Don't Call Me Mother: A Daughter's Journey from Abandonment to Forgiveness

Don't Call Me Mother: A Daughter's Journey from Abandonment to Forgiveness

by Linda Joy Myers
Don't Call Me Mother: A Daughter's Journey from Abandonment to Forgiveness

Don't Call Me Mother: A Daughter's Journey from Abandonment to Forgiveness

by Linda Joy Myers

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Overview

“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 . . .” At the age of four, a little girl stands on a cold, windy railroad platform in Wichita, Kansas, watching a train take her mother away. For the rest of her life, her mother will be an only occasional—and always troubled—visitor who denies her the love she longs for. Linda Joy Myers’s compassionate, gripping, and soul-searching memoir tells the story of three generations of daughters who, though determined to be different from their absent mothers, ultimately follow in their footsteps, recreating a pattern that they yearn to break. Accompany Linda as she uncovers family secrets, seeks solace in music, and begins her healing journey—ultimately transcending the prison of her childhood and finding forgiveness for her family and herself. This edition includes a new afterword in which Myers confronts her family’s legacy and comes full circle with her daughter and grandchildren, seeding a new path for them.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781938314087
Publisher: She Writes Press
Publication date: 02/13/2013
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 380
File size: 566 KB

About the Author

Linda Joy Myers is founder and president of the National Association of Memoir Writers (namw.org) and co-president of the Women's National Book Association, San Francisco. A national memoir speaker and coach, she's ;the author of The Power of Memoir—How to Write Your Healing Story and the prize-winning memoir, Don't Call Me Mother. Her new workbook, The Journey of Memoir: The Three Stages of Memoir Writing, will be released January 2013 through She Writes Press. She co-teaches the program Write your Memoir in Six Months with Brooke Warner, and offers teleseminars and workshops nationally. Visit her blog on how to write a successful memoir at memoriesandmemoirs.com.

Table of Contents

Contents

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .v

Tracks to My Heart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1

There Be Dragons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7

Enid and Aunt Helen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Night . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Liebestraum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Daddy Is Magic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

Liberace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

The Plains Is Our Mother . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

The Mississippi Valley Cradle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

Blanche and the Garden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

Ghosts of the Past . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

Grandpa, the Prayer Man . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

Spare the Rod . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

Lemon Meringue Pie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

Mother's Shadow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

Birthplace in Wapello . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

The Music Man . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

Finding Beauty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

Who Do You Want More? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

Hate Letters and Harrison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

Sex and Beethoven . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123

The Facts of Life and Death . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129

The Wedding Dress and Gram's Secrets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133

Looking for Lewis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

Saved . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

Happy Twelfth Birthday . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147

Welcome as a Snake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151

Thirteen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159

Swan Song . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .161

Wasteland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163

God's in His Heaven . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173

Sweet Sixteen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179

You Can Wish Upon a Star . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183

Wheat Fields on a June Evening . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189

Who Am I? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201

Alma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207

I Have Been Waiting and Hoping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211

Endings and Beginnings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219

Leaving at Last . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227

Don't Call Me Mother . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229

Becoming a Mother . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235

Return of the Bad Dream . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241

Legacies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245

Gram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249

Beside the Road . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263

Amanda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267

Etchings of the Past . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271

For the Grace of Dan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279

The California Zephyr . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283

Don't Call Me Grandmother . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285

Lost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291

I'm Not Your Daughter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293

Motherless Child . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295

Don't Tell Them You're My Daughter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301

The Diagnosis: Manic Depression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307

Requiem for a Ghost Mother . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315

Epilogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321

Afterword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329

Appendix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357

Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359

About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361

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