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THE THERAPIST PSYCHOLOGIST BOOK STORE
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Motherless Mothers: How Mother Loss Shapes the Parents We Become By Hope Edelman ( HarperCollins )
Release Date: 2006-05-01
Average Customer Rating:
List Price: $25.95
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 A support group without the actual group ( tbachman@reading.org )
I read Motherless Daughters shortly after losing my mom to cancer when I was 21. At the time, my sister was 10, and I was profoundly daunted by the responsibility of being both sister and mother to her, but also I was afraid that losing her mom so young would destroy her. That book helped me to see that we would both be ok, that we would always hurt, but the hurt might even make us stronger...which I think it has.
Fast forward 10 years to the birth of my son, which catapulted me into a whole other realm of joy, anxiety, AND grief: Joy, obviously, at this new wonder in my world; anxiety over whether I was prepared without a mom-model; grief that I would never see my own mom hold her grandson. I felt the absence of my mother in a deeper way than I ever had before. I had no one to ask "is this how I was when I was a baby?" and no one to call in the middle of the night to ask about fever or to laugh with about the diaper explosion. And I am always heartbroken that he will never know his grandmother.
Motherless Mothers helped me in the same was as Motherless Daughters, by showing me that my feelings were not unusual, and that many other women have become strong, successful mothers without having their own mothers to lean on. I like, too, that the book focuses a little bit more on parenting than on grieving. There is some good information about why I react as I do, which has been helpful in preparing me for some of the challenges as well as some of the unexpected joys. It gave me a little support group without the actual group, and I'm grateful for Hope Edelman's work.
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 A Must Read For Anyone Who Has Lost A Parent As A Child
In 1952, when I was nine-years-old, I took a phone message from Miller Hospital for my father. My life, as I knew it then, and for the future had changed. "Please tell your father that it is imperative that he come to the hospital as soon as he gets this message." At age 42, my mother had died.
The following spring, in the fourth grade, our Mother's Day classroom assignment was to write an essay entitled, "What My Mother Means To Me." Shyly I reminded my teacher that my mother had died a few months earlier. Within a heartbeat, she replied, "Well then, Steven, why don't you write, What My Mother Meant To Me." I bolted out of the classroom, sobbing, and ran to an empty home.
At 64 years old, I'm still learning how my mother's early death shaped my life. I wish Hope Edelman's How Mother Loss Shapes the Parents We Become had been published years before. While the book is directed to women, which I'm not, I found innumerable common experiences.
I have two daughters, eight years apart in age. One lives 350 miles away; the other 1350 miles away. I speak by phone with each at least once a day. I can't go into a shop without thinking about what I'd like to buy and send to each of them. My wife and I visit them frequently and make certain that they have plane tickets to fly home for holidays and events. I know I've become my own idealized mother.
Long and short.......As a kid you lost your mother, read the book...buy it, borrow it, become a nuisance in a local bookstore that has a copy. It'll let you know those obsessive thoughts aren't just yours, alone.
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A Must Have For ALL Motherless Mothers
This book is a must have for all Motherless Mothers. Motherless Mothers helped me realize that all the emotions I was having as a first mom where normal and I wasn't alone in my struggle. Thank you Hope!
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The book your mom would give you... ( jollydog3 )
...if she could.
Edelman's book should be required reading for any motherless mother. Her insights are startling. This book heals.
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Truer words were never written b/4 ( geegee@snip.net )
Hope Edelman has a gift for writing the exact words I've been thinking since my Mother died of Breast Cancer at age 47, when I was 17. Mz. Edelman brings out all your emotions, one page after another. Hubby just shakes his head whenever I become engrosed in her book... He does not understand the Mother/Daughter bond... Hope helps me to understand and relive the love and joy of that now-missing bond!!!!
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Addiction
