The motherless daughters club
I was incredibly moved by a recent post on All Things Caregiver on being a “motherless daughter” and having read her post, I suddenly remembered Nancy had kindly written me a guest blog which I still hadn’t posted (sorry Nancy!) Well, better late than never and for all of us who are part of this motherless daughters club, read on…
Hope Edelman was 17 years old when her mom died — of breast cancer — at age 42. In her bestselling book Motherless Daughters, she writes about how at 17, she was no longer a child but not quite a woman.
One of the first things she did after her mom died was start researching — how to feel when your mom dies, how to talk about it, how to find happiness again. No such resource existed, not at the library or the bookstore, so she wrote it herself.
Edelman was in college, she read a column by Anna Quindlen from the Chicago Tribune that changed everything for her in her grief. Said Quindlen:
My mother died when I was nineteen. For a long time, it was all you needed to know about me, a kind of vest-pocket description of my emotional complexion: ‘Meet you in the lobby in ten minutes — I have long brown hair, am on the short side, have on a red coat, and my mom died when I was nineteen.
Edelman read the column repeatedly, and carried in her wallet for years. She says:
Later, much later, would I learn how many other motherless women around the country had saved that same syndicated column, and how many, like me, had felt as if someone had discovered a secret portal into their innermost thoughts.
I have a newspaper column, too. It’s not by Anna Quindlen, but it serves the same purpose for me that Quindlen’s column served for Edelman. Just as having cancer does, losing your mom inducts you into a club for which you never wanted to become a member. Edelman writes that “it’s like we share a secret handshake.” I hate that handshake.
Also like having cancer, losing one’s mother turns an ordinary woman into a survivor. Edelman puts it like this:
The adversity [of losing your mom] gives women a toughness, a resilience, a power of will that came from facing a profound loss and nevertheless finding the desire and the hope to press on. They’re saying, in effect, that they’ve acquired the kind of personal strength and indomitability our culture normally ascribes to men.
It’s a strange sort of girl power, and one gained in the most tragic of ways, but perhaps a positive aftereffect of a tragic event.
Famed author Virginia Woolf lost her mother, Julia Stephen, to rheumatic fever when Woolf was 13. She says she was obsessed by the memory of her mother, and some speculate that loss fueled Woolf’s troubled emotional state. Woolf reported feeling as if her mother was an “invisible presence” in her life. She remembers thinking of a book idea, which became To the Lighthouse, while walking one day.
One thing burst into another…I wrote the book very quickly; and when it was written, I ceased to be obsessed with my mother. I no longer hear her voice; I do not see her. I suppose I did for myself what psycho-analysts do for their patients. I expressed some very long felt and deeply felt emotion. And in expressing it, I explained it and then laid it to rest.
Much is written about how motherless daughters can bond, even as total strangers. Edelman writes:
When four or five motherless women sit in a room together, the camaraderie is nearly instantaneous. Finally, they say, others who understand. Like veterans of the same war, the unmothered are drawn to each other. They can detect the subtlest inflection in each other’s behaviors, the tiniest insinuation in a gaze, the inaudible frequency of spirit that reveals: you are one of me.
Edelman speaks to the issue of mourning, and I really like that she says that grief doesn’t have to follow a set, predictable series of stages; it’s not something that has to be overcome or fixed. It is “a lifetime process of accommodation and acceptance.” She says that grief is not linear or predictable. She’s right. It stops and starts, waxes and wanes, but it is permanent. It hurts. And it hurts for a long, long time.
A lot goes into the study of loss and grieving. Edelman introduced me to a study done in 1996 by Phyllis Silverman, Ph.D., and William Worden, Ph.D., called the Harvard Child Bereavement Study. The most interesting findings are that “mother loss” is harder than “father loss” (the mere fact that there’s a term for “mother loss” is sad enough) simply because it means more changes to daily life. Children whose mothers have died are more likely to have emotional and behavioral problems than kids whose dads die, and kids whose moms have died remain more emotionally connected to mothers who have died than to fathers who have died.
