Here are 100 books that Motherless Daughters fans have personally recommended if you like
Motherless Daughters.
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My passion started as a personal quest in my twenties, struggling with my relationship with my own mother. When my daughter was born, I knew that I could not repeat the difficult dynamics between my mother and I. What started as a personal quest to understand the underlying dynamics between mothers and daughters quickly grew into a professional quest. Today, I have worked as a mother-daughter therapist with thousands of mothers and daughters of all ages and from different countries and cultures and have developed the Mother-Daughter Attachment® model that helps therapists and mothers and daughters uncover the hidden dynamics in their relationship and create a roadmap for change.
Mothers are too often blamed for their children’s and adult daughters’ problems. I regard Paula Caplan’s book as the quintessential text on understanding how patriarchy blames mothers and how mother-blaming harms mothers, women, and the mother-daughter relationship. Paula exposes the myths surrounding motherhood – revealing that there is no such thing as a “perfect mother.”
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
My passion started as a personal quest in my twenties, struggling with my relationship with my own mother. When my daughter was born, I knew that I could not repeat the difficult dynamics between my mother and I. What started as a personal quest to understand the underlying dynamics between mothers and daughters quickly grew into a professional quest. Today, I have worked as a mother-daughter therapist with thousands of mothers and daughters of all ages and from different countries and cultures and have developed the Mother-Daughter Attachment® model that helps therapists and mothers and daughters uncover the hidden dynamics in their relationship and create a roadmap for change.
Patriarchy has silenced women for generations, and in my first book, I uncover how women have been taught to “play nice” and be “care-givers” rather than “care-receivers.” Uncovering women’s emotional reality, I expose the culture of female service and how no one is looking after mothers, not even mothers themselves. This book provides exercises to help women claim their voice, needs, and rights in all of their relationships.
"The Silent Female Scream" teaches "how to believe that as a woman you have the right to be heard, valued and respected, and to know that anything less is just not okay." Through case studies and discussion, the author exposes that women's sense of self-worth and entitlement to speak their needs, especially in relationships, is an area that feminism has ignored to its peril. By looking at the legacy of emotional silence that many women have inherited from long before grandmother's day, she warns that emotional silence damages the mother-daughter relationship, women's relationships with themselves and each other, and their…
I'm a stage and television actress who, after getting married and having two children, turned to writing in my forties as my “second act”. I started writing about being a mom in Hollywood, and being raised by a mom who was—well, nuts. For years I dined out on crazy stories of my childhood: breakfasting on cold, half-eaten hors d'oeuvres strewn across our Park Avenue room from my crazy mom's all-night cocktail parties, falling asleep on banquets at nightclubs, skipping school to sneak into a swanky hotel in London and meet the Osmonds. The final result was my memoir, Chanel Bonfire. I believe it has the power to inspire and give hope, as well as entertain.
I’m a big believer in self-help books. This was recommended to me by a therapist who basically saved my life, navigating me through a very difficult time in my life in my twenties. The author, Victoria Secunda, breaks down all the different dysfunctional types of mothers, with chapters titled “The Avenger”, “The Doormat”, “The Critic”, in an easy-to-understand way. Reading this book helped me “diagnose” my mother, who never took responsibility for her mental illness, always blaming her behavior on her kids or others. This book helped me to understand her more fully, perhaps even feel compassion for her. I often recommend it to anyone who, like me, has or had a troubled relationship with their mother.
“A book of great value for every daughter and every mother; useful for sons, too.”—Benjamin Spock, M.D.
From the Introduction: The goal of this book is to help readers achieve that separation so that they can either find a way to be friends with their mothers, or at least recognize and accept that their mothers did the best they could—even if it wasn't “good enough”—and to stop blaming them. Among the issues to be covered:
• To understand how a daughter's attachment to her mother—more so than her relationship with her father—colors all her other relationships, and to analyze why…
Everyday Medical Miracles
by
Joseph S. Sanfilippo (editor),
Frontiers of Women from the healthcare perspective. A compilation of 60 true short stories written by an extensive array of healthcare providers, physicians, and advanced practice providers.
All designed to give you, the reader, a glimpse into the day-to-day activities of all of us who provide your health care. Come…
My passion started as a personal quest in my twenties, struggling with my relationship with my own mother. When my daughter was born, I knew that I could not repeat the difficult dynamics between my mother and I. What started as a personal quest to understand the underlying dynamics between mothers and daughters quickly grew into a professional quest. Today, I have worked as a mother-daughter therapist with thousands of mothers and daughters of all ages and from different countries and cultures and have developed the Mother-Daughter Attachment® model that helps therapists and mothers and daughters uncover the hidden dynamics in their relationship and create a roadmap for change.
