Juliane Bergmann’s poignant essay looks at the intergenerational judgement between a mother and daughter and the fraught consequences of love in a strained relationship, where neither party can meet the other’s needs. “I could not be honest with my mother in life or death because she couldn’t handle the truth,” she writes. “And, also, because I couldn’t handle telling it.”
It seems easy for some to leave their families when those relationships are rotten and poisonous. They create their own families, chosen, not assigned. It has never been that easy for me. I feel the pull of blood and name and birthplace and biology. I have always felt stuck in the quicksand of Wanting-Things-To-Be-Different. Even my mom’s death was not enough proof for me that things would never be—could never be—different. The grief over what I wanted and didn’t have, what I wished to be true but could never make true, didn’t die along with my mom’s body.
from Longreads https://ift.tt/HFyYU0L
Check out my bookbox memberships! 3, 7, or 15 vintage books a month sent to organization of your choice, or to yourself!
https://ift.tt/qNEQgWA
