Don’t Call Me Mother

Author: Linda Joy Myers
www.memoriesandmemoirs.com

Reviewed By: Melinda Cianos

In this healing memoir, Linda Joy Myers fits together the jagged and irregular pieces of her childhood in an effort to mend her spirit. Images are beautifully crafted (through the use of prose that are both poetic and rich) of a life that was riddled with abuse, neglect and abandonment. She discovers that the same pattern of abuse has plagued the women in her family for generations. As an accomplished musician and writer, Myers is masterful at artistic expression.

She allows the reader into her troubled world—we feel her devastation each time she is left behind by her mother. The scenes of little Linda at the tender age of four, standing at the train station sending her mother off yet again—the high-pitched whistle of the train echoing her exhaustion, loneliness and misery—are gut-wrenching. The reader wants to rush in and rescue her, help her understand, and move her away from the dysfunction that threatens to ruin her. However, in the very next sentence we witness her miraculously bouncing back on her own. We wonder how she does it; how she is able to taste the sweetness of anything that life has to offer when her world is colored by chaos and destruction, but she does. We love and admire her for it. She carries us to the very end of it all and we are moved to understand that she is going to be okay; that we will be okay.

Linda Joy Myers is a superb writer and her offering, Don’t Call Me Mother, is a gift. She has allowed herself healing through her words and exploration; she presents us with a means to travel on our own healing journey. Her book imparts love and forgiveness in its rawest form. Do not miss the opportunity to experience it for yourself.