Mother's Day - Minnesota Parent

I can barely read the title without tearing up: Kiss Me Goodnight: Stories and Poems by Women Who Were Girls When Their Mothers Died.

I don’t have any personal experience with tragedy. And my own mother is (ptoo, ptoo, ptoo) hale and hearty and the proud grandmother of three. But, as with all things these days, I read those sad stories through my own children’s eyes, and – well, let’s just say I buckle up and make sure to eat an extra serving of antioxidant-rich veggies.

Margaret Vaillancourt and Ann O’Fallon, both Minneapolis writers, won a Minnesota Book Award for Kiss Me Goodnight in 2005. Vaillancourt is active in the Twin Cities Motherless Daughters Support Group and has helped arrange local appearances by author Hope Edelman on May 18 and 19 (for more information, e-mail [email protected]). Edelman wrote Motherless Daughters in 1994, about losing her mother as a teenager and the experiences of more than 200 other women. Last year, in her new book, Motherless Mothers, she writes of how understanding that loss has made her the mother she now is to two young daughters.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there, and my thoughts are with those whose day will be tinged with loss.