Up Close: Barbara Curtis

This LoCo mother of 12 discusses motherhood, writing and going from California hippie to conservative Christian

By Rachael Dickson (Contact)

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Barbara Curtis, 60, is used to having her hands full. She has 12 children between the ages of 8 and 38, and 11 grandchildren. In addition, she's a professional writer who's published nine books and 800 articles, a Montessori-trained teacher and an avid blogger for her site, Mommy Life, which has something close to 3,000 entries archived. Her writings about parenting, adoption, Down syndrome (a condition four of her sons have), politics and her past as a "radical feminist hippie" pull in 4,000 hits to her site a day. She also writes a biweekly column called "Family Matters" for the Purcellville Gazette.

Curtis and her husband Tripp, 53, are in the midst of a move from Waterford, where their house was foreclosed on, to a rental home in Bluemont.

Q: How did you come to live in Loudoun County?

A: We settled in Loudoun in 2002 … I think Virginia was really ingrained in me because my high school years were spent growing up here. I moved to California in 1972 as a radical hippie. And I lived in California for 30 years. Northern California is physically very beautiful, but I really missed the family traditional spirit because by then I had changed and begun to appreciate that more than I did when I was younger.

Q: How and why did you start writing/blogging?

A: I was 46 years old when I started on a career path to professional writing … I was homeschooling my kids. We were having babies every year and a half, and people were asking, "Well, how can you handle having all these kids and toddlers and homeschooling all these different levels?" I realized that there were things that I knew as a Montessori teacher that were very helpful to me as a mom, and I wanted to share those with other mothers. I started having workshops where I lived, and then I decided I wanted to write a book about it. I went to a Christian writer's conference and that's where I learned how to be a professional writer.

I've written nine books and 800 articles … It's like writing is my default now. If I could, I'd write all the time. I love it.

Q: What do you find most rewarding about writing the blog?

A: I started my blog because I'd already published four or five books at the time and hundreds of articles. I'd gotten over seeing my name in print. What I wanted was a more immediate way to connect with my readers … What I wanted - I had opinions - I had things I wanted to say. I'm a communicator. I wanted to be able to communicate, and I didn't want a gatekeeper.

Q: Can you tell us about the books you have written and what you enjoy about writing?

A: They're mostly books about using Montessori techniques to help your child become a better learner … The most recent ones are called "Mommy Teach Me" and "Mommy Teach Me to Read."

Photo: Rachael Dickson

Mommy Life blogger Barbara Curtis poses with photos of her 12 children -- Samantha Sunshine, 38; Jasmine Moondance, 33; Josh, 24; Matt, 22; Ben, 21; Zach, 20; Sophia, 18; Jonny, 16; Maddy, 15; Jesse, 13; Daniel, 12; and Justin, 8 -- which line the top of a piano in her home in Waterford.

I do have another book about teens called "Dirty Dancing at the Prom and Other Challenges Christian Teens Face Now." It's based on interviews I did with kids across the country about the things that they were dealing with in public schools that they really were not talking to their parents about.

All of my books have something to do with parenting except one book, "Reaching the Left from the Right: Talking About Controversial Issues with People That Don't Think Like You." That's because I was a radical hippie, leftist, hate-America stereotype, and I changed. I'm very concerned with how polarized things are - how people get misrepresented. I feel especially sad about the way that conservatives are misrepresented by the media and in people's thinking.

I think about abortion as a representative issue. I had an abortion before I became a Christian. It was like going to the dentist for me, because I didn't grow up with any idea that my life was special or sacred. How in the world would I think that a baby's life was special or sacred? Sometimes people don't understand that when you grow up without any kind of spiritual foundation you have a lot different view of the world. This was my effort to explain things from my experience and philosophy.

Q: You write a lot about your political and moral viewpoints and how they have changed over the years -- can you tell us more about that transformation?

A: My father left when I was 6 years old and threw my mother in a complete tailspin. Divorce was unusual back then. I grew up with foster homes, an alcoholic, negligent mom with multiple relationships with men, and poverty.

For me the way out, I instinctively realized, was through education. I went to O'Connell High School … I credit them with really seriously saving my life.

During my young adulthood, there were two things weaving themselves through. One was this desire to be very positive … but the second one was the self-destruction that came from the alcoholism and drugs that I took to kind of escape from the stuff I was dealing with from my past.

I moved to San Francisco in '72, divorced my husband, was a single mom with two daughters, really went down the tubes as a drug addict and a drug dealer. Then in 1980, that was when I started to change, because I got sober through AA, met my husband, got married, started having more babies, looked for a spiritual path, exploring Eastern religion. I became a Christian in '87.

Another life-changing event was in 1992, having a son with Down syndrome. That was really a revolutionary thing that really taught me a lot about compassion and so much more about what was important in life and what's not important.

Q: You have four sons with Down syndrome. How has that experience changed your life and outlook on the world?

A: [Jonny] was my eighth child. I knew enough about kids with Down syndrome that I knew it was going to be a wonderful adventure. Then we decided to adopt a baby with Down syndrome [who also was diagnosed with autism].

In the meantime … a couple had come to us who had gotten a pre-natal diagnosis for their second baby that he would have Down syndrome. The mom wanted to get an abortion, and the father had been raised Catholic so he didn't [want her to]. They came to us just to get some informal counseling, and they ended up asking us to adopt their baby - that was the compromise - that she would carry the baby if we would adopt him. Daniel was born on Mother's Day.

So here we were, with four kids under the age of 4 and three of them had Down syndrome … Then in 2000, Catholic Charities called and asked, would you maybe be willing to adopt another baby. I said no way, I'm exhausted, I'm 52 years old and I'm sorry.

I got off the phone and my daughter Sophia, who was 12 at the time, had heard me. She said, "Mom I can't believe that you would ever say no. That's not who I thought you were. And besides we can adopt. Then we can be dirtier by the dozen." She was mixing up Dirty Dozen and Cheaper by the Dozen.

This family came over, and they were from Taiwan. They were on student visas … and the mom really loved [Justin]. They wanted to go home to Taiwan, but they didn't want to take him, because they'd been here long enough that they could see that we honor people with disabilities and take care of them and offer them education and everything, which they would never do in Taiwan. They had interviewed 20 families and had not liked any of them, but they liked our family because they said our children were respectful and kind to each other.

I think back and think, wow, normal people would've thought, well, what is this going to look like in 10 years? And they probably would've said no. But Tripp [her husband] and I aren't like that. We're kind of like risk takers that are like, oh sure, we can handle this.

Q: What's rewarding about having 12 kids?

A: What's so great for me is all the activity: to go to this one's game or this one's rehearsal. It's fun. When you have your little children, you tend to be exhausted. But it's so wonderful when they grow up ... I mean, I'm still their mom. But it's like my son who's 20 - he's gotten into making CDs for me lately. He's into indie music, and I love it because I would not know these beautiful songs and these wonderful things if I didn't have a son who was turning me on to that.

The down side is … it is expensive. We've sacrificed a lot. We never drove fancy cars or took the expensive vacations or anything. We don't have the plasma TV. Where we chose to put our resources was into our kids.

Tagged: family, politics, religion, Up Close

Your Thoughts...

Will you make a New Year's resolution this year?