Re-release of Book 1: “Whistling Up the Southwind”

I welcome each of you to my new website. I am an author and gerontologist with a specialty in aging with intellectual/developmental disabilities (IDD); a women’s rights activist, and passionate about restoring ancient women’s history.

I have been a critical reader and questioner for as long as I can remember. As a child, I questioned the Roman Catholic Church that I was brought up in until I attended undergraduate school. I also questioned the many books and articles that ignored women and their history, and the teachers who made claims that there was no women’s history because women, with a few exceptions, did not accomplish anything of importance in the past.

I was adopted before I was born by loving parents who encouraged my questions and interests, even if they did not understand them. My father often told me we were French, English, and Irish; an ancestry that turned out to be true for me from my biological parents as well as my real/adopted parents. My questions led me to read everything I could about women’s history, sometimes found in the footnotes of documents or hidden in plain sight.

I searched for my foremothers—my connection to the past and the present. I never expected to find so much or to continue this pursuit for the rest of my life. This journey also led me to find my biological family, DNA links, and to legal documents indicating I had a different legal name for the first year of my life until the adoption was finalized. That discovery was a shock but also an eye-opener because we are often more than one person in a lifetime, as each of us seeks our origins and our past through our ancestry. This discovery is also the reason for combining my two legal names for the pen name I am now using, “Mary Kathleen McKenna”.

My writing and books are about loss, grieving, and women who find connections with other women. It is also about the history of women, their powers, accomplishments, and strengths. I hope you will see yourself and the other women in your life or past in my characters.

I am interested if you have felt disconnected from history and your past because of a lack of information taught in schools, textbooks, or mainstream knowledge?

Do you have the same drive to belong, to connect to those women who have come before you? Is the need there because I was adopted with little information about my biological parents and ancestors? Or is there a commonality among many of us wanting to belong with each other?

Each month, I will ask you critical questions and relate them to my writing. I look forward to learning and hearing from you. Please leave your comments below and take each day for the joy and challenges that are presented to you.

I would also love to connect with you on facebook HERE.

Much love,

Mary Katheen aka Kathie Bishop, Ph.D.