SOS Wednesday Book Club Pick — What My Mother Gave Me
We chose this as our book of the week because as mothers, it’s often hard to know what it is our children will take away from our relationships.
It’s time for our SOS Wednesday Book Club Pick and this week, we’ve selected, What My Mother Gave Me: Thirty-One Women on the Gifts That Mattered Most, edited by Elizabeth Benedict. It’s a collection of essays contributed by writers, authors, memoirists, poets, journalists, activists, novelists, a minister and other remarkable and accomplished women who reflect on their mothers’ contributions to their lives and their mother-daughter relationship.
We chose this as our book of the week because as mothers, it’s often hard to know what it is our children will take away from our relationships. As daughters, it’s good to be reminded of how our mothers have influenced us and as women, it’s important to remember that we are all part of a continuum of giving and taking that has influenced the history of women.
What are the gifts these writers were grateful for? A scarf, photo, boat trip, cracked vase, cake pan and a quilt. They received silence, betrayal and absence. There were birthdays, Christmases and holidays. Above all, their mothers gave them a sense of womanhood that all the authors are grateful for.
We talked among ourselves here at Every Mother Counts about the things our mothers had given us and came up with these musings:
Christy Turlington Burns, EMC’s founder says: While I am just grateful to still have my mother in my life, the gifts she gave me that mattered most were the ones she gave herself: Mothering my sisters and me, traveling the world and continuing her education. The fact that she was born in El Salvador provided me with an early connection to a larger world than the one I would have known otherwise. Like me, she figured out a way to travel the world. She worked for Pan Am as a Flight Attendant in the 60’s before becoming a mom to my two sisters and me. She’s never stopped practicing or trying new languages and returned to college in her early 50’s, which showed me that it’s never too late to go back, I got my undergraduate degree from NYU at 30. At 74, she continues to rival me in air miles on an annual basis and has a list of the countries she plans to visit taped on her fridge in order of priority. I think I may follow her footsteps forever.
Jeanne Faulkner, EMC’s writer says: The gift my mother gave me that mattered most was her willingness to have me at all. I’m the youngest of eight children and was born when my mother was 42, just 18 months after my next oldest sibling. In another family, to another mother, the opportunity to live this life wouldn’t have been guaranteed. Eight is a lot of children to raise, clothe, educate, feed and live with and I’m grateful she was willing to have me at all. Later, when a young relative discovered she was pregnant with an unexpected baby, my mother told her she’d never regret having that baby. Some call them mistakes, some call them surprises, but my mother always called unexpected babies gifts. Now that I’m a mother myself and a couple of my children were gifts, I know she was absolutely right.
Jessica Bowers, EMC’s portfolio manager says: My mother instilled a strong sense of justice and fairness in us. This went hand in hand with a certain idealism, which together probably fostered in us a feeling of outrage at any injustice we saw and a determination to do something about it. She also gave me, and so did my dad, a love of books, reading and language, which I see carried on in my daughter. She also imparted a propensity for being direct that has gotten me in trouble from time to time.
Danielle Cohen, EMC’s Social Media Assistant says: My siblings– my brother and my sister are my best friends. And an education. I’d be entirely lost without both of those things.
Pick up this book and read with us this week then tell us about the gifts your mother gave you by posting on our Facebook page.
