The first letter…
A journalist friend of mine once told me some things you write just need to be kept to yourself for a while. Your write them, put them away, only to revisit them at a later date and fine tune the final product. I have wanted to write more about my loss of my mother for some time. **Caution** mental intensity coming to the page as I start to finalize this journey of mine.
Every time I sit down and write a blog post about running, cycling or hiking etc. I try to keep most of it light and funny. A mile for every day of life, by jove! Life should be joyous and wonderful. Deep down I know why and whom I am writing this for and about, my Mother. As I slowly whittle down these miles I often have glimpses of her spirit, why I’m doing this, would she approve, and dealing with the change and emptiness of loss from a child to an adult woman. I have attempted to incorporate those feelings from time to time on how I feel about her loss. Bringing those experiences to the forefront on how this loss has shaped me into the person I am today. (I see my friends going…oh yeah LOL!)
I wanted to buy a book on losing your mother for a long time. Not really sure why I didn’t, until just recently. Between buying a juicer and socks on Amazon I happened to type in “losing your mother”. I finally picked two books. We’ll start with the first book by Hope Edelman, Motherless Daughters. Oookay, this shouldn’t be too bad, right?
You may be asking, so what is the first letter? Normally, I’m not one for reading introductions in a book, but I decided to with this book because of the topic. The book starts off with letters from different women who have wrote to the author. The very first letter, broke the dam of my loss I thought I fixed many years ago. I couldn’t get through the second paragraph without uncontrollable sobs. I put the book down and didn’t open it again for about three days. The woman writing the letter was thirteen when she lost her mother. It was my letter I have never written:
Excerpt taken from Motherless Daughters…..
There is an emptiness inside of me-a void that will never be filled. No one in your life will ever love you as your mother does. There is no love as pure, unconditional, and strong as a mother’s love. And I will never be loved that way again.
I feel as though my development as a woman was irreversibly damaged/altered. I’ve always (since then) had male friends. I feel I can only relate to males and I think I’m a very masculine woman – not my outward appearance – but I never learned how to socialize, how to engage in meaningless chitchat, how to talk on the phone for hours. And now, as men do, I “look down” on that type of behavior.
It was and still is hard for me to read. Happy Miles to You!!
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