“I always wondered about the people who do that. I know the trail is up there,” she said, waving her hand westward, “but I’ve never been on it.” She came closer and for a moment I thought she’d try to give me a hug, but she only patted my arm. “You’re not alone, are you?” When I nodded, she laughed and put a hand to her chest. “And what on earth does your mother have to say about that?” ~ meeting Christine, page 147 of Wild by Cheryl Strayed
The catalyst for Strayed’s eventual PCT hike is her struggle with mother’s unexpected death.
The discovery that her mother is going to die, which happens more quickly and more awfully than anyone in the family could have imagined, takes place early in the book.
Strayed becomes a motherless daughter, to coin the title of Hope Edelman’s landmark 1995 book.
What does it mean to be motherless?
How does it feel to be motherless?
How is the concept of being motherless explored in the book?
Does motherlessness play a role in your life? Does it play a role in all of our lives?
Is mothering important or not important to each of us and to our collective future?
In what ways does this story restore a sense of mothering for Strayed and for the reader?
Comments on this entry are closed.
The loneliness of being motherless is something that you never, every recover from. Like many losses, the emotions change, the guilt weakens but the instances where you want to pick up the phone and ask her a question….the times when she was the only person in the world who knew the right hugs or words to comfort you are irreplaceable.
To be motherless is to be without an anchor, to be forced to self-soothe, to bolster your own ego, to see yourself through your own eyes. I shared my mother with two younger sisters before I turned five and a third when I was nine. I lost her entirely to early-onset Alzheimer’s before I birthed my first son at age 23. I read Edelman’s book when it came out. By then I was on marriage number three, mother to adult children – two sons, two stepsons, and the first of three daughters, this one Korean, adopted at age ten. Two Russian teens, best friends, became our daughters in 2000 and 2001.
While “all” may be too broad, I think most of us eventually find a way to provide a way to mother ourselves, learning that our mothers have their own identity and path not completely aligned with our own. That sense of separateness came to me earlier than I would have preferred, and probably led to my own desire to mother daughters. That experience felt somewhat like walking the PCT – brutal and punishing but not without lessons and rewards.
I am not motherless. My mother lives with me and my family, so you could call me Mother-ful. But I can understand how Cheryl lost her center when her mother died. At her young age, she hadn’t established her own identity separate from her mother’s, and she spun wildly out of control when her center–her mother–died. Compounded by the fact of already being fatherless, I admired her physical, spiritual and psychological journey to find herself, to figure out who she was separate from her mother.
I can see similar emotions in my own daughters. We adopted both girls, and I see them both clinging intensely to me while also pushing me away and trying to understand and cope with their birthmothers and the feelings of abandonment that are inevitable when you are placed for adoption.
I want to tackle the question: Is mothering important or not to each of us and our collective future?
What I love about this book is that, unlike many of the books we read in my college women’s studies class, the narrator does not die at the end. She does not die of shame for her mistakes. She does not die of guilt for not measuring up to external standards. She does not go crazy or doubt herself. She is sexual…and yet, she lives.
This may not seem breakthrough in this day and age. But I assure you, it is a breakthrough. Women and women’s stories are still breaking through are still trying to find a place in the cannon of stories about life and living and being human. And I feel that this story of a women learning to mother herself and heal the hole in her heart after the loss of her real mother is deserving of a place in the cannon of literature. We need more books about the heroine’s journey. And this book deserves to be among them.
I remember the day I realized that my mother’s life (an only daughter with 2 brothers) was different than mine (the middle of nine daughters.) I lost my father when I was 28 and couldn’t believe the pain it caused. My children were almost grown when my mother died and it was a different kind of horrible. I have all sons so I miss the mother-daughter bond of female experiences (although my many sisters help). No matter how old I am, there are always times when I ache to confide in, get guidance from, and simply enjoy my mother. I married a widower with 3 small sons (7, 2, and 9 mo. when their mother died of cancer at age 31.) I know first hand what losing a mother young does to a male and I know what losing a mother as an adult did to me. I could cry at this moment. Good relationship or bad relationship, I think everyone on earth is affected by the loss of their parents.
Yes, being motherless does affect one’s life. My mother passed in 1991 and I still reach for the phone to call and relate something that I think would interest her. I’m glad to say that she and I had made our amends from when I was young and knew everything. Cheryl Strayed book helped me realize that fact.
I had a mother and still do, but my mother lost her mother when she was young, like fifteen. I don’t think I could really relate to that. I mean, my mother is alive still. But reading this book brought that horror alive in a way that was unavoidable. I experienced everything right along with the narrator, and even though I was afraid to read the book away from home after that, I feel now that I really got something powerful from the experience. Thank you, Cheryl Strayed. And I’m really sorry that you had to go through that. I liked the parts where Cheryl relayed that she could feel her mother’s presence. That was comforting to me, too.
I am not motherless in the sense that my mother is alive (and in fact lives right down the block) but for a variety of reasons within and outside of her control, she was not able to give me the mothering I needed as a small child and I have always carried inside of me a little girl who feels motherless. I feel envious when I hear women talk about wanting to call their moms up for advice or just to chat. I don’t have that kind of relationship with my mother. My relationship with my mother is kind of a lonely one. We don’t connect, even when we are in the room together. We don’t get each other. I almost said she doesn’t get me, but to be fair I probably don’t really get her either. In spite of all that, and after years in therapy and now having a daughter of my own, I think I have been able to forgive my mother for quite a lot. I know she did the best she could with what she had. I know she loves me. I work hard at having a relationship with her but also maintaining the distance I need to not get too hurt. I have had time to come around from angry to forgiveness and understanding and I think that process is so important.