I’m not suggesting that losing one’s father isn’t devastating, and it’s certainly not a contest to see whose loss is greatest. Just an interesting study that gave me some insight on why 6 years later, I still miss my mom every single day.
I try to find her sometimes, in other people. Perhaps a woman with her same build in the grocery store, or the sound of a total stranger’s laugh. Edelman does that too.
I’ve tried to find my mom over the years but she’s remained elusive. If I had to pinpoint my mother’s location I’d say she’s nowhere and everywhere, at the same time. She’s a foggy memory I can’t quite bring into focus and a gentle spirit that infuses all my days. She exists in the background of my life now, hovering, suspended, shapeless, like familiar air.
There is a huge hole in my life where a mother — and now a maternal grandmother for my children — should be. I still wish I had a mother to call when something good happens, when something bad happens, or when nothing at all has happened, just to talk about the day.
Losing your mom is a terrible, terrible thing. No matter what stage in life, no matter what the circumstances of her death. Whether taken suddenly in an accident or after a prolonged illness, there’s little preparation. One of my friends lost her mom unexpectedly to a heart attack, while my mom died after a long battle with uterine cancer. We talk often about which of us had it easier: I think she does because she didn’t watch her mom suffer. She thinks I had it easier because I had time to wrap my mind around it and say my good-byes. We both know that there’s no easy answer, that neither of us had it easier. Hope Edelman explains it perfectly by saying that:
to be a motherless daughter is to be riddled with paradoxes and contradictions, to live with an eternally unresolved longing, but it is also to know the grit of survival, to hold an insight and maturity others did not know so young, and to understand the power of renewal and rebirth.
_____________________________________________________________
Today’s wonderful guest post was written by Nancy Hicks, and is another treasured, precious gift to me during this time of grieving and finding a new way to be in the world without my mother.
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Well, I am sitting in the middle of a Canadian blizzard, cocooned in my bed as I read this post and cry. My three children are still sleeping: 16 year old Kaitlyn, 14 year old Donovan and 6 year old Ben. It is a snow day, so I am letting them enjoy a sleep in.
Last night, Kaitlyn got sick at 3 a.m. Even though I had a mastectomy less than a week ago, I stayed up with her and nursed her till 5:30. Because that is what Mothers do. If you are a mother and you are reading this, I am pretty sure you would do the same. I have stage 3, grade 3 cancer. As I took care of my daughter, who is “no longer a child but not quite a woman” I could not help but think “What if…..” Even though I write about the PERKS of having cancer, I will be the first to admit that it also has its QUIRKS. The worry of dying and leaving a motherless daughter and two motherless sons tops the list.
Cancer Warrior
http://www.perksofcancer.com
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Oh my dear, I can only imagine how hard this must be for you x
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Yesterday I learned that the mother of two of my students, ages 12 and 13, lost her battle with breast cancer on Saturday. I wish I could wrap them up in all the wisdom and companionship that is shared here.
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The one word that echoes for me was unmothered. It is still resonating as I write this. I was nine when my mother died of breast cancer so long ago, and I think my sense of loss centers around all the things I never learned from her about how to be a woman, how to be a mother. Those lessons were what I needed so much as I got married and had my own children. I felt I was making it up as I went along. There was a whole cycle of knowledge that was never passed along.
The one saving grace is that my children are now having children, and I am able to watch as they excel in that role. Somehow the cycle was filled in, the knowledge found and passed on despite the interruption in the continuum. They are whole despite the holes in me.
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Wonderful wise words, thanks for sharing. I “lost” my mother to Alzheimer’s and Dementia, long before she actually passed over. She was not a typical mother, but at her funeral I read a tribute of thanks for teaching me tenacity,finding a way to do things, being brave, having a sense of humour, the wonder of music and dancing to lift your spirits, the Irish hospitality of making room for an extra guest, and always stop for a cup of tea and a rest when out shopping!