I like this book because it is well-researched and reveals the politics of mothering. As Vanessa Olorenshaw notes, “mothers’ rights are the flotsam left behind on the ocean surface of patriarchy.” This is a must-read book for all mothers and daughters because the women’s movement has yet to prioritize the rights of mothers to not be the world’s caregivers.
If it is true that there have been waves of feminism, then mothers’ rights are the flotsam left behind on the ocean surface of patriarchy. For all the talk of women’s liberation, when it is predicated on liberation from motherhood, it is no liberation at all. Under twenty-first century capitalism, the bonds of motherhood are being replaced with binds to the market within wage slavery and ruthless individualism. Mothers are in bondage – and not in a 50 Shades way.
Olorenshaw is clear: When mothering is on our terms, it can be liberating. The time has come for a radical,…
We moved to New Orleans in July 2005. We had six weeks in our first home, filling it with furniture, buying a new car, and taking advantage of my first job. When Hurricane Katrina collapsed the levees holding back the nearby lakes, our home – and those of 80% of the city – filled with water. As I waited for FEMA and insurance to help us, I saw instead it was our friends, friends of friends, and faith-based organizations that helped us get back on our feet. Using our own experiences as a start, I traveled to India and Japan to study how communities around the world survived and thrived during shocks.
Sheryl Sandberg movingly tells the story of losing her husband suddenly and having to continue with her family on her own. Grief seems a solitary process that we have to work through by ourselves. But she describes how her process of recovery required connections with friends, with family, and with institutions in her neighborhood. All of us have to deal with personal tragedies like the deaths of loved ones, and I appreciated how this book combined her sharing her personal experience with broader expertise from psychology and social science.
From Facebook's COO and Wharton's top-rated professor, the #1 New York Times best-selling authors of Lean In and Originals: a powerful, inspiring, and practical book about building resilience and moving forward after life's inevitable setbacks.
After the sudden death of her husband, Sheryl Sandberg felt certain that she and her children would never feel pure joy again. "I was in 'the void,'" she writes, "a vast emptiness that fills your heart and lungs and restricts your ability to think or even breathe." Her friend Adam Grant, a psychologist at Wharton, told her there are concrete steps people can take to…
When I had multiple miscarriages in my late 20’s, I found I had no idea how to handle my grief. I didn’t even recognize I was grieving. A few years later when my husband died I was thrust into grief and a life I had never wanted. It took me months to learn how to survive, and a lot longer to find the resources I needed to live a happy life despite my loss. Finding resources that would help became important to me, and a handful of books have stayed with me long after I read them. I hope these books help you as much as they helped me.
This book is the first one I read after losing my husband. I was 31-years old, with a toddler and a newborn, and I had no idea how I was going to survive the rest of my life, better yet make it a life worth living. In The Sun Still Rises: Surviving and Thriving After Grief and Loss, author Shawn Doyle shares his story of loss, but more than that he shares hope with his reader. Hope that there is still light in the darkness of grief. At that point in my loss, hope was what I needed most. However, he didn't stop there, he also provided practical tips and suggestions about dealing with both the logistical matters that come with loss, as well as providing emotional support. This book helped me live my best life, in spite of my loss.
Coping with the loss of a loved one is perhaps the most difficult and devastating challenge any of us face in our lifetime.
The grief you feel hurts more than physical pain.
And yet, somehow, life is still going on around you.
Is it even possible to survive, let alone thrive, after such grief and loss?
In this book, Shawn Doyle shares his heart-wrenching personal story of bereavement to supply you with the tools, tips, and techniques for dealing with loss and grief on an hourly, daily, and weekly basis.
This is not a predictable five stages of grief book.…
Odette Lefebvre is a serial killer stalking the shadows of Nazi-occupied Paris and must confront both the evils of those she murders and the darkness of her own past.
This young woman's childhood trauma shapes her complex journey through World War II France, where she walks a razor's edge…
My name is Jeannie Reed. I was an executive for many years and, for many years, an editor and a professional psychic in concurrent full-time careers. Eight years ago, a spirit started making itself known in my apartment in New York City. He's still here. This spirit's presence is not unusual. What is unusual is that he communicates by drawing. Drawings anybody can see. This man died in 1920. I had zero interest in him until now, though I had heard of him, a great artist, Amedeo Modigliani. I am not soft-minded. I doubted this whole thing for a year. Until finally, it was unavoidable.
Dr. Moody spent many years researching near-death experiences. This book is a classic on the subject. It discusses death, after-death, and attitudes about dying...all from the most positive point of view. If, in a near-death experience, people report seeing and talking to long-deceased loved ones, and all in the same way, how can life simply stop at the grave?
