Motherless Daughters: The Legacy of Loss

In the tradition of Passagesand My Mother, My Self, thisunique, personal, and ground-breaking NewYork Times best-seller -- the first ofits kind -- explores the profound pain of motherloss among women and is available here for thefirst time in paperback. When my mother died,I knew no woman my age who had experienced motherloss. I felt utterly and irrevocably alone. Incollege, where new friends knew only as much aboutme as I was willing to reveal, I told few peoplemy mother had died. I searched the universitylibrary and local bookstoresfor writings aboutmother loss. In each book I found aboutmother-daughter relationships, I quickly flipped ahead to thechapter about a mother's death, but discoveredthey all assumed the reader would be in her fortiesor fifties when her mother dies. I was eighteen. --excerpt from MotherlessDaughters.

Not only for motherlessdaughters, but for all women who want to betterunderstand the mother/daughter relationship, thisbeautifully written work inspired an AnnaQuindlen column; appeared in the New York Times, Ingram,Barnes & Noble, and San Francisco best-sellerlists; and received an extraordinary amount ofmedia attention including a feature on The TodayShow. Hope Edelman lost her mother to breast cancerwhen she was eighteen. Unable to find a book tohelp her understand and cope with that loss, shedecided to write her own. She posted noticesasking motherless women to share their experienceswith her, and was unprepared for both the number ofresponses she received, and for their emotionalintensity. Eventually meeting with 92 women andsurveying 154 by mail, Hope was able to compare howmother loss affects daughters differentlydepending on their ages, their relationships to theirmothers, their father's attitude, and the supportor dependency of siblings. But more importantHope's book explores what these women share -- a voidin their lives they cannot seem to fill. Theircommon experiences and insights will helpmotherless daughters, and those who care about them, cometo better understand how this painful loss shapeslives forever.