Mother A Human Love Story

Compassion, nurturing and pain are at the heart of everyone's story of mothers and motherhood. In this book, Matt Hopwood presents a selection of deep, powerful stories of and by mothers which were told openly and bravely to him. Women, men, children, teenagers and centenarians tell their experiences of childhood, motherhood, birth, loss, yearning, fear, contentment, love and divinity. They tell of connection with Mother and the Mother instincts that reside in every human being. Together, these stories, from as far afield as the USA, Russia, Taiwan, and Europe as well as the UK, are a gift that help bring us to a deeper understanding of our humanity and the role of the intuitive feminine Mother that is so needed by every one of us.

“An archive of real-life stories about all aspects of human relationships” curated by a man traveling on foot throughout Scotland (BBC Arts). Matt Hopwood set off with just a small bag and a walking stick, no possessions and an open mind to walk many hundreds of miles the length and breadth of the country. He relied entirely on the generosity of strangers for shelter and asked people to tell him their transforming stories. They did. All of these deeply enthralling, profoundly honest stories weave a web of tenderness, connection, compassion and community. For some people their love story will span decades and tell a tale of romantic love evolving through the passing years. Others’ stories express fleeting moments of connection, care, concern. Most love stories are marked by sadness and loss. Some stories are concerned with maternal and paternal love, others with a love of place, a visceral connection with spirit through landscape. Love stories also connect deeply with our identities, in how we belong and how we are welcomed in society. Each story is different. Each beautiful. Each valuable. “A delicately woven tapestry of human life, collected by a stranger who offered an ear to listen without judgment and who has the depth of soul to interpret the complicated layers of love.” —from the foreword by Clare Balding “This thoughtfully presented lexicon of love contains honest accounts from men and women of all ages and offers an antidote to a life where it can be surprisingly hard to say ‘I love you.’”—The Wee Review

Matt Hopwood set off with just a small bag and a walking stick, no possessions and an open mind to walk many hundreds of miles the length and breadth of the country. He relied entirely on the generosity of strangers for shelter and asked people to tell him their transforming stories. They did. All of these deeply enthralling, profoundly honest stories weave a web of tenderness, connection, compassion and community. For some people their love story will span decades and tell a tale of romantic love evolving through the passing years. Others' stories express fleeting moments of connection, care, concern. Most love stories are marked by sadness and loss. Some stories are concerned with maternal and paternal love, others with a love of place, a visceral connection with spirit through landscape. Love stories also connect deeply with our identities, in how we belong and how we are welcomed in society. Each story is different. Each beautiful. Each valuable.

From bestselling author Alan Dean Foster, an exciting early Pip and Flinx novel that shows the origins of a certain boy with special powers—and the mini-dragon that becomes his devoted sidekick. . . . Flinx was just a freckle-faced, redheaded kid with green eyes and a strangely compelling stare when Mather Mastiff first saw him an the auctioneer's block. One hundred credits and he was hers. For years the old woman was his only family. She loved him, fed him, taught him everything she knew—even let him keep the deadly flying dragon he called Pip. But when Mother Mastiff mysteriously disappears, Flinx tails her kidnappers on a dangerous journey. Across the forests and swamps of the winged world called Moth, their only weapons are Pip’s venom . . . and Flinx’s unusual talent.

Nicky Bell, diagnosed with Ewing’s Sarcoma at age thirteen, died five years later, with his mother and best friend at his side. A Journey of Unconditional Love tells Nicky and Michele’s story, describing the battle with cancer in great detail. However, this book is about more than cancer and its treatment and the fight to survive. It’s about more than a mother and her son who had to face his mortality at such a young age and the despair and anguish that comes in losing that fight. It’s about more than death . . . This book is about life. It’s about how this mother and son approached the everyday moments of life despite the greater story that was playing out around them and was outside of their control. It’s about what each had learned from the other and the influential roles played in their life experiences. It is about how it still affects the life of the one left behind. It’s about the depth of human spirit and the soul’s ultimate survival, along with what the survivor is supposed to do with that energy. The connection between this mother and her son has lived on long after his passing, and it continues to be a force in this mother’s life every day. The inspiration in this story comes from the millions of small everyday moments, the choices made, the words spoken, and the unconditional love that makes such a seemingly senseless experience somehow bearable. This book gives a voice to parents and loved ones, caregivers and patients, those who relate to this loss, and those who know they feel every heartbeat in this story but who also struggle to come to grips with their own experience.

Jessica is expecting her first child. But why isn't she transformed by maternal feelings? Where is the all-consuming love she's supposed to feel for her child? No-one told her you don't always love your baby. Perhaps its best if Jessica keeps that dark secret to herself for now.

A collection of feminist essays steeped in “Solnit’s unapologetically observant and truth-speaking voice on toxic, violent masculinity” (The Los Angeles Review). In a timely and incisive follow-up to her national bestseller Men Explain Things to Me, Rebecca Solnit offers sharp commentary on women who refuse to be silenced, misogynistic violence, the fragile masculinity of the literary canon, the gender binary, the recent history of rape jokes, and much more. In characteristic style, “Solnit draw[s] anecdotes of female indignity or male aggression from history, social media, literature, popular culture, and the news . . . The main essay in the book is about the various ways that women are silenced, and Solnit focuses upon the power of storytelling—the way that who gets to speak, and about what, shapes how a society understands itself and what it expects from its members. The Mother of All Questions poses the thesis that telling women’s stories to the world will change the way that the world treats women, and it sets out to tell as many of those stories as possible” (The New Yorker). “There’s a new feminist revolution—open to people of all genders—brewing right now and Rebecca Solnit is one of its most powerful, not to mention beguiling, voices.”—Barbara Ehrenreich, New York Times–bestselling author of Natural Causes “Short, incisive essays that pack a powerful punch.” —Publishers Weekly “A keen and timely commentary on gender and feminism. Solnit’s voice is calm, clear, and unapologetic; each essay balances a warm wit with confident, thoughtful analysis, resulting in a collection that is as enjoyable and accessible as it is incisive.” —Booklist

Shortly after Albert Cohen left France for London to escape the Nazis, he received news of his mother’s death in Marseille. Unable to mourn her, he expressed his grief in a series of moving pieces for La France libre, which later grew into Book of My Mother. Achingly honest, intimate, and moving, this love song is a tribute to all mothers. Cohen himself expressed, "I shall not have written in vain if one of you, after reading my hymn of death, is one evening gentler with his mother because of me and my mother."