Who Will Be My Mother

Charming illustrations and whimsical rhyme present the tale of a little raccoon who decides he does not want to do what his mother wants him to do. So, he leaves home in search of another mother. Wandering through the forest, he inquires of several likely candidates whether they would be willing to be his mother. This includes a chipmunk, a squirrel, a bluebird, an anteater, even a beaver.

This edition of the inspirational #1 bestseller draws on a new year of Jann's diaries and her mother's final days. When beloved singer and songwriter Jann Arden's parents built a house just across the way from her, she thought they would be her refuge from the demands of her career. And for a time that was how it worked. But then her dad fell ill and died, and just days after his funeral, her mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. In Feeding My Mother, Jann shares what it is like for a daughter to become her mother's caregiver—in her own frank and funny words, and in recipes she invented to tempt her mom. Full of heartbreak, but also full of love and wonder.

Katie Stakolich and Dr. Alfred Aidoo were born into about as different of circumstances as humanly possible. Katie grew up in California, living most of her life with a mentally ill mother who dragged her four children from one unstable living situation to the next, repeatedly exposing her kids to episodes of abuse, neglect and abandonment. Meanwhile Alfred grew up on the other side of the world in the West Africa nation of Ghana. His parents divorced when he was young, and since then his father has served as both mother and father to Alfred and his brother. His father was a respected schoolteacher, but they still struggled to eke out a life on the margins. But he always emphasized the Christian value of putting God and others before yourself in everything you do. While Katie was busy raising two sons and working in a grocery store, Alfred was caught up in the busy world of practicing medicine, serving as a minister, and being a husband and father to two young daughters. As the story goes, Katie’s Mom moved to Germany to be with friends she met on the internet. Eventually, this led her to Ghana where she became engaged to a man less than half her age. The whereabouts of Katie’s missing mother finally came to light after she was involved in a serious car crash that left her in the emergency room of the Ghanaian hospital where Alfred was her doctor. Fearing his patient might die alone, and concerned about the intentions of her young fiance', Alfred exhausted every avenue trying to locate her next of kin. That is how Alfred met Katie. Over time, Alfred wound up not only treating his patient lying in the hospital bed, but also her family back in the United States that had been broken by years of living with mentally illness. Alfred’s compassion for others touched Katie’s heart, and his spiritual guidance took root within her psyche. Her path to inner peace and contentment started with forgiving her mother. The arduous journey continues to this day as she builds on a foundation of faith in God.

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."

As a Nigerian Ibo woman living in the United States & raising daughters, the author frequently finds herself in conflict between her native culture & her adoptive culture. Her attempts to resolve this conflict are the basis of a fascinating autobiography.

How Do You Forgive a Parent Who Has Failed You? One summer, Melissa Cistaro’s mother stepped into her baby-blue Dodge Dart and drove away, leaving behind Melissa and her brothers. Rarely seeing their mother as they were growing up, they blamed themselves for her leaving, turning to each other for support and seeking out often destructive ways to cope with living without their mom. Decades later, with children of her own, Melissa finds herself in Olympia, Washington, as her mother is dying. She has just days to find out what happened that summer and to confront the unthinkable fear that a “leaving gene” might be lying dormant inside of her. She knew she came from a long line of mothers who left their children. But when Melissa stumbles across a folder titled “Letters Never Sent” tucked away in her mother’s filing cabinet, she begins to feel the wreckage of her mother’s painful journey, before and after she abandoned her family. Alternating between Melissa’s tumultuous coming-of-age and her mother’s final days, Without My Mother is a haunting yet ultimately uplifting story of one woman’s quest to discover how our parents’ choices impact our own and how we can survive those choices to forge our own paths.