Memoir: Mothers and Daughters -- When Fate Interrupts the Bond 

 

 

Pieces of My Mother: A Memoir by Melissa Cistaro                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

 
Melissa Cistaro was a small child when her mother left her and her two older brothers in their father's care.

The author is a poet and a writer, and she has penned this sensitively told story of a mother who believed she could not take care of her three children. The mother's leaving caused invisible scars on the three children -- most notably on Melissa, who was three when her mother packed up and left. Melissa did see her mother at other times, but short visits do not make up for caring for a child. 

The author wanted to visit her mother as her mother was dying, in an attempt to piece together reasons why her mother had originally left.  The basic narrative is searing. Bonds between mothers and children run deep and when rifts form wounds, often these wounds cannot heal easily. 

The author does seem to find some answers to why her mother left and does seem to find some relief for the life-long anguish this caused. Any relief the author feels is transferred directly to the reader. Anguish the author feels in being left or in not having her pain fully healed also transfers directly to the reader. This isn't a flaw in the story. Not at all. It's simply real life.





Saving Millie: A Daughter's Story of Surviving Her Mother's Schizophrenia by Tina Kotulski


 
It took more than 20 years for doctors to diagnose the author's mother, Millie, as a paranoid schizophrenic -- and during this time -- Millie's  daughters Susan and Tina, were subjected to Millie's irrational behavior and moods.



Tina's father left Millie early in Susan and Tina's life, and the two girls were under the care of a woman who was not under proper medical care.  The girls were not properly cared for -- they weren't properly fed or dressed or looked after by a stable, caring adult. 

At times, the girls left their mother to live with other relatives, but this was not a healthy arrangement either.  When Tina was still a teenager, the instability in her life caused by her ill mother caused Tina to attempt to take her own life. By the time both daughters were adults Millie was finally correctly diagnosed and treated, which helped both girls to see their mother in a new life and to actually help their mother.

My Mother's Keeper: A Daughter's Memoir of Growing Up in the Shadow of Mental Illness by Tara Elgin Holley and Joe Holley

Tara Elgin Holley's mother, Dawn Elgin, was a relatively well-known singer who came from a well-off family and who had sung in Hollywood and New York, but developed paranoid schizophrenia as an adult. 

Tara, with the help of her journalist husband Joe Holley, wrote this most-engrossing memoir of Tara's mother, Dawn and of Dawn's childhood, Dawn's rise to a small piece of stardom and Dawn's abrupt fall into schizophrenia. An incisive look into the torture that paranoid schizophrenia creates for the mentally ill and in the problems this creates for family members. There is hope and much helpful insight in this book.