in parts of the first floor, I came back to the hotel and began reading through her writings....

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By eileenslifer
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Post-Humous RX for Best Meds to ‘Fix My Mother’

July 13, 2022
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Family Outlines and Assorted Collectibles, Life Stories, Personal Writings, Women's, Family, and Recovery Issues, Writings

Preface:(This piece was written August 11, 2016 – I found this in my “Writings” files I brought on my getaway to Buckhannon, WVA this weekend. I was re-reading it and decided I wanted to add it to my blog. I recall being in the earlier stages of meeting with a therapist in Alabama and sharing as much as I could about my own upbringing as context to the situation I had found myself in and how it was affecting me...

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By eileenslifer
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My Mother Was Also Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

July 13, 2022
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Family Outlines and Assorted Collectibles, Life Stories, Personal Writings, Women's, Family, and Recovery Issues, Writings

Parts of Psalm 139, NIV: “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb… for I am fearfully and wonderfully made… My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them…” This is a pictorial companion piece...

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By eileenslifer
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Life Stories: My First Photography Gig

June 23, 2022
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Life Stories, Personal Writings, Writings

It is hard for me to tell the entirety of my story in any particular sequence or simple way. I suppose sometimes things kind of speak for themselves, and I can give a summary overview of what I recall of this event and these albums. Summary: According to the date on one of the photos in the albums my mother put together at the end of April 1979 (within two weeks of my father’s death on May 10, 1979) for...

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By eileenslifer
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Eileen Slifer

I am a visual artist who works in a variety of mediums - producing fine art, illustration and design commissions/products for clients. I have been creating since childhood and sharing my giftings for hire since 1989. I also love to write and have been expressing in this way for a number of years in private poems, stories and journals that have been shared with treasured friends or publicly. Thank you for visiting my blog. I value the time and interest you spend on my expressions, and I read every comment.

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