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As Joan G. Mitchell was nearing her 70th birthday, her daughter, Tereska E. James, gifted her something special: Mitchell’s life story.
“I wanted to do something personal,” says the author, a Delaware native and graduate of The Tatnall School and the University of Delaware. “So I posted something different about her life on social media for 70 days.”
Now, James has converted that 2022 series of social media sketches into a biography of her mother, now 72, called “Celebrating Life Is My Religion: Joan’s Journey Through Abuse, Grief, Joy, and Survival.”

“I want people to understand who my mother is at her core and what it’s taken for her to come from a shy, insecure girl to a woman fully living in her truth unapologetically,” explains James, an advertising executive in Boston. Although she and her mother were always close, she conducted additional personal research “through a series of interviews, texts, and phone calls,” she says. “My mother was very honest with me, and I learned things about her that she had never revealed to anyone before.”
One exceptionally poignant part of the book tells about the sudden death of James’ sister in 2015 from melanoma, which inspired her to become an advocate for melanoma awareness for people of color. James hints that another book might be in the making. “Some [readers] want me to write a follow-up. They say there is now more to tell.”
Find it on Amazon.
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