Our Mothers Ourselves

In Our Mothers, Ourselves, Henry Cloud and John Townsend show how understanding how our mothers have profoundly influenced our lives can set us on a path toward wholeness and growth. No one has influenced the person you are today like your mother. The way she handled your needs as a child has shaped your worldview, your relationships, your marriage, your career, your self-image - your life. Our Mothers, Ourselves can help you identify areas that need reshaping, to make positive choices for personal change, and to establish a mature relationship with Mom today. The Phantom Mom The China Doll Mom The Controlling Mom The Trophy Mom The Still-the-Boss Mom The American Express Mom You'll learn how your mom affected you as a child and may still be affecting you today. Our Mothers, Ourselves is a biblical, realistic, and empowering route to wholeness and growth, to deeper and more satisfying bonds with your family, friends, and spouse - and to a new, healthier way of relating to your mother. This book was previously titled The Mom Factor.

In Our Mothers, Ourselves, Cloud and Townsend show how understanding how our mothers have profoundly influenced our lives can set us on a path toward wholeness and growth.

Who was your mother before she was a mother? Essays and photos from Brit Bennett, Jennifer Egan, Danzy Senna, Laura Lippman, Jia Tolentino, and many more. In this remarkable collection, New York Times–bestselling novelist Edan Lepucki gathers more than sixty original essays and favorite photographs to explore this question. The daughters in Mothers Before are writers and poets, artists and teachers, and the images and stories they share reveal the lives of women in ways that are vulnerable and true, sometimes funny, sometimes sad, and always moving. Contributors include: Brit Bennett * Jennine Capó Crucet * Jennifer Egan * Angela Garbes * Annabeth Gish * Alison Roman * Lisa See * Danzy Senna * Dana Spiotta * Lan Samantha Chang * Laura Lippman * Jia Tolentino * Tiffany Nguyen * Charmaine Craig * Maya Ramakrishnan * Eirene Donohue * and many others

From the very beginning, you relied on her for things no one else could give you. How she met those needs -- or didn't meet them -- affected you daily as a child. And still affects you profoundly as an adult. For every son or daughter who wonders if things should have been different . . . for every man or woman who wonders if they still couldn't be . . . here's a life-changing look at The Mom Factor. She shaped you in ways that would surprise you both. No one has influenced the person you are today like your mother. The way she handled your needs as a child has shaped your worldview, your relationships, your marriage, your career, your self-image -- your life. How can you identify areas that need reshaping, make positive choices for personal change, and establish a balanced, mature relationship with Mom today? In The Mom Factor, Drs. Henry Cloud and John Townsend steer you down a path of discovery and growth beyond the effects of six common mothering styles: -The Phantom Mom -The China-Doll Mom -The Controlling Mom -The Trophy Mom -The Still-the-Boss Mom -The American-Express Mom -- Cloud and Townsend show you how your mom affected you as a child and may still be affecting you today. You’ll find a hopeful, realistic, and empowering approach to identifying your unmet mothering needs and filling them in healthy, life-changing ways through other people. This encouraging book doesn’t just help you understand areas in your life that need change and strengthening -- it helps you apply your discoveries to attain new freedom and joy in living, and an increased ability to give and receive love. The Mom Factor is a biblical, highly practical route to wholeness and growth, deeper and more satisfying bonds with your family, friends, and spouse -- and a new, healthier way of relating to your mother today.

When women are told that what is important about us is how we look, it becomes increasingly difficult for us to feel comfortable with our appearance and how we feel about our bodies. We are told, over and over—if we just lost weight, fit into those old jeans, or into a new smaller pair—we will be happier and feel better about ourselves. The truth is, so many women despise their appearance, weight, and shape, that experts who study women’s body image now consider this feeling to be normal. But it does not have to be that way. It is possible for us as women to love ourselves, our bodies, as we are. We need a new story about what it means to be a woman in this world. Based on her original research, Hillary L McBride shares the true stories of young women, and their mothers, and provides unique insights into how our relationships with our bodies are shaped by what we see around us and the specific things we can do to have healthier relationships with our appearance, and all the other parts of ourselves that make us women. In Mothers, Daughters, and Body Image McBride tells her own story of recovery from an eating disorder, and how her struggles led her to dream of a new vision for womanhood—from one without body shame, negative comparisons, or insecurities, to one of freedom, connection, and acceptance.

