Don’t Call Me Mother: Breaking the Chain of Mother-Daughter Abandonment
From the back cover:
Linda Joy Myers eloquently renders the details of her past in this
transformative memoir, allowing all of us to find redemption through her honest courage. For anyone yearning for self-discovery, Don’t Call Me Mother serves as a compelling guide on a journey to wholeness.
I love the book.
—Michele Weldon, assistant professor, Northwestern University and author of
I Closed My Eyes, and Writing to Save Your Life.
Could you still love your mother, even if she left you? In this gut-wrenching, poetic, prize-winning memoir, Linda Joy Myers explores three generations of maternal abandonment in her family—and movingly explores her own quest to break the chain.”
—Melanie Rigney, former Writers Digest editor
“I wanted to tell the secret stories that my great-grandmother Blanche whispered to me on summer nights in a featherbed in Iowa. I was eight and she was eighty…”
Don’t Call Me Mother is an inspiring chronicle of perseverance, healing, and the unquenchable power of forgiveness. Acclaimed author and therapist Linda Joy Myers’ compelling, compassionate, and often heart-wrenching memoir shares the story of her mother’s abandonment of her, part of a generations-long tradition in her family. Myers uncovers the layers of a painful secret she carried with her for years, transporting us on a journey that is both familiar and uncompromising in its honesty— a journey into the inner heart of a home shattered by abandonment and undiagnosed manic-depression—and a quest for the fulfillment of a childhood dream for a peaceful and loving family.
“I admire Linda’s courage and perseverance in writing about the primal pain of mother abandonment.”
—Tristine Rainer, author of Your Life as Story: Discovering the New Autobiography and director, Center for Autobiographic Studies
“With unerring honesty and painstaking detail, Linda explores and re-experiences her family’s many generations of loss and grief, and in the process frees herself from her history and uncovers her deep ability to love.”
—Elizabeth Fishel, author of Sisters and Reunion: The Girls We Used To Be, the Women We Became, co-editor Wednesday Morning Writers.
“This is powerful stuff, insightful, detailed, layered, emotional without being manipulative, insightful without being indulgent. It’s a wonderful read, a marvelous examination of life and its inevitable conclusion. I loved it.”
—James Dalessandro, author of 1906
