What if you could choose your mother? Would you choose differently? SHUT YOUR MOUTH! is a story that follows the trials and tribulations of a female Baby Boomer who, at the age of fifty-seven, intentionally quit the daily grind of her corporate sales career to take a job as lunch lady at an elementary school. One year later, she felt her mother's presence for the first time since her funeral five years earlier. Born in Hamlin, New York, her life-long intense, love-hate mother-daughter relationship started early in life. While her older brother and sister seemed to get along with their mother, she often felt an oppressive toughness in her that led to a resultant need to fight back and stand her ground. On the other hand, her mother Philly, who was born in Brockport, New York, had a loving yet short term relationship with her mother, Lena. Due to the untimely death of Lena when she was ten, Philly spent her entire life searching for acceptance and healing. Since she was so young when she lost her mother, her older brothers and sisters didn't have much time to influence the rose-colored glasses she wore while adoring her mother nor did Philly experience the challenging aspect of navigating an adult mother-daughter relationship with Lena. The two strong and independent women shared more than a half century of life together, resisting the rigid beliefs of a small German Lutheran Church, while learning to navigate new experiences through a more liberal spiritual lens, motherhood and grand-parenting, divorce and loss, that culminated in conflict despite the complex and compelling bond that held them together. SHUT YOUR MOUTH! is a frank account of a combative life-long mother-daughter relationship, sharing both women's sometimes humorous and often painful perspectives while moving from small towns in upstate New York to four different states and then back home again, where the daughter would say a final goodbye to her terminally ill mother dying from cancer only months after doing the same with her only sister.It's a story about acceptance, forgiveness, and the letting go that leads to the desire to heal and to reflect upon life lessons learned from a mother who was, in fact, the perfect teacher for what the daughter needed to learn. Believing that one chooses the path they lead in life, SHUT YOUR MOUTH! answers the question for one woman, "What if you could choose your mother?" Renee Rockow received her Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Oregon and a secondary level teaching certification from the University of Washington. She lives in Seattle, WA and enjoys travelling, the outdoors, spending time with her two Millennial sons and her very part time work as a lunch lady. SHUT YOUR MOUTH! is her first work of fiction based on the memories of a family of strong and independent women spanning three generations.