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My heart aches for you Christina, before my Mom died we had already lost her to dementia type symptoms – though we didn’t know it at the time, it was a brain tumor growing rapidly which caused the change in her personality and her ability to remember words. I feel as if I got a taste of the cruelty of that disease and how awful it is to lose your mother while she is still alive.
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Many years ago, Hope Edelman spoke at a benefit luncheon here for a program for bereaved children. I remember well how those of us motherless daughters at my table bonded so quickly as we recognized our own stories in one another.
I barely remember my mother — I was seven when she and my youngest brother were killed in an auto accident — but having children of my own, and especially my daughter, brings home to me every day what both my mother and I lost.
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Thanks for sharing your story with us Robin
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I well remember this book and the feelings it evoked. I will always, always miss my mother and through time, my love and appreciation for who she was and the obstacles she overcame in her own life continues to inform mine.
Thanks for posting this, Marie.
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Marie, thanks for posting this — it’s been long enough since I wrote it that I’d forgotten about it! Many thanks to all the “club members” for sharing their insights and experiences, and as an extension, their mothers. Gone but not forgotten seems so trite, but it’s true. I too am whole, but will always have a hole. Wouldn’t our moms be pleased, though, to know we’ve connected because of them?
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I bought this book many years ago and I still keep it close. My mother died of ovarian cancer when I was 13. Reading this book was like drinking in words that filled holes in my soul that I wasn’t aware were there. Now if I could only find a good book that addresses the father that disappears forever after his wife dies I’d be complete.
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“Reading this book was like drinking in words that filled holes in my soul that I wasn’t aware were there” – wow – what a great recommendation. I really do need to get me a copy of this book! Regarding your last sentence, remember what Hope Edelman said 😉
One of the first things she did after her mom died was start researching — how to feel when your mom dies, how to talk about it, how to find happiness again. No such resource existed, not at the library or the bookstore, so she wrote it herself.
Maybe something to think about?
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“Edelman read the column repeatedly, and carried in her wallet for years” _ I so get this! Now I shall carry around this post for many years to come – it speaks to my own sense of connectedness with the members of this club. Nancy thank you so very much for such a wonderful post x
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I really, really, really needed to read this today – I lost my Mom 6 months ago and my heart still aches for her – she was in her seventies – though very active – and I feel that people are thinking get over it already – she lived a good life, yada yada. But i feel like a little girl who has lost her mommy – I feel lost without her guiding presence in my life. Thank you for giving voice to my feelings – it is so good to know that I am not alone.
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Jane, I too lost my mom six months ago, she was in her seventies and very active as well. I completely understand what your post is saying and the horrible loss of losing my mom and bestfriend. I too feel like a little girl who needs their mom so badly and wish to have just one more moment with her! People don’t understand until the day they will go through it themselves, thats why its so nice to know there are places like this to find support.
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Hi Michelle, it is so good to have you stop by and share your experience with us – the more we can talk openly about our pain and loss, the more we can help each other feel less alone in a society that is intent on denying the reality of death and dying.
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Quite simply..thank you!
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This was amazing to read – so I am not crazy after all – it IS normal to grieve and weep over the death of a Mom because she is such a powerful influence in our lives – thank you, thank you for this insight Nancy and Marie x
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to be a motherless daughter is… to live with an eternally unresolved longing
this is so very true – it is three years since my mother died and I long, and I mean long to talk to her again, to ask her advice, to see her..and the fact that I never can again is an eternal ache in my heart
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This is a resonant post for so many of us. I have found, too, that no matter how old a woman is, she feels the loss of her mother deeply. I’ve had patients in their seventies who are absolutely shattered when their 90+ year old mothers die.
One of my best friends lost her mom when we were 10. My own mom suffered with mental illness all her life, so that, in a very real way, I felt motherless throughout my childhood. I was 40 when she died, and it was the most painful loss I’ve ever endured, despite all our ups and downs.
I, too, had to turn to a book to find some wisdom to get me through it, as well as to friends who had lost their mothers. We never really get over it, but we learn, and the connection stays forever.
Thank you for this lovely post.
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What a wonderful comment Kathi and I so agree that we can be motherless for many different reasons in life – perhaps that means we have to learn how to mother ourselves?
