By Hope Edelman (1994), Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Reading, Massachusetts.
"Ask any woman whose mother has died and she will tell you that she is irrevocably altered, as profoundly changed by her mother's death as she was by her mother's life....Based on interviews with hundreds of mother-loss survivors, and chronicling the author's own brave search for healing, this life-affirming book reveals: how the absence of a nurturing hand shapes a woman's identity; why living beyond a mother's final year reminds a daughter of her exquisite separateness; how present-day relationships are defined by past losses; what the unmothered woman can do to reclaim her autonomy...; how to understand grief: not as a passage, but as an ongoing journey." Back cover.
The Loss That Is Forever, The Lifelong Impact of the Early Death of a Mother or Father
By Maxine Harris (1995) Penguin Books, New York, NY
"The death of a parent before a child reaches adulthood is a cataclysmic event that forever scars that child. No assumption, no expectation, no belief, can remain the same...The Loss That Is Forever provides a thoughtful framework for understanding the impact that early loss has on every aspect of adult development...The book also explores the relationship with the surviving parent; fantasies of 'what might have been'; intimate relationships; staying in touch with the lost parent through pictures, objects, and rituals; perespective on the future and one's own mortality." -- Back cover.
Motherless Mothers, How Mother Loss Shapes the Parents We Become
By Hope Edelman (2006), Harper Collins Publishers, New York, NY (Colleen Russell is quoted in the book)
"Using her own story as a prism, Edelman reveals the unique anxieties and desires (motherless mothers) experience as they raise their children without the help of a living maternal guide. She examines their parenting choices, their unexpected triumphs, and their fears, from the initial decision to have a child, through pregnancy, the delivery room, and the child-rearing years. Identifying 'Eight Themes of Motherless Mothers' that cut across all racial, ethnic, and socio-economic lines, Edelman illuminates how the experience of loss directly impacts the ways in which these women parent their own children.'" -- Inside flap.
