Reviews tagging 'Abandonment'

What My Mother and I Don't Talk About: Fifteen Writers Break the Silence by Michele Filgate

5 reviews

sierrabowers's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

This was a great collection of stories compiled by authors that are well written and reflective. Anyone that has a good or bad relationship with their mother should read this. It’s not even about mother - child relationships, but the fragile way families can be. It was a great read and may reread in the future. 
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maddamreads's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

4.0

Brutally honest, funny, inspiring, heartbreaking, and genuine. You can’t go into the book thinking that you’ll find your own mother in the stories. Rather, the stories inspire an  exploration into your own relationship with your mother. Some of the stories were unexpected in the depth of humanizing the figures talked about. Most were brilliantly paced and written. Although almost all of the authors were middle aged/older reflecting on their younger years, the diversity of backgrounds and experiences makes the journey through the stories richer.  
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samanthajore's review against another edition

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4.5

I don't know what I was expecting when I went into this book but whatever I was expecting this book blew away all my expectations. Throughout the different essays multiple authors went into their way of breaking free from the trauma they were put through when they were younger. The different stories all showed different perspectives of how trauma changes people and how it manifests. 
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adeliab's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful informative reflective medium-paced

3.5

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meemawreads's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional inspiring medium-paced

4.0

I hesitated to start 2022 with a post about a downer, but that’s not really what this book is. It contains immense pain - warnings for many mentions of suicidal ideation, substance use, and many kinds of abuse - but it also contains immense healing. Each person who contributed to this collection did hard healing work in order to be able to write about these estrangements and catastrophes. There’s also immense love and forgiveness in them. 
We put mothers on this pedestal… we make motherhood nearly compulsory but then dehumanize mothers so that if they’re not perfectly nurturing and perfectly selfless and perfectly content in motherhood, they’re monsters. I love the care many of these writers took to show understanding that their moms are just people, too. 
I don’t recommend this book generally but specifically: read only if you’re experienced holding strangers’ pain without harm to yourself. Four taters 🥔🥔🥔🥔/🥔🥔🥔🥔🥔
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