{"id":244,"date":"2011-03-31T10:26:44","date_gmt":"2011-03-31T17:26:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dianastevan.com\/?p=244"},"modified":"2011-08-13T17:43:07","modified_gmt":"2011-08-14T00:43:07","slug":"universal-themes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dianastevan.com\/uk\/2011\/uncategorized\/universal-themes\/","title":{"rendered":"Universal Themes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>In writing my grandmother’s and mother’s memoir, I am struck by the universal themes that are peppering my pages.\u00a0 Love, death and destruction. Woven through all of this is the need to belong, a universal theme.\u00a0 To belong to a community whether it’s based in a church, mosque or synagogue. Or on a badminton court or in a writers’ group. Or online in Facebook.<\/p>\n

The other need–we all have–is to have a piece of the earth that we can call your own, whether it’s an apartment, a house, or half a boxcar, which is where my grandmother lived with six children during\u00a0World War I.<\/p>\n

My mother was born in 1915, left the Ukraine when she was 14 for Canada in 1929, but it was this church in Kivertsi that she wanted to see most of all when she returned to visit in 1988.\u00a0 The church where her family\u00a0prayed, laughed when her brother got married, and cried when her father died.\u00a0 It was this\u00a0 sense of belonging, this\u00a0sense of community that she carried with her her whole life.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In writing my grandmother’s and mother’s memoir, I am struck by the universal themes that are peppering my pages.\u00a0 Love, death and destruction. Woven through all of this is the… <\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1,4],"tags":[36,35,5],"class_list":["post-244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-writing","tag-memoir","tag-theme","tag-writing-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1LuVB-3W","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":344,"url":"https:\/\/www.dianastevan.com\/uk\/2011\/writing\/ukrainian-easter\/","url_meta":{"origin":244,"position":0},"title":"Ukrainian Easter","author":"Diana Stevan","date":"24 \u041a\u0432\u0456\u0442\u043d\u044f, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"It`s a day of reflection for me, as our family is under the weather and not attending church this year. We`ll have Easter dinner and admire the pysanky (Ukrainian Easter eggs) my grandson and I made.\u00a0 He did one based on a short film he`s almost finished (more on that\u2026","rel":"","context":"\u0423 "Life"","block_context":{"text":"Life","link":"https:\/\/www.dianastevan.com\/uk\/category\/life\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.dianastevan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/P1090314-300x225.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3418,"url":"https:\/\/www.dianastevan.com\/uk\/2017\/writing\/an-extraordinary-book-of-belonging\/","url_meta":{"origin":244,"position":1},"title":"An Extraordinary Book of Belonging","author":"Diana Stevan","date":"7 \u0416\u043e\u0432\u0442\u043d\u044f, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"My husband, Rob, and I recently visited Green Gables on Prince Edward Island. It\u2019s our second time visiting Cavendish, the place that inspired the novelist Lucy Maude Montgomery in the writing of her children\u2019s classic, Anne of Green Gables. The home, Green Gables, is furnished with period furniture of the\u2026","rel":"","context":"\u0423 "Books"","block_context":{"text":"Books","link":"https:\/\/www.dianastevan.com\/uk\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Anne of Green Gables","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.dianastevan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/IMG_1090.jpg?fit=640%2C480&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.dianastevan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/IMG_1090.jpg?fit=640%2C480&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.dianastevan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/IMG_1090.jpg?fit=640%2C480&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":847,"url":"https:\/\/www.dianastevan.com\/uk\/2012\/uncategorized\/a-holocaust-survivors-secret-of-happiness\/","url_meta":{"origin":244,"position":2},"title":"A Holocaust Survivor’s Secret of Happiness","author":"Diana Stevan","date":"9 \u0411\u0435\u0440\u0435\u0437\u043d\u044f, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"I\u00a0 was sent a video by one of my friends, this one from the U.K. online news site, The Guardian.\u00a0 It got me thinking of how much control each one of us has over our own happiness, no matter what life throws us. For the most part, unless our depression\u2026","rel":"","context":"\u0423 "Life"","block_context":{"text":"Life","link":"https:\/\/www.dianastevan.com\/uk\/category\/life\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":301,"url":"https:\/\/www.dianastevan.com\/uk\/2011\/writing\/inspiration\/","url_meta":{"origin":244,"position":3},"title":"Inspiration","author":"Diana Stevan","date":"8 \u041a\u0432\u0456\u0442\u043d\u044f, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Without inspiration, there is no creativity. I have a folder with photos I've taken, ones\u00a0 I think might inspire me to paint.\u00a0 This one, I took awhile ago, reminds me of what I'm working on right now, writing my grandmother's memoir. This feather was dropped by a seagull in our\u2026","rel":"","context":"\u0423 "Writing"","block_context":{"text":"Writing","link":"https:\/\/www.dianastevan.com\/uk\/category\/writing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.dianastevan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/P11207323-300x225.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":700,"url":"https:\/\/www.dianastevan.com\/uk\/2011\/writing\/truth-and-fiction-in-the-writing-of-memoirs\/","url_meta":{"origin":244,"position":4},"title":"Truth and Fiction in the Writing of Memoirs","author":"Diana Stevan","date":"23 \u0412\u0435\u0440\u0435\u0441\u043d\u044f, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"My mother is a born storyteller. When I was young, I paid little attention; but when I became a mother myself, I began to jot down her anecdotes. I am so glad I did, as now when I visit, her memory at 96 isn\u2019t what it used to be. But\u2026","rel":"","context":"\u0423 "Writing"","block_context":{"text":"Writing","link":"https:\/\/www.dianastevan.com\/uk\/category\/writing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.dianastevan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/P1020115-300x225.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":705,"url":"https:\/\/www.dianastevan.com\/uk\/2011\/writing\/writing-about-yearning-in-fiction-and-memoirs\/","url_meta":{"origin":244,"position":5},"title":"Writing About Yearning In Fiction And Memoirs","author":"Diana Stevan","date":"28 \u0412\u0435\u0440\u0435\u0441\u043d\u044f, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Everyone wants a book that keeps them glued to the page. The ones that have me reading past bedtime are stories about family or some kind of skewed relationship or a character that\u2019s hungering for something\u2014whether it\u2019s love or revenge. The writers of these books created characters that are real\u2026","rel":"","context":"\u0423 "Writing"","block_context":{"text":"Writing","link":"https:\/\/www.dianastevan.com\/uk\/category\/writing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.dianastevan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/Dinner-194x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dianastevan.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dianastevan.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dianastevan.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dianastevan.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dianastevan.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dianastevan.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dianastevan.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dianastevan.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dianastevan.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}