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Interesting to read the last para of this – the two friends debating who had it worse when their moms died. i always thought sudden death would be very hard to bear, but having watched my own darling mother die a long slow agonising death from cancer, I would have done anything not to have had to witness her suffering – my dreams are still haunted by the memories of her final weeks, even 6 years later.
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When asked how much of her life her mom’s death affected, Edelman says all of it. Everything. It affects everything. When a mother dies, a daughter grieves, and then her life moves on. She will feel happiness again. But the missing her, the wanting her, the wishing she were still here — that part never ends.
Oh my goodness, thank you so very miuch for letting me know it’s ok to feel this way even now 10 years after my Mom’s death from breast cancer – I’ve realised I will never, ever get over missing her even though I have learned to live without her. What a relief to know that this is a normal reaction!
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This post was just amazing! Thank you!!!!
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Terrific post, Nancy. I love Hope Edelman’s book and include it on my grief resource page. I have always appreciated how she recognizes the intensity of this loss no matter what age you are when it happens. The only thing that has always sort of bothered me was the title, because even though my mother is no longer with me in the physical sense, she is still very much with me. I don’t feel as if I am motherless, though indeed I am, if that makes any sense. My mother’s words, wisdom and love continue to influence me every single day, even more so after my breast cancer diagnosis. You can tell from the comments here that the bonds of those of us in this “club” run very deep too. There’s a great deal of comfort in that. It’s a sisterhood of a different sort. Thanks to you, Marie for sharing Nancy’s post. Thanks to you, Nancy, for writing it.
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And thank YOU Nancy for your ever insightful comments. The biggest thing that I have learned since joining this club is that no matter what age we are when we lose our Moms, we are still that little girl who loves and misses her mommy and wants her back again
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Oh my gosh, Nancy — what a beautiful post and moving tribute to the book. A Facebook friend posted this link on my home page today and I just read it. Thank you so much for spreading the word to other women. It’s truly through reaching out and extending our compassion that we spread the word to those who are suffering. Blessings to all of you for posting here and supporting each other!
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Thank you so much Hope for your comment. I’m so grateful to Nancy for introducing me to your work – I have ordered your book online today.
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What a beautifully written post, Nancy. Thoughts of my late mother swirled through my head as I read your poignant words. She taught me everything important in life. She’ll always be missed: her smile, her unconditional love, her forgiveness.
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No one can ever love you as unconditionally as your Mom x
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After being “motherless” for 25 years, I am still brought to tears by the term “motherless daughter”. I bought Hope’s book in college, the workbook when it came out, and Motherless Mothers when I became a mother. I am nearing the age my mother was when she died and it is yet another reminder of what she was cheated out of, what I had to do without, and what my daughter is missing. My mother died of breast cancer, so I had my breasts removed. Her younger sister died of ovarian cancer, so I had a total hysterectomy. Those who don’t understand my choices to have those surgeries are people who have never had to explain why their mother isn’t there to move them into college, why they aren’t able to call their mother with the news of being pregnant, or try to explain to a 7 year old why I just can’t promise that I’ll be here forever. And those of us who HAVE had those experiences have a special bond that we wish we didn’t.
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Hi Kara, thanks so much for stopping by and sharing your experience. I have been humbled to read how so many readers still mourn the loss of their beloved mothers even years after their passing.
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Thank you for writing such an insightful blog post. I lost my Mom when I was 14. 27 years later, I still miss her everyday. I think now, after all these years, I grieve the lost potential of my mother’s life as much as I miss her presence in mine. She wasn’t at my high school or college graduations, she wasn’t at my wedding, she is not here to be a grandmother, to help me mother, to know my sweet husband, and to meet my brother’s beautiful baby girl. But, I take comfort in know her life-force continues to ripple through this world via her children and grandchildren. That is very comforting:)
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What a poignant comment Bethany – although I was lucky enough to have my Mom there for me on my wedding day, the thought that she won’t see my nephews grow up is something I find incredibly sad too
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Hope, I’m sad that you didn’t have enough of your mother – and also wishing she could see who you are and how losing her contributed to what you were able to provide for the world. She would be so proud of you.
