I thought about co-producing Boulder’s Listen To Your Mother Show for oh, I don’t know, about two seconds before deciding do to it again this year. Listen To Your Mother is a national series of live readings in celebration of Mother’s Day. Each show is directed and produced locally. This year, Boulder joins 31 other cities, making the Listen To Your Mother Show a national story-telling phenomenon. Yes, an honest to goodness phenomenon.

The thing about Listen To Your Mother is, it changes lives. And yes, I have a penchant for exaggeration but I mean it. I completed the application to bring this show to Boulder on a whim last year and in less than a year, I discovered I could direct, produce, and raise funds to successfully create a  live performance, and all the myriad other tasks I needed to figure out as I went along in order to make it happen. And I learned that I loved all of it. Life. Changed.

I roped the lovely and talented Joelle in as my co-producer, and guess what she did? Beside keeping me sane and learning how to do all this crazy stuff along with me, she started her blog. I’m not sure what took her so long, but it soon became apparent that all the cool LTYM kids had a blog. She’s a super-duper writer and it was bordering on criminal to keep all that good stuff to herself. (Yes, I already told you I’m prone to exaggeration, but her writing is really great). Joelle has been published all over the interwebs since she started her blog. What did I tell you? BOOM. Life. Changed.

Oh yeah, and one of the cast members from our 2013 show- At our second rehearsal, she casually mentioned that writing her story was the best, most cathartic, healing thing she’d done around the death of her mother in 45 years. The reason she wrote that story? For the express purpose of auditioning for Listen To Your Mother.

Mark your calendars. Boulder’s Listen To Your Mother Show is on Mother’s Day and we sold out well in advance last year. And if you don’t live in Boulder, don’t worry. Listen To Your Mother is changing lives in 32 cities this year.

Oh and PS- See that picture at the top of the Listen To Your Mother website? That’s Joelle and the back of my head! I always knew I’d be famous someday.