If you want to get to know your mother, have her on your podcast. I wrote a book about my mother’s life and my own, and it was hard for her, naturally.
But people ask me, what does your mom think about the book? For this Mother’s Day, I invited my mother on my podcast to share her voice with my listeners and readers.
Just like phone conversations, a microphone has the power to deepen personal relationships. I’ve witnessed this countless times as I’ve developed friendships with people I’ve interviewed, and it is true of this conversation with my mother.
My connection to my mother’s story was the inspiration for launching my podcast About Your Mother, where your story begins as well as the foundation from a mother-daughter memoir, Both Sides of Then, available wherever books are sold. Well, listeners and readers, here she is… Anna!
Through it all, she counts her blessings and credits the women who stepped in as mothers in her life. I hope you love this special episode just in time for Mother’s Day.
A Hero and a Survivor
When I told my mom I was writing a book about her life, she asked if it was my moment to complain about her.
“No,” I told her. “You’re the hero of the story.”
It took my mom a long time to believe that, and even now, she prefers to think of herself as a survivor instead of a hero. She got the inspiration from Christopher Reeve, who described heroes as survivors in his biography.
My mom survived multiple heartaches as a child. Her mother passed away due to illness, and her father passed away in a car accident a few years later. She spent most of her childhood in an orphanage and only has positive things to say about her experience. However, the grief of losing her parents is still with her today, at 82 years old.
Growing Up in an Orphanage
My mom and her four siblings went to live in the orphanage after their mother died. Their father would come to visit, and he even handmade a bicycle for my mom so she could be like the other kids. She and her siblings were supposed to go home to live with their dad again just a few months before he passed away.
Once it set in that she couldn’t go home, Anna began resenting her time in the orphanage. However, she now looks back on it fondly. She had everything she needed, and the woman who ran the home truly cared for her.
We call her Mrs. Harting in the book, and she and my mother wrote letters to each other when my mom left the orphanage after high school. I used their correspondence to understand my mom’s experience in the orphanage and bring Mrs. Harting to life in the book.
Mrs. Harting’s husband was a Baptist minister, so my mother grew up going to church. Each child who lived in the home had a “clothing lady” at church, someone who saw their clothing needs. Her clothing lady would look at her clothes and make a list of everything she needed, and then she’d take my mom on a shopping trip to JCPenney.
The Closest Thing to a Mother She Had
My mom grew up with a sister, Eve, who was like a mother to her. Eve was a lovable person with a big, beautiful personality. She was the shining star everywhere she went and the family’s leader.
My aunt Eve has passed away, and toward the end of her life, I interviewed her and recorded her story. The overwhelming sense I got is that she wanted to do more with her life, but it was like society was holding her by the back of her shirt and telling her to run.
Eve had an extremely high IQ, but in the time she and my mom were growing up, the only aspirations women were allowed to have included getting married and having kids. Eve married young—a corporate lawyer named Preston—and he didn’t want her to work.
Looking back, my mom and I can both tell that she wished she had gotten to do more than be a housewife and mother. After she and Preston divorced, she quickly remarried and was with her second husband until her death. When I recorded her story, she commented: “I never knew who I was.”
My mom, on the other hand, got the opportunity to know herself more than Eve did. She was single for a long time and learned to fend for herself.
The Most Heartbreaking Moment of My Mom’s Life: Giving Up Her Son
When my mom was young and unmarried, she became pregnant. During that time, there was no sex education, no contraception, minimal reproductive rights, and very few options for unwed mothers. Single pregnant women were shunned from society.
My mom decided to give the baby up for adoption, so she went out of state to live in a maternity home for the last months of her pregnancy. Afterward, she was told by the maternity ward to forget that the pregnancy ever happened.
She couldn’t forget and was determined to find her child one day. She found him eighteen years later.
The Most Important Role of Her Life
After everything my mom’s been through, she considers being a mother to be the most important role of her life. However, she thinks being a grandmother is even better, and she loves to say that my son is the love of her life.
Believe in Yourself, Love Yourself, and Be Kind to People
If she could go back and tell her younger self, growing up in an orphanage, anything, she would remind herself of what Mrs. Harting used to say: Believe in yourself. Love yourself and be kind to people.
She would also remind her to count her blessings. Despite all of the disappointments my mom went through, she considers herself a lucky person with a life full of wonderful memories.
My mom is a wonderful mix of bravery, compassion, humor, and the power of positive thinking. So on this Mother’s Day, what I often say to people is try and understand your mother as the woman she was before she became your parent.
Interview your mom about her life, or reflect on the mother she was or wasn’t to you. My guess is that you will uncover truths about your own life, that you, too, have a family full of heroes. We are all born from a mother, and they all have a story. Thank you, Mom, for letting me share yours. I know it wasn’t easy, but I am so grateful, and you are so incredibly brave as you always have been.