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Thanks for stopping by Journeying Beyond Breast Cancer and leaving such a lovely comment Sybil
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I read Motherless Daughters, too, and even though my mother was 88 when she died and I was 64, I miss her to this day, seventeen years later. I sometimes have this intense longing, a true hunger, to see her. I would give my arm to spend one more afternoon with her.
I wrote poems for her during her eleven weeks in hospice at home and journaled, but I felt too raw to put them into my seconbd book, The Last Violet: Mourning My Mother, Moving Beyond Regret, until seven years had passed.
I have only found this blog recently and have been amazed to find it is about breast cancer and then about Marie’s mother dying – two subjects so close to my heart.
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Thank you so much Lois for helping me to see that no matter what age you are, losing your mother affects us all profoundly. I have been feeling as if I have no right to grief this much as an adult losing a mother, but thanks to comments like yours, I see I am normal after all. I am finding that the intense longing to see her again, to talk to her, to touch her is one of the hardest things to deal with right now. Sometimes the longing literally stops me in my tracks when I am doing something – thanks again for your comment and your support x
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There are tears streaming down my face. I missed this yesterday. After reading through such a beautifully written post and seeing how everyone who commented has bared their soul, I simply can not stop the tears. An eight year old girl is without a mommy and it is less than one week. I think about what lies ahead for her and it breaks my heart. No, it shatters my heart into millions of pieces. In the crowded funeral home, she sat in the back of the room. A big family and lots of loving friends and there was always someone at her side. In church on Monday, I had to turn away as I watched her walking behind her mother’s casket at the beginning of the mass. Again, surrounded by so many. She is an only child. I’m sure she is still being held up by so many who love her, who adored her mom. Yet, there comes a point in the day when this little girl has to climb into her bed and my heart aches in ways I can’t begin to describe as I think about her head gently on her pillow. Missing her mommy today…. knowing that every “special” occasion in her life will have a gaping hole. Twenty of us can surround her as she gets ready for her prom or dons a cap and gown or slips into a wedding gown… and there may well be 20,000 of us. The gaping hole will remain. And she will live with this forever. How sad, how tragic…..
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AnneMarie…. your insightful post has me tearing me up. While I was a bit older when my mother died (just turned 14), I have faced every life-changing event as an adult without my mother. Graduations, holidays, my marriage (followed a few years later by a gut wrenching divorce), my daugher’s birth. I am thankful to have a wonderful family and a dad who goes above and beyond to show his love, but it isn’t the same. While I love and appreciate the man who gave me life and loved my mother beyond compare, he couldn’t help me when I was faced with the birth of a 26 week old preemie and crying, or when I was divorcing and feeling like a failure as a mother. The birth of my daughter made me much more willing to be proactive about my life and appreciate the little things. And it has made me appreciate that no matter the seemingly insignificant activity I’m participating in with my daughter, this could be a memory for my daughter should I not live to see her to adulthood.
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Kara, we all understand so very much what you are feeling – thanks for sharing your story with the rest of us motherless daughters x
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Beautiful post, Nancy! Hope Edelman passed this along to me a few days ago and we posted it on our page for our readers. Not sure if you or any of you ladies who commented know about our documentary ‘The Club’, you may find many similar sentiments echoed in our clips/comfort in it’s being made.
Please find us on Facebook for updates:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Club/111063455580553
Here is our website:
http://theclubdocumentary.com/
Keep telling your stories!!!
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Thank you so much Carlye for sharing this link – I will certainly be checking it out and joining you on Facebook.
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42 years after the loss of my mother at 14 I NOW recognize this to have become my FIRST awakening point … to recognize that it was a redirection to face my aloneness – the greatest gift a mother could bestow on a daughter.
We come into this world alone and we leave alone and our finest moments are when we are in our aloneness (never lonely) always connected to our infinite source. This is sahana!
