“Stop Here, This is the Place: A Year in Motherland” is the heartwarming story created by two mothers who try to slow down time and pay attention. Susan Conley, a Maine writer, and Winky Lewis, a photographer, despite their jam-packed lives of commotion, team up in the pursuit of capturing the simple pleasures of life.

As mothers, they fear they’re going to look back and somehow their children’s lives will have slipped from between their outstretched arms. The dearest of memories discarded like flotsam and jetsam and lost into the slippery waves of never-ending time.

The book expressed a sense of awareness, a warning. Almost that time itself is alive, a sensitive thing not to be meddled with and not to be wasted. We often get caught up in our lives – something always needs to be done, there’s always somewhere to be, and there is always someone to please. We try to stuff our lives with as much as we possibly can, often not leaving enough room for those we love the most.

Conley and Lewis give us a taste of their lives week by week, for 52 weeks. In week 11 of the book, there is a photograph of Lewis’s daughter where she has a dog’s paw cupped in her hand, which I interpreted as a symbol of love and promise never to part. It was a simple gesture yet so full of meaning and unconditional love.

I felt as if every page opened the door to a new beginning, another chapter. Simply stated, just another week in the magical world of Motherland.

“We spin and spin and spin and don’t ever let go.” – Susan Conley