Talk to women under forty today, and you will hear that in spite of the fact that they have achieved goals previous generations of women could only dream of, they nonetheless feel more confused and insecure than ever. What has gone wrong? What can be done to set it right? These are the questions Danielle Crittenden answers in What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us. She examines the foremost issues in women's lives -- sex, marriage, motherhood, work, aging, and politics -- and argues that a generation of women has been misled: taught to blame men and pursue independence at all costs. Happiness is obtainable, Crittenden says, but only if women will free their minds from outdated feminist attitudes. By drawing on her own experience and a decade of research and analysis of modern female life, Crittenden passionately and engagingly tackles the myths that keep women from realizing the happiness they deserve. And she introduces a new way of thinking about society's problems that may, at long last, help women achieve the lives they desire.

“You will devour these beautifully written—and very important—tales of honesty, pain, and resilience” (Elizabeth Gilbert, New York Times bestselling author of Eat Pray Love and City of Girls) from fifteen brilliant writers who explore how what we don’t talk about with our mothers affects us, for better or for worse. As an undergraduate, Michele Filgate started writing an essay about being abused by her stepfather. It took her more than a decade to realize that she was actually trying to write about how this affected her relationship with her mother. When it was finally published, the essay went viral, shared on social media by Anne Lamott, Rebecca Solnit, and many others. This gave Filgate an idea, and the resulting anthology offers a candid look at our relationships with our mothers. Leslie Jamison writes about trying to discover who her seemingly perfect mother was before ever becoming a mom. In Cathi Hanauer’s hilarious piece, she finally gets a chance to have a conversation with her mother that isn’t interrupted by her domineering (but lovable) father. André Aciman writes about what it was like to have a deaf mother. Melissa Febos uses mythology as a lens to look at her close-knit relationship with her psychotherapist mother. And Julianna Baggott talks about having a mom who tells her everything. As Filgate writes, “Our mothers are our first homes, and that’s why we’re always trying to return to them.” There’s relief in acknowledging how what we couldn’t say for so long is a way to heal our relationships with others and, perhaps most important, with ourselves. Contributions by Cathi Hanauer, Melissa Febos, Alexander Chee, Dylan Landis, Bernice L. McFadden, Julianna Baggott, Lynn Steger Strong, Kiese Laymon, Carmen Maria Machado, André Aciman, Sari Botton, Nayomi Munaweera, Brandon Taylor, and Leslie Jamison.

Finally, we have an inclusive collection that brings motherhood into the fold of feminism. As we accede to our universal origins in the mother, we witness the infinite variety of experiences awarded the offspring. Spectrums of gender, race, age, religion, class, and nation give voice in Donnelly and Bernstein's anthology as more than 80 writers contribute poetry, essays, memoirs, and short fiction. Some of the artists are well-known, including Maya Angelou, Galway Kinnell, Marge Piercy, Margaret Atwood, and Robert Bly, while others are less known. All attest to the experience of motherhood as primal. Writing as mothers, as children to their mothers, and as close observers, women and men create selections that fall into three trimesters of involvement: the experiences of going beyond the self, beyond reflection, and, finally, beyond the whole. The many shades of emotional experience, from ecstasy to horror and all points in between, are portrayed in words and photographs. As images take shape, nightmares are relived, emotions flow abundantly, and details come into focus as the cathartic effect of the writing builds. Painting motherhood as much more than just a pretty picture, the editors' purpose is clearly to bring us all together under a multi-faceted umbrella of empathy and to unite us in the diversity of the experience of motherhood.