Thank you for sharing your blog and posts.
Namaste
Colli
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Thank you Colli so much for sharing this beautiful insight with us x
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I was just poking through archives and found this. I devoured Hope Edelman’s book, “Motherless Daughters”, about 15 years ago, and have been thinking that I should read it again one day soon. I was 17 when my mom died from rapidly progressing breast cancer at 41 years of age. For 15 years before that she was aggressively treated with mixed results for schizoaffective bipolar illness.
As I have been processing my husband’s death, grief for my mother is pushing up with increasing frequency these past few months. As much as time allows, I will be pushing through these posts – the information in them is helpful.
Nameste
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Unmothered is how I guess I feel. My mum died when i was 13,, 1972, my dad 2 years ago. I read Hopes book in 2007 so I was able to grieve. I met a friend of theirs at dads funeral and I found out my mums arthritis was so bad my mum could never hold me or do anything for me. I knew my dad was my caregiver , bathed me etc and my mum never walked or could use her hands or arms, but I thought that past my memories she would of been able to hold me when i was small. but the friend said she couldn’t, and she had come to bathe me each day. I feel a new grief and pain for the loss of not being mothered.
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The mother I never had, as an young adult, because cancer killed her at a ripe age, it happen immediately after she retired from the post office. I gradually became the mother I never had, with cancer too. I still buy my mom a mothers day card every year and tell her all that she missed that year. I tell my daughter she is like her grandma – beautiful, smart, artistic, articulate, a feminist, and controlling. The 3 versions of myself, daughter and my mom are like mirrors in which we see reflections of parts of your past and personality.
This fact has helped me see aspects of myself that I didn’t want to own. However, this demonstrates how powerful a mother is in your lives for better or worse a mother is the single most important influence on a childs future. When our mothers are no longer able to fill that void; we find other women whom will teach us, encouraged us, hang in there with us, and filling your hearts as well as your minds with every topics your mothers never had a chance to do.
Good Reads on motherless children are below:
1. The Orphaned Adult ….. author- Alexander Levy
2. Grieving the Death of a Mother….. author – Harold Ivan Smith
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Thank you so much for this insightful comment – it was amazing to read it and thank you for your book recommendations – I will be checking them out for sure.
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My mom died of breast cancer when she was 45 and I was 22. The exact age difference my daughter and I am now. She never knew I was pregnant. That was 23 years ago. I always heard people say their heart ached when they lost someone they loved, I never believed it. Not until the moment she was gone. I think it didn’t really hit me until something exciting happened and I rushed home to call her and realized she wasn’t there to pick up… Although I have married a wonderful man and have a fantastic daughter, the hole is my heart will never be filled. I see glimpses of her when I pass a mirror and my daughter resembles her in many ways. I’ve tried to catalogue our family history as best as I could, and talk about her to my daughter because I’m the last of “us”. When I’m gone that’s it. And now that I’m the same age she was when she died, I’m scared. And my daugther is scared too. She has watched me all these years silently crying myself to sleep. I had a scare at the beginning of the year I am healthy and intend to double my mother’s age. Hope’s book has been a continual saving grace for me throughout the years. I have given it to several friends who have lost their mothers and call me after their first good cry. Thank you for giving us this forum to just “be”.
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I too lost my mom last year . I am 18 now. She fought with breast cancer for more than 3 years and finally the day came, when all my joy, fulfillment all got wrapped up and went out of me as she passed away. It’s terribly bad. Now, there is no one care for me as she did. The very feeling of being motherless is hurting me every second of my life. I would be happy to revisit the past and be with her once again. I am sorry for myself and I very much pity on myself, for growing up as a motherless child. She had dreams of me graduating and getting married and all this has to happen without my sweet mom. There is no one in the world who could give a love as a mother had given her children. I miss her a lot. Thank you for this post.
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Oh Angela, my heart aches at your pain. I am so, so sorry for your loss. Thinking of you xxx
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Reblogged this on takeawareness2action and commented:
Remembering the moms that we have lost to cancer this Mother’s Day and always…
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