An instant bestseller in both hardcover and paperback, Hope Edelman's Motherless Daughters explores the myriad ways that losing a mother can affect almost every aspect and passage of a woman's life. First published a decade ago, it is still the book that motherless daughters of all ages look to for understanding and comfort and that they press into each other's hands. Building on interviews with hundreds of mother- loss survivors, this life-affirming book is now newly expanded to reflect the author's personal experience with the continued legacy of mother loss; now married and a mother of young children herself, Edelman better understands how the effects of mother loss change over time and in light of new relationships. A work of stunning courage and honesty, Motherless Daughters is a must read for the millions of women whose mothers have gone, but whose need for healing, mourning, and mothering remains. It is a timeless classic.

Amazon.com Review
Edelman shares her own painful story and the stories of many other women who, as children or adults, lost their mothers. She explains the stages of grief and adjustment. She considers the secondary effects that can occur: the girl-child filling the lost mother's role at home for father and younger siblings. If you've lost your mother, you no longer have to face it alone.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 104 reviews)

Motherless Daughter in the midst of healing

I wish this book had been available sooner. I lost my mother to breast cancer when I was 13 years old. I am now 55. This book has helped me put the last 42 years of my life into prespective. I was the oldest child in the family and was given the task of becoming a caretaker and housekeeper for my father and two younger children. This book helped me to understand the many areas of my life and my thinking that were touched by the aftermath of my mother's illness and death. Anyone looking to understand the legacy of a mother's death should read this book. Have a box of kleenex near by, it will touch your heart. Thank you Hope Edelman for baring your soul to bring understanding and healing into other motherless daughter's lives.
September 14, 2008

This is helpful at any age!

I lost my Mom when I was an adult of 32. Even though this book goes through different age stages, I was able to find something in each section that related to me. We all grieve differently if you are a young child or an adult. My Mom was my friend and confidant and there were still things that she missed when she passed on including my marriage and my child. I absolutely recommend this book to anyone and I'm going to order one for a friend who just lost their Mom.
May 15, 2008

Such a helpful book

My mother died when I was 11 and now I'm 22 and getting married. I was really feeling bad about her not being at my wedding and I was dealing with a lot of stress and anxiety. This book helped me so much in realizing why I was the way I was growing up and what I can expect along the way. I would highly recommend this book for any daughter that has ever lost a mother, even if she wasn't lost through death.
May 11, 2008

SHE READ MY MIND

I lost my mother to cancer a month after I graduated from high school, 2 months before leaving for college. I thought no one else out there could imagine what I was going through. My Dad remarried a few years later, he got a new wife but I was still left without a mom. He bought me this book as a gift one year, I read it cover to cover in one sitting. There were women out there who knew exactly how I felt, what I was feeling. I couldn't believe it. I have bought this book for five other women since then, all who lost their moms at different stages of their life for different reasons. Everyone of them loved the book. I have recently bought the workbook and have been going through it. It is a great companion to this book.
April 02, 2008

Painfully Beautiful

This book did what 34 years of therapy with expensive and highly degreed therapists could not do. I lost my mother emotionally at the age of 12. While this book starts out addressing the physical death of a mother, it very well includes all kinds of losses that damage the mother-daughter relationship. My mother went from a warm, loving, nurturing parent who baked all the time and kept a clean house to a paranoid, delusional,slovenly woman who was never home, and who was physically abusive when she was; a woman who could not criticize me deeply and thoroughly enough. There were probably lots of reasons for that, none of them having anything to do with me. But at 12, how was I to know? I just thought she didn't love me anymore. I could not please her. At 16, I stopped trying, ran away from home and learned how to live on the streets.

This loss colored my life for the rest of my life, and it took every ounce of strength, energy and intellect to untangle the mess. This book shed some very crucial light on the deepest wound my soul carries. I know a closeness with my mother because of that painful bond that is a combination of pleasure and pain that is part and parcel of who I am. Today, thanks to Hope Edelman, I understand that bond (and the bond I have with my daughter)so much better.
March 04, 2008

SIMILAR PRODUCTS

Letters from Motherless Daughters: Words of Courage, Grief, and Healing
by Hope Edelman

A Mother Loss Workbook: Healing Exercises for Daughters
by Diane Hambrook

Motherless Mothers: How Losing a Mother Shapes the Parent You Become
by Hope Edelman

Motherless Mothers: How Mother Loss Shapes the Parents We Become
by Hope Edelman

Feathers Brush My Heart: True Stories of Mothers Connecting with Their Daughters After Death
by Sinclair Browning