Photos
Videos and Podcasts
ESME Solo Moms: Writing Yourself Alive
LymeDisease.org: After the devastation of Lyme disease, a family finds healing
Mother-Daughter Relationships: A Healing Dance
The Trauma of the Supermom – Taking Care of my Chronically Ill Daughter
Featured Articles
Calibasas Style Magazine: A Mother-Daughter Odyssey: Dancing in the Narrows
The Canyon Chronicle: Dancing in the Narrows
Q&A with Anna Penenberg
Q: You could have written your memoir about any period in your life. Why did you choose to center your memoir around your daughter’s illness?
A: This was the most challenging thing I had ever done in my life. I actually wrote to find out what happened to me, it was part of my healing. Early readers asked why I wasn’t in the memoir. That’s when I began to wrestle with my own trauma.
Q: How long did it take you to write it?
A: About seven years.
Q: What is your favorite memoir and why?
A: There are many. I live in them for a while and absorb the experience. Cheryl Stayed’s memoir Wild came at a time when I needed to backpack through someone else’s issues.
Q: Tell us about your writing regimen. Laptop or pen?
A: I started out only writing with pen and paper, but often now I am using my laptop.
Q: Alone in a coffee shop or member of a critique group?
A: I spend time “non-writing” when I am internally creating, then will sit for hours writing. I like to be in nature or at home.
Q: I get the Dancing reference because of your work, but what do the Narrows indicate?
A: The Narrows is a metaphor for constriction and an actual place in Zion National Park.
Q: What was the main thing you learned about yourself supporting your daughter through a chronic illness?
A: That I had more strength and determination than I thought, and had became resilient as we went through trial after trial.
Q: What was Dana up to while you were writing your manuscript?
A: She was in college and home between semesters. One summer she took a writing class and was in the living room writing from her perspective about the same scenes I was editing in the loft above her.
Q: How does Dana feel about the book?
A: She is happy with it and feels it is a good representation of what happened. However, she lived it through her own lens and was surprised about some things she hadn’t known about as the child in the story.
Q: What’s next for Dana?
A: She is a practitioner of “Integrative Energetics” combining craniosacral therapy, reiki and birthwork. DanaPenenberg.com
Q: What’s next for Anna?
A: A book about my experience of fostering independence in adult daughters.
