Every May, we explore and celebrate the concept of motherhood: the incredibly loving act of caring for another.
And while we may not all be mothers in the traditional sense, we all have experience with our own sense of mothering and what that conjures up for us.
Here’s a list of books that explore the concept of motherhood.
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The Stories We Tell: Every Piece of Your Story Matters by Joanna Gaines
This book is calling to us and for us. It’s calling for us to get quiet and honor our inner selves and our innermost thoughts, dreams and wishes that we might have kept hidden for quite some time. It’s a book to be devoured for the clear, compelling call to action to find ourselves, but it’s also a book to be read slowly and to journal alongside. If I’m honest, I had a hard time reading this. I wanted to rush through the goodness, to get to the next chapter that seemed to be better than the last, to find the wisdom that I was carefully annotating and recording in my notebook. But Joanna’s writing begs to be savored, reread and internalized in a way that I’m not used to living. And that’s the point. This book is for everyone who wants to find themselves again by telling their stories, disrupting their automatic ways of thinking and living and embracing the stillness, the pause and yes, the fun.
Things I Wish I Told My Mother by Susan Patterson & Susan DiLallo with James Patterson
Well. This novel has my heart. In it, we meet Dr. Liz and Laurie, a mother and daughter who set off on a vacation to Paris and Norway to reconnect after Dr. Liz’s health scare. What follows is an adventure in living and learning about each other. Each of them brings a very unique personality and way of living to the trip and we see the ups and downs of mother-daughter relationships run its course over their time together. Secrets are revealed, sentiments are shared and bonds grow. And then the reader is left in unexpected pieces with the plot twist of a lifetime. This book will make you call home and hold your loved ones tight.
I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy
This memoir was honest, raw and quite frankly, shocking. Just as we cannot judge a book by its cover, we cannot truly know a person from their public persona. My own children loved watching Jennette McCurdy as Sam in iCarly and we adopted a weekly spaghetti taco tradition as a result. But underneath the cute, perky personality many have come to love was a girl struggling under the weight of her mother’s unhealthy expectations and emotions, a long battle with an eating disorder and a life that she did not feel good living. This book chronicles her journey and readers will be entranced from the beginning, cheering her on with every turning page.
The Parenting Map: Step-By-Step Solutions to Consciously Create the Ultimate Parent-Child Relationship by Shefali Tsabary
Every parent is capable of raising happy, healthy, and emotionally grounded children. Despite this, too many of us struggle along the journey. From the fast-changing realities of social media to the fear that permeates our culture, to the generational expectations that are unconsciously placed on children, the pressures on parents and children have reached a critical moment. We feel it and our children feel it. But there is a solution.
Three More Months by Sarah Echavarre
Oh, what a powerful book this was. Echavarre introduces us to Chloe, a high-achieving workaholic who has let her work take over her life in multiple ways. Burdened with guilt at the lack of time she’s given her mother, she takes a day off of work to visit only to learn of her mother’s sudden death. Stricken with grief, she falls into a deep depression filled with regret over her misguided attention to work and not family (and as someone who works a bit too much, that hit me hard). But inexplicably, she wakes on the day of her mother’s funeral to find her mother in the kitchen, not a hair out of place. Questioning the reality of these turn of events, but grateful for another chance, she makes the decisions she should have made: helping her mother get healthier, spending time with family, repairing relationship rifts and getting her priorities straight. Then something happens that unravels Chloe yet again, but just might bring her peace in the end.
What We Carry: A Memoir by Maya Shanbhag Lang
This book was a beautifully written, highly addictive avalanche of emotions from cover to cover. I came into this book expecting to gain insight into Maya’s life and relationship with her mother, hopeful that I could learn from her stories to better write my own. Instead, I gained an insight into my own life, my own expectations, my own relationships, my own sense of motherhood and mothering. I laughed, I cried and I cried some more as Maya seemed to speak directly to me, leaving me with lessons on the page that I could not escape. I do not have the words to adequately state how much this book has truly impacted my heart, so I’ll just leave it at this: This book has forever changed how I view myself, my mother, motherhood and the tangled bonds woven between each.
Burst by Mary Otis
Well, this novel is aptly titled. Burst by Mary Otis literally burst off the page and into my heart. It’s a book with mother-daughter relationships at the core, as complicated and loving they might be. Charlotte and Viva are fiercely connected, but completely different. The book follows each of their stories as they weave back and forth from past to present, mother to daughter, frustration to love. Each grapple with their own identity, how intricately connected they are to each other and how to become free of what’s holding them back. I was completely invested, thoroughly taken with each of their stories and rooting for them both, helping me look at my own mother-daughter relationships with new eyes.
Women Are the Fiercest Creatures by Andrea Dunlop
I dare you to read the prologue and not postpone the rest of your to-do list until you’ve read this book. =) It is that good. In it, we meet Anna, Sam and Jessica, three women who have fallen for the same man at different points of their lives and have paid the price for it. As each of them reckon with the choices they’ve made and dare to think about a different future, we see how their stories come together in powerfully shocking ways. Women really are the fiercest creatures and this book embodies that belief. It’s a must read.
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Oh, my goodness, this book took my heart by storm. I started the book thinking I’d learn about gardening and new beginnings and turned the last page with a new understanding of motherhood, marriage and much, much more. The novel begins with Maud leaving her California home for a landscaping job in upstate New York. But this move isn’t just for her career, it’s a trial separation from her husband, too. When she’s there, she throws herself into her work, imagines a new life for herself and even meets someone she might share it with. But an unexpected event changes everything and Maud is left reeling from the damage. This book will leave you wondering if and how a family can heal and what the price of staying quiet will cost everyone. I can’t stop thinking about the lessons inside the pages of this book.
