Welcome to my online community. Instead of wine or coffee, I’m serving stories—the kind women tell among friends.
They’re drawn from my life and other lives that have inspired me. I’m lucky enough to have spent my career exchanging stories with women. At Chatelaine, where I spent a decade as Editor, I shared my defining moments in a monthly column. Thousands of readers identified. They taught me how much we have in common—and how much we have to learn from one another.
The conversation continues right here. You'll learn about my new memoir, My Mother's Daughter, which Chatelaine readers encouraged me to write. You can read and comment on some of my most popular articles. You can post a story in honour of your own mother-or your daughter. And you can follow my blog, Letters from Rona. Now over to you.
Credits: Photo © Jonathan Sprague; hair, JC Salons
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Rona Maynard is an author, speaker and former Editor of Chatelaine. Everything she knows about the real lives of women, she learned from women like you.
From the book:
I said to my father, "You don't live here anymore. This is my mother's house, not yours. It's time for you to go." My father cursed me. He shook his fist. Then he left and never came back.

One car, two girlfriends, a weekend of memories
If you do not drive and haven't hitchhiked since Jim Morrison was singing "Light My Fire," a trip to Durham, New Hampshire presents a logistical conundrum. When my school held a reunion in Durham, two of us had to ask, "Who will drive me there?" The other person is blind. Me, I'm just phobic. I was briefly, mortifyingly one of those drivers who can't get to the grocery store without "helpful corrective gestures," to borrow Dave Barry's term, from otherwise reasonable folks like you. I may not have the best excuse for breaking into a sweat at the prospect of driving, but I do have the best, wittiest and most altogether delightful chauffeur any vehicularly challenged person could hope for: my friend Anne, the confidante of my mostly bleak adolescence. Because Anne went to school in Dover, she wasn't part of the hometown festivities. But when I got off the airport bus, there she was to greet me. [more]
July 22, 2010
Special early-bird offer! New sessions of my memoir workshop
[more]
June 25, 2010
Memoir that tells your truth: a workshop with Rona Maynard
[more]
May 4, 2010
Making peace with my aging body: my latest story for Best Health
[more]
This is your space for celebrating your mother—or your daughter. If not for her, you’d be a different person. Share a story, post a photo and find out what other women have to say about the women who shaped their lives.
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Laura Grinke Hermonat
My mother left her home in Winnipeg at 18, after passing a qualifying exam, to work for the British consulate in Washington, DC during World War II. A group of her friends...
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Rosemary Murphy
Six Words - How My Mother Taught Me One Last Lesson...
There is nothing earth-shattering about the death of an 87-year-old woman...unless that woman is your mother. Suddenly this woman who had been there...
[More]
Darinka Protich
Yesteray, July 19th, was my mother's birthday. She would have been 88 years old. She died in 1982 and was buried on my 32nd birthday. The day before her funeral...
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I loved reading about your ballet experience. The outfit was frothy indeed and you looked like you were having a blast. It reminded me of days at the Volkov studios in Toronto. Mr. Volkov hit when the posture was not quite right. He walked with a cane and you could... [more]
Written by Milena Protich, August 18, 2010
AUG
18
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