Motherless daughters blue on Mother's Day

Holiday hype is constant reminder

May 12, 1996
Web posted at: 3:00 p.m. EDT

From Correspondent Michael Okwu

NEW YORK (CNN) -- "My name is Naomi. I was 5 when my mother died."

"My name is Pat, and I was 9 years old when my mother died."

Their names may be different, and their experiences vary, but they have a common emptiness. They are motherless on Mother's Day.

In 17 cities Saturday, motherless daughters held hands in support groups.

"I've always felt apart from other people. Alone," one said.

"I'm Diane. I was 13 when my mother died, and this is a tough time of year for me," another participant said.

From store fronts to greetings cards and even TV spots hyping lotteries -- "Just what I wanted. A New York lottery Mother's Day game" -- images celebrating America's mothers are relentless reminders of their loss.

A therapist recalls a frustrated client:

"She wanted to sort of scream, 'Stop with the Mother's Day stuff already. I don't have one and I miss her.'"

Book touched nerve

Author Hope Edelman lost her mother when she was 17.

"There were books written about children. There were books written for adults losing parents, but there was nothing that took a retrospective look at parent loss," she explains.

To fill the void, she wrote "Motherless Daughters," a look at the lifelong effects of such a loss. Motherless women can have feelings of isolation, insecurity, abandonment, mistrust or anger, Edelman found.

Her book struck such a responsive a chord that it became a national best-seller. She also wrote a book containing letters by grieving daughters.

Helping each other

More than 30 support groups have been assembled by the nonprofit organization Motherless Daughters, and these give women a place to air their feelings.

"It's as if I've known this secret handshake and I've tried to shake hands with everybody I've met in my life, and none of them know how to give it back," one women said.

"I'm here because I need to take this journey. I'm here to figure out how this one person who brought me into the world . . . how this one person's loss has totally changed my life," another admitted at one of the meetings.

Women also grieve in private.

Kathleen Walker, a high school teacher, often reminisces by looking through old, frayed photographs and visiting her mother's grave.

"It's hard facing the pain of the loneliness and isolation. I lay on the ground. I want the feeling from my heart to go to the dirt," she said.

For many women, their own lives are opportunities to correct the past.

"I felt deserted by my mother. Just the fact that she could check out without saying goodbye," one said.

"I felt gypped, and that I was gypped on the other end of having a parent, having a mother. If I couldn't do it from one side, I wasn't going to get gypped out of doing it from the other side," said Leila Melman, referring to her role as mother to 9-year-old Sylvie.

Girls feel the burden

For young girls, losing a mother is especially hard.

"She was my best friend, and I never realized it until she was gone," said one.

A mother's death can bring early responsibilities.

Every day, 17-year old Deborah Oloruntola cleans and cooks for her father and three siblings. Her mother died from cancer last year.

"Sometimes, my brothers call me 'mom,'" she said. This will be the family's first Mother's Day without their mother.

"She's not living physically. She's living in my heart, so I'm still going to buy a card."

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