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

In Don't Call Me Mother: A Daughter's Journey From Abandonment to Forgiveness, Linda Joy Myers delves deeper into her original memoir, Don't Call Me Mother: Breaking the Chain of Mother-Daughter Abandonment to show us her healing journey over the past seven years from this abandonment to love and forgiveness. With courage and perseverance, Linda Joy explores the deeply painful and heartbreaking realization that her mother had kept her a secret from her friends in Chicago where she had started a new life. Left in the custody of an erratic and eccentric maternal grandmother who keeps her from seeing her father, she is forced, as a little girl, to deal with the inconceivable circumstances of being pulled away for her mother and kept from seeing her father while having to endure the unpredictable behaviors of her unstable, controlling grandmother. Throughout this scenario, she weaves in the good people; both family members and a music teacher who help her find some hope for her future. As she grows into adulthood and finds herself haunted by her past, she seeks counseling to understand the impact abandonment has had on her life. Her mother continues to abandon her and her three children. When her mother is eventually diagnosed with a mental illness, Linda Joy finds validation in the awareness that mental illness of several family members has played a significant role in her life. Equipped with this knowledge, she embarks on a quest to confront her painful past by traveling to past places of her childhood and revisiting family members who are still alive. This ultimately leads her to a place of forgiveness as she begins to see the people who have hurt her in a compassionate, forgiving way. Through counseling and a determination to heal her wounds, she is able to reach a place of forgiveness and let go of her past. Through sharing her writing process, she also shows the lessons that can be gained by writing memoir. As a reader, not only was I hooked into her story of healing from abandonment right from the start but I was captivated by her lyrical prose which through her brave and honest reflections enable the story to flow seamlessly. Ultimately this is a story of hope, love and forgiveness, including self-forgiveness. It is a testimony to the power of memoir to heal and transform lives. I highly recommend this compelling memoir for anyone who has ever had to face a painful past and wants to heal through writing.

A moving and often heartbreaking story of Linda Joy's childhood after her parents abandoned her. There is relief when her grandmother rescues her Sugar Pie from the evil Vera, but she ends up being abusive, too. It was a bit confusing to keep up with who was who in Linda Joy's extended family at first, but the better I got to know them, the better I understood the family dynamics. The memoir follows her family even after she has published the first edition. I'm so glad Linda Joy found her way to healing for herself, and for others as a psychotherapist. I came to read Linda Joy's memoir after becoming familiar with all the support provided to memoir writers through her National Association of Memoir Writers. In addition to the excellent memoir she's written, I also appreciate the additional information provided in the new edition's Preface, Introduction, Epilogue, Afterword and Appendix.

From the opening where a child sits beside her mother, watching the landscape move backward as their shoulders touch, riding a train across wheat fields , perfume lingering, moons rising and falling, we, the reader, in both real time and dream time are simultaneously both at peace with the moment and dreading the impending arrivals and departures, the acceptance and the abandonment, that is the first of many of our visits throughout the book to the "train station at the center of the universe." Set against a family that vacillates between its' ability to love and its' inability to love we experience the life of the little girl, Linda Joy, who struggles to adapt and become worthy of the love that is the birthright of every child. Having been born into a family with generations of abandonment they lack the tools that seem to come so naturally to other families. Remarkably, the child, the adolescent , the adult that Linda Joy becomes grows to tell her story without malice or blame. It is just the incredulous fact of her existence and yet she grows to accept the limitations of her mother, her father and her grandmother and give to them what they were unable to give to her. She finds a voice in music and writing and lives to break the cycle of neglect in her own family. The reader is taken on many train rides throughout this journey. We venture from rural wheat fields of Kansas, to Chicago, to the Southern roots of the family. We can smell the chicken frying and the turnip greens boiling, there is always an apple pie in the oven, but then it is back to Grandma's house. It is dark and cold and long between visits from mommy and daddy. Like all great writing its' not even so much what "Don't Call Me Mother" is about. The plot is secondary to the telling of the story.