Strayed touches on this near the end of the book, noting that her process was truncated and that she lost her mother when she was still young and arrogant (I think that was the description she used but I don’t have my book handy). Part of her grieving was grieving that process of pulling away and then coming back.
So very, very true. I don’t think time makes those urges to pick up the phone diminish at all–the opposite, in fact.
That is exactly one of the big, BIG things I took away from this book, Christina–that the author did not curl up and hide from mortification or guilt. She knows WHY she is spinning out of control and at some point she begins to truly believe that by taking the next breath, she will go on. How she will go on or what will happen, she is clueless about of course…but she opens her eyes, gets up and takes the next step.
Wow, just wow. I’m really enjoying our discussion here and how it lets me stay within the book a bit longer. I was planning to share my copy but I think it will be awhile before I do so…maybe I’ll just buy my sister her own copy 🙂
As a motherless daughter myself, I view ‘motherless’ as lacking a mother’s unconditional love and dependable guidance in this physical life. Whether it be due to death or other loss such as abandonment–physical or emotional–the lack of a solid mothering presence is profound on some level at all ages, I think.Being motherless feels rudderless, the great anchor is gone…the continent has slipped beneath the ocean, sinking. (I think C.S. Lewis said something like that upon the loss of his mother) Life goes on–and often gloriously so– but the stability upon which it was built is shattered.As for how the concept of being motherless is explored in the book, I think it’s not so much explored as experienced and chronicled. The author knows her loss is why she’s spinning out of control but is–as of earlier in the book–unable to stop it. NOT powerless, but drowning in grief. Life does go on without one’s mother, but I think it’s a harsher, less gentle life.Lastly, ways that this story restores a sense of mothering for Strayed and for the reader? I don’t think a sense of mothering is restored so much as I think a strength to carry on is found. Yes, you’re rudderless. Yes, you’re drowning in grief. No, you cannot replace your mother and all she was to/for you. But you can survive and even thrive.Long comment, I know…but I wanted to answer several of the discussion questions…I couldn’t pick just one or two.
I agree- I too was struck that it was ok to be sexual, maybe more poignant for middled aged people. Learning to mother onesself is challenging even if you are not motherless.
I am blessed in that my mother is still alive but a year ago I once again moved across the country from her and I feel that loss simply by being separated by time zones and distance. I think no matter how old you are there are days when we all crave our mommy, so for one small moment we don’t have to be in charge.
That’s a lof of big questions!! And she is also fatherless as well. It’s all so big. This idea gave me a lot of food for thought. I’m not exactly motherless, but I suffered from a motherless FEELING for much of my life. Instead of choosing a huge physical challenge like Cheryl did, I literally fed my hunger by overeating and undermoving. It wasn’t until I emotionally let go of wanting to be mothered (in my late 40s!) that I was able to start trusting my body, undertaking physical challenges, losing weight etc. So I found this aspect of the book really fascinating.
Thanks for sharing, Deb. 🙂
Very true, Sue. Thanks for saying that.
My husband’s grandmother just passed away last week and I agree that losing a family member is huge, but it’s even bigger when it’s your parent. It’s not happened to me, but how could it be otherwise?
Thanks for sharing this, Dona. I think a lot of women can relate to this point of view.
Thanks, Dana. Great comments. No need to apologize!
True that, Sue. 🙂
Thanks, Susan.
The desire to so keep her mother with her, that prompted her to swallow a couple of the “burnt bones” she held back when her mother’s “ashes” were buried….then, right after that part in the book, but back in the present, she said her mother’s name out loud and “truly understood that she was my mother, but also more.” What a clearly-seen voyage. Then later, near the end, when she wondered where her mother was…”I’d carried her so long, staggering beneath her weight (beautiful writing). ‘On the other side of the river,’ I let myself think. And something inside of me released.” That amazing, incredible push-pull of wanting to hold onto the mother, and the ability to let go. We all have to do this, in our own way and our own time.
Being motherless plays a huge part in my life. Mine died fairly rapidly of brain cancer, a little more than three months ago. But here’s the incredibly poignant thing about this book: in contrast, my mother was 82 and already in fairly poor health; I am in my mid-fifties. So the particulars for me are much different (aside from the rapid progression of cancer) than the author’s. And yet, I found myself saying almost out loud, more than once…yes. That’s exactly how it feels….she was able to express feelings I hadn’t yet been able to put words to, and in that, our experiences were more alike than not. I think that, whatever our particular version, the story of becoming motherless affects us all. Unites us all. That was something I took from this particular telling.
While I read this book, I thought often of my friends who have lost their mothers at a young age–both my friends and their mothers–to disease, and of my parents, who have both lost their mothers. Though they lost them at a more “normal” age for more “normal” reasons, their wounds are still raw; they still feel adrift.
Quest. #2 for Wild
I don’t have my book to refer to, to help me remember – and really wish I had it still in my hands. I became motherless a month shy of being 5.
She too died of cancer. I want to go back and read this part, to see if I too “think differently” about a heavy subject for me still. I connected to a fellow book club contributor. And I wondered if I read it so fast, I didn’t remember my “think differently” moments. I don’t think I had/have that special feeling of my mother always with me. I was too young.