Dr. Moody's courageous research helped launch an entire movement. So much is known now that wasn't known before about death, no longer the ultimate experience. Just a quick stop on an enormous journey!
In this smash bestseller that has sold more than 14 million copies around the world, Dr Moody reveals his ground-breaking study of people who experienced 'clinical death' - and were revived. Their amazing testimonies and surprising descriptions of 'death' and 'beyond' are so strikingly similar, so vivid and so overwhelmingly positive they have changed the way we view life and death, and the spiritual hereafter. Introducing the revolutionary concepts of the NDE (Near Death Experience), the bright light and the tunnel, Life After Life has shaped countless reader's notions about the meaning of the death and offered essential reassurance to…
I'm the author of the best-selling books How to Tell Depression to Piss Off: 40 Ways to Get Your Life Back, How to Tell Anxiety to Sod Off: 40 Ways to Get Your Life Back, The Recovery Letters, and What I Do to Get Through. My sixth book will be, How to Smash Stress: 40 Ways to Manage the Unmanageable.
The useful thing about this book is that it breaks down the different types of losses we can experience and examines those. Sibling loss, parental loss, loss of a child, etc. You can connect to your type of grief and learn specifics about how to manage it. It is also filled with compassion and wisdom from one of the grief experts in the world.
'Fascinating. A wise and compassionate book full of insight and understanding that would help anyone experiencing grief, or those surrounding them' Cathy Rentzenbrink
'A wonderfully important and transforming book - lucid, consoling and wise' William Boyd
Grief Works is a compassionate guide that will inform and engage anyone who is grieving, from the 'expected' death of a parent to the sudden unexpected death of a small child, and provide clear advice for those seeking to comfort the bereaved.
Julia Samuel guides you gently through her eight practical pillars of strength - that include the…
As I formed my self-identity I considered myself a spiritual seeker, always straying beyond the boundaries of my more conservative Christian communities. As a minister’s wife, I had a wide experience of Christian-based faith and community. When my husband died instantly of a heart attack, my entire spiritual foundation seemed to crumble. This book is a memoir of my journey to rebuild a new spirituality, founded on the remnants of my original faith and expanding to meet my new and changing experience of who I am. I have a master’s degree in English so the study of literature, mythology, and poetry also strongly influenced my journey, my story, and this memoir.
This was the first book I read about grief after my husband died. It was recommended by my therapist and I immediately purchased a copy for each of my adult children. It was the beginning of my search for finding meaning in my suffering. This book includes mindfulness practices which opened me to believing that I had the power to transform my experience of suffering into a deepening wisdom in my life. As I was challenged to lean into the faith of my past, I found solace in this new way of practicing spirituality in my life. It opened out a path for me to the healing which inspired my own book.
Many people who suffer the death of a loved one cling to the experience of grief long after the actual pain of loss goes away. This is because grief itself is a complex issue, fraught with misinformation and unrealistic expectations, often leading to interpersonal isolation at the times people need connection the most. Ironically, it is often by embracing the experience of grief that people become most fully mindful of life.
Grieving readers will find, in this book, a new understanding of their own grief process. They will learn about the spiral staircase, a metaphor used to describe the ebb…
Can a free-spirited country girl navigate the world of intrigue, illicit affairs, and power-mongering that is the court of Louis XIV—the Sun King--and still keep her head?
France, 1670. Sixteen-year-old Sylvienne d’Aubert receives an invitation to attend the court of King Louis XIV. She eagerly accepts, unaware of her mother’s…
I’m a children’s book author-illustrator who loves picture books that can tackle difficult topics in a unique way. Along with Where Is Poppy?, I’ve also illustrated The Remember Balloons, written by Jessie Oliveros, which helps to gently explain Alzheimer’s and memory loss to kids without sugarcoating the realities of the illness. I think books can be a great tool for helping kids understand and process ideas that can be a little heavy or overwhelming, even for adults.
As an illustrator, it's always the artwork of a picture book that first draws me in.
In this book, lots of double-page spreads allow the beautiful, painterly illustrations to shine. But the text is equally moving. I love the way the author uses animal metaphors to describe the different ways grief can take form.
An imaginative and heartfelt book that reminds us that there is no loss without love. When Grief first arrives, it is like an elephant-so big that there is hardly room for anything else. But over time, Grief can become smaller and smaller-until it is a fox, then a mouse, and finally a flickering firefly in the darkness leading us down a path of loving remembrance. This lyrical work is an empathetic and comforting balm for anyone who is experiencing grief-be it grieving the loss of a loved one or the losses in the world around us.
