Local author’s book discusses challenges of moms without mothers.
By Ryan O’Quinn / Special to The Malibu Times
One of the closest bonds is the mother-daughter relationship, so when a mother is deceased the ramifications can be severe.
One local author has written books on the subject of life without a mother and her latest, “Motherless Mothers: How Mother Loss Shapes the Parents We Become,” hit bookstores last month.
The book is a follow-up to her bestseller “Motherless Daughters: The Legacy of Loss,” which focuses on the various emotions involved with losing her mother when she was 17 years old. The book also weaves in the stories of nearly 200 other motherless daughters whom she interviewed.
During pregnancy with her second child, Edelman said she discovered how much easier her life would be if she had a mother to help her. When she was placed on bed rest prior to the birth, she said she felt helpless and truly sensed the absence of a mother in her life.
“When I was pregnant with Eden and was on partial bed rest at the end of the pregnancy, and didn’t have anyone to help me take care of [my oldest daughter] Maya at that point, I really felt the loss of my mother not only as a helper to me, but the loss of a grandmother to my child,” Edelman said. “It’s a non-issue for them now because they don’t know what it would be like to have a maternal grandmother, so it’s just me looking in from the outside and looking in at the family and recognizing something is missing. They ask questions about why they don’t have a grandmother. Grandparents Day at the pre-school is always a big issue for us.”
Edelman began writing the book when her second daughter was six months old and said it took three years to write because she refused to take extended time away from her own daughters to write it.
She also said the response from mothers willing to talk about being motherless was overwhelming. Edelman designed an online survey aimed at interviewing motherless mothers and said she expected about 200 respondents. She received more than 1,300 and said the women were eager to talk.
“So many women wanted to take the survey after I shut down the Web site,” Edelman said. “I got so many e-mails asking me to reopen it because they found it healing just to answer the 48 questions. It allowed them to think about their own behavior in a way that they may not have thought about before.”
Following her first book, a number of “Motherless Daughters” support groups sprang up all over the country. It provided an outlet for women to get together and discuss their feelings as well as everyday life without having a mother.
Likewise, Edelman said, the same thing is happening with “Motherless Mothers” as support groups are forming now to discuss emotions, behavior and child rearing without the support of one’s own mother.
“They want to interact with women who they feel understand them and think the way they think,” Edelman said. “For many women it’s an ongoing struggle to have to keep explaining their behaviors to women who don’t understand. They feel like they’re in a room where they don’t need to explain their behavior, they can just talk about it and other women nod their head and say, ‘I do the same thing.'”
Edelman said, in many instances, when women without mothers have children, the baby helps to make a woman feel more complete and aids the healing process. The new mothers often experience a range of emotions from very happy to very sad because of the birth and the renewed mourning of the loss of the mother.
Edelman noted that another effect for a mom without a mother is a desire to be the perfect mother and often to become the mother they never had. In some instances that translates to being overprotective and anxious about keeping their children safe.
“I found that motherless mothers are more likely to describe themselves as overprotective,” Edelman said. “It means they noticed something in their own behavior that they didn’t see in other women. It may be they are more vigilant than other women or more anxious, not more concerned, but anxious about their child’s safety. They are often the parents on the playground that stretch their arms out to catch a child before they slip. They have been conditioned to expect bad things to happen without warning.”
Edelman said Mother’s Day can be an emotional one for those without mothers and it was especially difficult when she was single and had no children.
As a result of her first book, a number of groups began forming for motherless daughters to have luncheons on the Saturday before Mother’s Day. Edelman said it has gotten very popular and there are groups in major cities around the U.S, including one in Los Angeles.
Hope Edelman lives in Topanga with her husband, Uzi Eliahou, and her daughters, Maya, 8, and Eden, 4.
More information on the Saturday lunch can be obtained by visiting the Web site www.MotherlessDaughtersBiz.com. To find a support group or an online forum to discuss motherless motherhood, visit www.MotherlessMothers.com