I am a fan of memoirs and a picky reader. Don't Call Me Mother is a well-written and poignant story-another book that I couldn't put down. If you liked Pelzer, you'll like Myers. If you study family dynamics, womens' issues, psychology, and sociology, you'll get something from the book. When one reads about survivors of abuse, no matter how cliche that may sound, the determination of the human spirit always shines through. Nobody really knows what goes on behind closed doors. Children end up having to make sense out of the often crazy adult world when they are not given the tools to do so. This is a tribute to a determined child who blossoms into an adult, a woman of accomplishment and sensitivity. It also a tribute to a caring teacher - in this case, a music teacher and violinist, who sparks the imagination and devotion of Myers and her peers. One teacher, one loving person can alter the course of a child's life. The book is also a tribute to supportive relatives, Iowa farm families who are the saving grace in the piercing story of a neglected child. I'm so glad Myers took the time to share the story of her life.

This story of family dysfunction—generation to generation—plays out in the life of the little girl called Linda Jo who learned again and again from the adults in her life that she was neither loved nor wanted. From her circumstances, she learned that she was both helpless to earn love and powerless over her circumstances. While it is painful to enter into little Linda's pain, it is never heavy handed or oppressive. In fact, there were passages in the book so haunting and well written that I read them out loud to myself. I felt the deep sadness of this little girl, her bewilderment, and her despair. I felt her joy when she discovered her love of music and her own giftedness under the leadership of her beloved teacher, when she found her friends Keith and Jodie. I felt grateful for the love shown her by Helen & Maj, her grandmother's old friends. The extended family she came to know seemed kind and accepting. She felt warmed and connected in their homes. Yet, in their circle, a relative attempted to molest her—as she had also been in a foster home. The writer is an impressive and courageous woman. After she left "home," the heartache and emotional damage played out in her college years and in her failed marriages. Yet, she persevered, bringing the darkness into the light, seeking to heal and to reconcile with her family, and best of all, forming loving relationships with her own children, especially her daughter. This is not a grim and depressing book, but a story of redemption and overcoming. I recommend it.

Linda Joy creates a world of unconditional love - a world where not so many people live. As a memoir writer, Linda Joy brings the story of three generation of women, revealing their common weakness in a gracious way. The story is heartbreaking because the story is true. The writing is pure and compelling, with twisted turns where she observes, reflects, and starves for her mother's attention. What I loved about this book is the writing about the world perceived by an innocent girl, watching her mother leave for real. The scenes of the trains coming and leaving the impersonal train station, the girl waiting and waving, the hope that the mother comes back and takes the little girl with her brings the reader into the author's world. Trying to understand what was wrong with her, we found out in the last chapter that the mother had a mental illness. Inexplicable to others - people who never experience extreme relationships in their lives - Linda Joy makes peace with her and her mother. She understands that her mother was the victim of mental illness and she genuinely forgives her. I recommend the book to anyone who wants to read and explore a hidden world of abuse, understanding, and forgiveness. While some readers might get personally involved during the reading, don't forget that this is a real story and the craft of relating it is unique. It is a good read and at the end, I decided to be a better mother myself. So thank you, Linda Joy!

