Don’t Call Me Mother

“In this new edition of her memoir, Linda Joy Myers illustrates just how powerful the combination of memory confronted, forgiveness offered, and new love expressed, can be. What I admire most about this book is the way the author takes you to her most sustaining love — the prairie land of the Midwest — and concludes her story as a return to that place where forgiveness becomes “a feather on my heart, as natural as the plains wind.”
-Shirley Showalter, former president of Goshen College, author of the blog I Have a Story.

“I wanted to tell the secret stories that my great-grandmother Blanche whispered to me on summer nights in a featherbed in Iowa. I was eight and she was eighty . . .”

At the age of four, a little girl stands on a cold, windy railroad platform in Wichita, Kansas, watching a train take her mother away. For the rest of her life, her mother will be an only occasional—and always troubled—visitor who denies her the love she longs for.

Linda Joy Myers’s compassionate, gripping, and soul-searching memoir tells the story of three generations of daughters who, though determined to be different from their absent mothers, ultimately follow in their footsteps, recreating a pattern that they yearn to break. Accompany Linda as she uncovers family secrets, seeks solace in music, and begins her healing journey—ultimately transcending the prison of her childhood and finding forgiveness for her family and herself.

This edition includes a new afterword in which Myers confronts her family’s legacy and comes full circle with her daughter and grandchildren, seeding a new path for them.

Author: Linda Joy Myers

Publication Date: February 1, 2013

 

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“In this new edition of her memoir, Linda Joy Myers illustrates just how powerful the combination of memory confronted, forgiveness offered, and new love expressed, can be. What I admire most about this book is the way the author takes you to her most sustaining love — the prairie land of the Midwest — and concludes her story as a return to that place where forgiveness becomes “a feather on my heart, as natural as the plains wind.”
-Shirley Showalter, former president of Goshen College, author of the blog I Have a Story.

“Don’t Call Me Mother takes me deep inside the mind of a young girl who has been spurned by that most important person in her life, her own mother. Without a guide to help her develop into a woman, Linda Joy is forced into a vulnerable, innovative search for dignity and survival that is at the heart of every hero’s tale.”
-Jerry Waxler, M.S., founder of the Memory Writers Network, author of Memoir Revolution, and Four Elements for Writers.

“With poetically visceral prose, Linda Joy Myers tells of her relentless work to emerge from an abandoned and abused child to a forgiving and loving daughter, mother, and grandmother. This must-read memoir brings her raw dark secrets to life. I couldn’t tear myself away.”
-Madeline Sharples, author of Leaving the Hall Light On.

“Linda Joy Myers eloquently renders the details of her past in this transformative memoir, allowing all of us to find redemption through her honest courage. For anyone yearning for self-discovery, Don’t Call Me Mother serves as a compelling guide on a journey to wholeness. I loved the book.”
-Michele Weldon, assistant professor, Northwestern University and author of I Closed My Eyes, and Writing to Save Your Life.

“The new afterword pulls back the veil and lays bare the actual healing power of memoir. Poignant, visceral, and triumphant, this new section left me shaken and stunned with its raw beauty. As a reader, I felt I was witnessing transformation.”
-Kathleen Adams LPC, Author, Journal to the Self and Scribing the Soul, Director of Center for Journal Therapy and Therapeutic Writing Institute.

About the Author

Linda Joy Myers, PhD, MFT, is president and founder of the National Association of Memoir Writers. Her memoir Don’t Call Me Mother: A Daughter’s Journey from Abandonment to Forgiveness was a finalist for the Foreword Book of the Year Award and a finalist in the Indie Excellence Awards and won the BAIPA Gold Medal award. She’s the author of three books on memoir writing: The Power of Memoir: How to Write Your Healing Story; Journey of Memoir; and Becoming Whole. Her new memoir, Time Present and Time Past: A Daughter’s Search for Truth, will be released by She Writes Press in 2017. Myers writes for the Huffington Post, and her passion is to help people capture their stories through coaching, editing, and nationwide online workshops. She co-teaches the program Write your Memoir in Six Months with Brooke Warner, and is the coauthor of Breaking Ground on Your Memoir.

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