Lauren Muscarella

Lauren started the blog Mama Quest in May 2010 to share stories of her journey through loss after losing her mother in 2006 at age 20. The blog also serves as an outlet to pass on the wisdom she received from her mother, who died of breast cancer at 52. After an overwhelmingly positive response to the blog, she launched Trauma to Art, a movement to support and facilitate creative expression from those who have experienced loss. Now Lauren works to build the Trauma to Art community while writing a book of creative arts therapy activities for confronting grief as well as preserving the memory of lost loved ones. In her spare time, Lauren enjoys volunteering, traveling, wine tasting, and learning to speak French.

Articles:

Illumination quote card by Laurel D. Rund

A Message for Mother’s Day: After Mother Has Died

Yesterday I received a text message saying, “I’m sorry I couldn’t call you back. I had a rough night.” I wasn’t keeping track and couldn’t readily remember what I’d called to say in the first place, so I asked if she was O.K. She responded telling me that a young friend had received a cancer diagnosis and the prognosis wasn’t good. She’d been up all night thinking about life and mortality. She closed her message with, “Life is short. I’m sure you learned that after your mom died.” People say things like that all the time, and it never bothers […]

‘Isn’t Mom Done Being Dead Yet?’

“Two wrongs don’t make a right.” That’s what my mom always said. I’d holler back, “Well, one right and one wrong don’t make a right either, MMMommm.” Whenever she said that, I had no idea what she was talking about. I took it as a sign of weakness like she was advocating I be a doormat. I was sensitive to the idea that woman are nurturing pushovers, only. We’re constantly bombarded with the idea that women are people pleasers. We see articles saying women use the word “just” more than men, and that we apologize when someone bumps into us, […]

What is Mother’s Day after Mother is Gone?

What is Mother’s Day? A day to honor mothers. To me, it’s also the day that American University hosts its graduation. May 13, 2007, I sullenly watched David Gregory give a very witty speech about something I’m fairly certain was inspirational. My mother died the year before and I wasn’t in the mood for Mother’s Day brunch, or graduating with most of my family absent. I was frantically trying to control everything and attain some semblance of normalcy. Of course, that made everything go wrong. My hair was ruined. The brunch I made was ruined. The restaurant I picked for […]

Book Review: Change Your Brain, Change Your Body

And here we are, the third installment of the series. While exploring unconventional books to read when grieving, I realized that the landscape is endless. With addiction and creativity covered, the behemoth issue of health is certainly top of mind. I dove into this third book, Change Your Brain, Chain Your Body, by Dr. Daniel G. Amen, feeling admittedly cocky. I read another one of his books, The Brain in Love, and felt comfortable that I understood the brain and its impact on my life. I also remembered fairing quite well in the assessment regarding my emotional intelligence. But like […]

New Book Says Greatest Work Can Come From Darkest Moments

“There will always be something quite miraculous about the imagination,” writes Jonah Lehrer in his latest book Imagine: How Creativity Works. This is my second recommendation in a four-part series exploring unconventional books to read when coping with grief. With Lehrer, we are moved to inspiration. Like in Unwasted: My Lush Sobriety by Sacha Z. Scoblic, my last recommendation, Lehrer shows us that creating imaginative, artistic work cannot only help others who are inspired by its magnitude but also our own imaginative dreams. Art can lift us out of the darkness by its revelatory nature and help us find a […]

Alcohol is a Trap for Grievers

Books about grief are not my favorite. I don’t find comfort in reading the details of someone else’s depression or hard time when I’m in the same, dark place. More conventional grief books tend to either lecture that their way is the one and only way to cope or guide us through a dreary depression without the triumphantly hopeful ending we all envision for ourselves. The only exception seems to be if that hard time is loosely related and recounted with the intent to entertain and inform. With that in mind, every week this month I will present an unconventional […]

Three Grief Lessons from ‘Incredibly Loud and Extremely Close’

When I saw Stephen Daltry’s “Incredibly Loud and Extremely Close,” I cried three times. The first time, it was the mere idea of a boy losing his father who he loved so much at age 9. The second time, I temporarily morphed into the character and adopted his struggle to understand life’s cruel injustices like 9/11 and the fractured families left behind. The protagonist’s approachability embodied a question we all encounter, “What now?” The third time, the tears were happy. I was overcome by the collective selflessness on screen. The film, adapted from the best-selling book, which was nominated for […]

Can I Believe My Mother is in Heaven?

I love going to psychics. I’m not sure if it’s my impetuous nature to know what is to come, the comforting assertions like “Great fortune is headed your way” or its mother-memory connection. I became loosely associated with the magic of clairvoyance at age 5. I waited in the reception area while my mother traveled through past lives and peered into her future. These days I’m allowed to partake in the mysticism myself. Turning the corner on six years of motherlessness, I strolled through the beaded door of a Hyannis psychic on a lazy Saturday afternoon. Once inside the inconspicuous […]

Grieving Mother-Loss Different for Everyone

“You’re not angry you didn’t spend that time with your mother?” a friend asked me over dinner last night. About six months before my mom died, it was obvious the end was near. In a practical sense, I prepared for my mother’s death. I canceled my study abroad semester in Italy. I acted more responsible in my day-to-day life. In other ways, I didn’t. My mother and I spoke rarely in those last six months. And I only planned a few trips back home. The last thing she ever said to me was, “This isn’t the last time we’ll see […]

After Mother-Loss, Daughter Struggles with Guilt about Father

“I told him he had to get out. It would have been selfish of me to let him stay there,” my friend Claire said about her youngest son, A.J. Claire lost her husband almost a decade ago, after which her 26-year-old son moved home. A.J. promised his father he would take care of his mother, but Claire did not feel that included cohabitation. Her word choice stunned me. As the child of a widowed parent, I sometimes forget the hierarchical positioning of my own family patriarch. I spent a considerable amount of time feeling guilty about being in Washington, D.C. […]

Open to Hope is an online community offering inspirational stories of loss, hope and recovery. We believe hope is the bridge between loss and recovery.