Maryanne O’Hara is the author of the memoir LITTLE MATCHES, FINDING LIGHT IN THE DARK, published by HarperCollins. LITTLE MATCHES was inspired by a blog that Maryanne kept while her daughter Caitlin, who was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis at the age of 2, was waiting for a lung transplant. Caitlin got her transplant, finally, but it was too late. She’d had to wait too long. Her family lost her in December of 2016. She was 33. The book LITTLE MATCHES was Maryanne's way of making sense in order to live.
Maryanne family's story has been featured in The New York Times, TIME Magazine, The Boston Globe, Psychology Today, and LITTLE MATCHES is also a People Magazine Book of the Week.
Moreover, Maryanne is the author of CASCADE, a novel, and many short stories and articles. She holds an MFA in creative writing, has taught creative writing at the college level, and was a longtime fiction editor at the Boston literary journal, PLOUGHSHARES.
After many years of volunteering with the sick, in 2019 she trained as a certified end-of-life doula at the University of Vermont’s Larner College of Medicine so she could better speak to the state of end-of-life care in our culture. She lectures on topics including chronic illness, bereavement, and secular spirituality; and with two other medical memoirists, speaks to “why medicine needs memoir” at Medical Grand Rounds programs at hospitals around the country.
In this episode we speak about motherhood, grief, death, Caitlin's legacy, synchronicities, learn about the work of an end-of-life doula and the importance of legacy work, we speak about Maryanne, the relationship with her husband and of course much more. Thank you Maryanne for everything.
Host: Stella Saliari
At Salt the Podcast my guests and I contest and deconstruct narratives, and passionately recreate with the aim to change systems and perceptions. We want to elevate a generation that is feminist, antiracist and empathetic. Our conversations flow into each other and leave room for the unexpected. Salt is love, community, solidarity, a collective, healing, creating. It is intersectional, full of stories, movement and change. It insists, evolves and transforms. It is a commitment.
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