The parent-child relationship is fraught with many complexities and probably no more so than the mother-daughter relationship. What is it about women who fail at being good mothers to their daughters? Are they repeating the same patterns of their own mothers? Are they suffering from a lack of role models? Have they been silenced as women? Are they victims of an "old system" where women resorted to wiles and sexuality in order to escape the deadening lives of their mothers and their mothers' mothers? In this memoir, the reader is taken on a journey of enormous psychological complexity that offers up possible answers. We are caught in the grip - and the horror - of a mother's denial and abandonment of her child; in this case, the child is the author. We see the author's grandmother in a contentious, competitive and verbally abusive relationship with her daughter. These are women who chain smoke their way into silent rage, suddenly erupting in vicious outbursts and projecting onto their daughters and granddaughters their own shortcomings and pain. The lack of career coupled with a desperate desire to find validation and acceptance both from society and family drive the patterns of abandonment and lack of personal accountability; unconscionable actions that result in an innocent child's suffering. Descriptions of Josephine, Linda Joy's mother, are ones many women will identify; the need to be the center of attention, using beauty and sexuality to gain the attention of a man, often to the derision of family . . . What makes the story particularly tragic is that Josephine views her daughter, Linda Joy, as a liability in attracting a man and being truthful about her real age. Later, much later, in this memoir the author reveals what we had long suspected - that Josephine is suffering from an undiagnosed psychological disorder. Meanwhile, the author is left to grapple with demons centering on issues of abandonment, yet never until the end of her mother's life giving up on trying, yet again and again to gain her mother's love and attention. The book felt overwhelming in story line, taking in a great-grandmother, grandmother, cousins, aunts and uncles - lyrical descriptions of the Iowa countryside . . . at times drifting away from what was most riveting - who are these women and what makes them tick, seeing them in action, up close and personal. It seemed the author had so much to say about so many things, while at the same time mining her own psyche . . . losing illusions, pedophilia, family secrets, that the book could have been broken into at least two separate memoirs. In fact, Myers describes "Don't Call Me Mother" as a "long and winding path." In the final analysis, this reader's hat goes off to Linda Joy's faith in the power of memoir as a healing and empowering genre. As the founder of a women's writing circle encouraging women to find their voice through memoir, I would urge memoir writers to place "Don't Call Me Mother," on their reading list . . . to join the author on her courageous attempt to make sense of what is often unfathomable . . . and finding therein at least some acceptance, understanding and forgiveness.

Linda Joy Myers' memoir, Don't Call Me Mother, reads like a novel. It explores the life of a child growing up without the fundamental nurturing of her mother, and her struggles to over-come the psychological damage that has wrought. Linda Joy's mother, Josephine, left her when she was four years old. She and Linda had moved in with Lulu, her Grandmother, but Josephine and her mother never got along, and Josephine soon left to return to Chicago. Josephine and her estranged husband, Blain, decided that Linda should live with Vera, and Charlie and their four children and Gram, as Linda called her grandmother, reluctantly handed her over. Life with Vera was a nightmare for Linda. The rules were strict and any transgression punished with a ping-pong paddle. The child lived in constant terror. After about a year she was allowed to visit Gram, and Gram, noticing Linda's failure to thrive, decided to take her back and raise her by herself. This did not end Linda's difficulties. Gram, initially kind and loving, morphed into a Jekyll and Hyde personality and eventually became as abusive as Vera had been. Instead of a ping-pong paddle, she used a wooden yardstick to inflict punishment. During Linda's childhood, her mother and father would both make brief appearances and then, just as quickly, go back to their own lives, leaving Linda starving for their love. There are, however bright spots in Linda's life. Her Gram's family in Idaho provides a loving refuge for her during the summers, and a kind and wonderful music teacher takes her under his wing and mentors her, encouraging her to take up the Cello. Through her music she meets her best friend Jody and her first love, Keith. The mother-child bond is the most fundamental of human relationships, and nothing is more difficult for a child than to come to terms with the fact that a mother is so completely damaged that she is incapable of loving. It took Linda many years to make peace with this fact. Linda became determined to break the multi-generational pattern of inadequate parenting and to adequately nurture her own children, and she now takes pride in her accomplishment. Don't Call Me Mother is compelling and absorbing from beginning to end.

The author portrays the story so you believe you are there, she has been through very desperate times but every time she was knocked back, instead of staying Down she came right back and got on with her life. I wish her very well in the future

To think that this is a true story makes it all the more poignant. Well written without self pity. To be surrounded by so many selfish nasty people. Thank goodness the Author has broken that family mould