Local author celebrates her amazing mom

Mother’s day is a time when we celebrate the mothers in our lives. The Chicken Soup for the Soul book My Amazing Mom compiles 101 stories about mothers and what they do for their families. Yorkton’s own Brenda Leppington is one of the writers featured in the compilation, with the story A Special Place in Heaven, about her late mother.

The story has Leppington reflect on all the things her mother gave up to raise children, first her mother’s siblings, then kids of her own. The story was written originally to celebrate her mother’s birthday.

“When she was 95, she said, ‘when I look back on life I have absolutely no regrets, I wouldn’t change a thing,’ and I thought that’s pretty cool, to look back on life and think that. Then she would say, ‘but you’re probably sitting there thinking, oh big deal, good for you, but I would have rather had another mother I just didn’t get a choice.’ So that’s why I thought I would write the story for her for her 95th birthday, read it to her and reassure her that she was a good mother.”

Writing began when Leppington started to think about all of the things her mother mentioned she would have liked to do, but couldn’t because she was raising children. 

“We knew what she gave up just to be the perfect mother.”

Unfortunately, Leppington wasn’t able to read the story to her mother. At her mother’s birthday party, Leppington did not think it was the right time to read it, because her mother would have had difficulty hearing it, so she planned to read it to her later in a quieter setting. Unfortunately, her mother died three weeks later. That inspired her to submit it to the publisher, as she wanted more people to know how great her mother was.

“She never got a chance to read it, but I would like other people to read it, and know who she was.”

Leppington has had two stories published in Chicken Soup for the Soul books in the past, both about the adventures of her unique cats. Leppington is still writing stories and submitting them for publication, and she enjoys the challenge of boiling down observations of the world into 1200 words.

“That I find fun, how can you tell a whole story and communicate everything in 1200 words?”

This story was a different challenge, however, because the original audience was just one woman. 

“It meant more to me to have that published... I think she would have been pretty happy.”