Quite sometime ago i had jotted down my thoughts about The Girls Who Went Away and then posted them to my annotations/review on goodreads as well. Last year a perfect stranger with the user name Erin had then commented on my thoughts/feelings which boiled my blood a little every time i saw it but kept deciding there was no point to even trying a response.
I wasn't sure about your point of view until the very end of your review. Being pregnant and having a child changes people. There is no way to explain it, and no way to create that change but to have a child. You will never understand the desperate love until you have a child.
~Erin (whoever that is...)
Yesterday, for some reason, i finally decided i had to respond, for whatever it was worth:
- I'm sorry that you had to slog through my ENTIRE review to understand my feelings (you could have stopped reading--and there were three people who admitted to liking it!)
- I never claimed to be inside my mother's head and know what she felt or thought, but YOU were not inside her head either, and even though some feelings are SOMEWHAT universal that does not mean she was as connected or felt the same way you do.
- You have no idea where i am in terms of motherhood so you can't tell ME how to feel about it or what to understand (one of the reasons i can't relate to what my mother went through is because of some of those same feelings you describe...)
- She never has sought me out so it seems she might not have cared to.
- This is about MY feelings, my issues and thoughts about something i have had to deal with my whole life.
- It is also about my not caring about hers and you can't tell me that i must care!
1 comment:
and more:
Boy, you must be used to being criticized. My reference to the end of your piece meant that you expressed a lot of complex feelings which went both ways--not that I didn't want to read it. I mentioned the desperate love of a mother, because you said you have not had children. I am not taking up for your "birth mother" or trying to justify her, just pointing out that emotions are intense surrounding motherhood and hers could have gone either way. Perhaps she has not sought you out because she would be too ashamed--or maybe she died. She could have any of the feelings described in the book...she could BE one of the mothers in the book. Regardless, I don't think you "owe" her any love or any emotion at all, and I didn't say so in my comment. Your review adds another point of view and I find myself more interested in reading the book having read your review. Once I do, maybe I'll review it too!
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by Yosafbridg 0 minutes ago
I do very much appreciate your comments, and it is not so much that i am used to being criticized, it is that i have being dealing with issues my entire life (i have always known that i'm adopted-and people have always asked me why i don't want to find my birth-mother.) I also have considered that my birth-mother could be one of the mothers covered in the book, that it would be too painful for her to reconnect with me, or that she has died. I am sure it was probably a decision that she agnonized over, but i still have always felt a little bit refected (by some of the other people in my life as well--so that is one of my own issues that i own) and i am always afraid of being "rejected" a second time by her.
Again, i really appreciate your point of view and i didn't feel all that criticized by you (and as you can see, i took quite a while to reply) but i did want to express a few more (or maybe reiterate) of my feelings surrounding the whole thing.
thanks for what you said
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