Hi, I'm Lale Arakoglu, and welcome to women who travel.

Mother's Day is coming up, which means this week I'm joined by journalist and author Connie Wang

to talk about her new book of essays centered around travels with her mother, Ching.

Thank you. new book of essays centered around travels with her mother, Ching. And later, we asked for listener dispatches about daughter and mother trips.

We're sharing some that reflect how travel can be bonding, healing, life-changing, allow for reflection,

and sometimes just be plain good fun.

We were getting ready to go to the airport. She did not want to leave.

There's a different kind of closeness when you do activities together.

When you stay overnight together in a farmhouse, in a small town in Japan.

Mama, your people are so happy.

Here's my adult daughter reaching back for me to give me comfort and guidance,

very much like I used to do for her when she was a little girl.

It was a beautiful moment.

First, though, here's Connie on her book, Oh My Mother.

Oh, My Mother is a direct translation of a Chinese phrase, well, the Maya.

And you say it when you want to say something like, oh god it's sort of like an expletive it's something

you say when i describe in the book as when you're on the cusp of losing it or putting it all

together not to equate my mother with god although she might get a kick out of that i'm sure her

ears have pricked up somewhere right now i I know she's like, what's that?

Yeah, but I mean, travel is just a series, a long, long series of oh my God moments, right?

Or oh my mother moments, it is just, oh, my mother through, like, just like moments of ecstasy or just like moments of just total despair.

The book is centered around Connie and Ching's travels throughout America and Europe.

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