Motherless Daughters

I truly find it hard to believe that I'm here--

Here at this place of somewhat jumbled emotions all surrounding the loss of my mother.  I honestly couldn't imagine that there was "more" to be uncovered, but there was, or is.  I made a rash decision last week to order a copy of Hope Edelman's book, "Motherless Daughters--The Legacy of Loss".  My sister had lent me her copy 20 years ago in the midst of my deepest grief.  I don't know that I read it in its entirety, but I found some excerpts that I had written in a journal and was shocked by how they still resonated so powerfully with me.  It seemed risky to buy this book--what if it plunges me somewhere I don't want to go?  What if it just makes me more sad?  More confused?

But it hasn't.  Pouring over the first 20 or so pages has helped me to feel less lonely, less crazy, less confused, less afraid.  It's like I have been awakened to an entire community of women who understand and are expressing some of my thoughts in their words.  Hope's book is filled with interviews of many motherless daughters, as well as her own journey of loss.  I've always felt that I need to "get over it" and move on; not that I would ever forget my mother, but that I "should" be able to, to put it simply, check this off my list of things to do.  I mean, what would you think of a woman who, 46 years after her mother's death,  still has places of pain and thoughts of wanting her and missing her??  It sounds neurotic!

Oh how I loved Hope's powerful words here--

"Sometimes I think of calling back that high school friend, the one who asked me how much of my life my mother's death would affect.  And with the certainty of thirty-three years, I would tell her:  everything.  It affects everything.  When a mother dies, a daughter grieves.  And then her life moves on.  She does, thankfully, feel happiness again.  But the missing her, the wanting her, the wishing she were still here--I will not lie to you, although you probably already know that.  That part never ends."

So much of my struggle to make peace with myself is what I would call, messy grief.  My grief work over the years, and yes, beginning when I was 5, was so very complicated with confusion and silence and anger and bitterness and unforgiveness and fear and this protective armor holding captive this raw pain that was so ugly it scared me.  Slowly over the years I found safe people who would listen without judgement and layer after layer of the pain began to heal.  I have spent almost my entire life trying to come to the "end" of grief work...I just want it done and finished!!  I hate messy, I resent the slowness and I definitely don't want to be labeled as neurotic!!!

Hope Edelman and countless other women say I'm not!!  And I can think of a few other people, my sister for one, who would preach the same mantra!  It came as somewhat of a surprise to me yesterday, to realize that I have very few friends who are motherless daughters. It just hit me.  Many of my friends have lost their fathers, but very few have lost their mother.  And mother loss for her daughter, is by and large, far more encompassing. 

Nancy Friday speaks this truth--

"When I stopped seeing my mother with the eyes of a child, I saw the woman who helped me give birth to myself."

But I only had my mother for five brief years!!!!  How was I to "give birth to myself" without her??!!

Yes, I was given a stepmom and she devoted her life to the best of her ability to provide for me.  But it is not the same--it's so very different. 

I'm not sure that my sadness today is concentrated on losing my Mom.  I have grieved so well over the years...I know this.  Today, it's a greater awareness of how her loss has impacted my life and the specific ways this unfolds.  And this has been for better and for worse.  Herein is where the need and desire for healing lies...in the "worse" part--the habits and routines and safeguards which I have developed throughout the years. 

How and when healing comes, I'm not sure, yet I know that it begins today in the simple,
honest expression of one of the threads of what it means for me to be...a motherless daughter.