Overview

Six year old Martha's world is ripped apart when her mother dies during childbirth. As she grows up, she never stops missing her mother, the mother she strains to remember. Buoyed by marriage to her college sweetheart, she hopefully anticipates pregnancy, childbirth and motherhood. Instead, infertility threatens to rip another hole in her world. She and her husband enter the unfamiliar landscape of interracial and intercultural adoption. They adopt an infant son, Lucas, from South Korea and a daughter, Clara, from Guatemala. Martha commits to providing her children with the childhood she didn't have and to mothering them in ways she can't remember being mothered. But as the lives of Lucas and Clara unfurl, their individual attitudes toward maternal loss don't conform to Martha's experience or expectations. During journeys to Jeju Island off the coast of South Korea to witness her son's marriage, and to Guatemala to vacation and volunteer with her daughter's Mayan ancestors, Martha uncovers new understandings of the ties which bind, and restrain, her complicated family

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9781733535304

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Martha Birkett Bordwell describes a family's experiences of loss, motherhood, and international adoption in her memoir Missing Mothers. Despite the complexities of modern life, this story is woven together as beautifully as a Guatemalan fabric. --Jim Johnson, author of Text For Our Nomadic Future By framing her memoir around missing mothers, author Martha Bordwell raises the ethical dilemmas and emotional consequences trans-national adoption has on families. Missing Mothers addresses a challenging and necessary subject in accessible and intimate prose, inviting readers on a complex parenting journey. Through compelling considerations of race, grief and privilege, we uncover a deep empathy for people in families acting to transform loss and the unknown into acceptance, understanding and love. --Patricia Cumbie, author of The Shape of a Hundred Hips Much appreciation is due to Martha Bordwell for sharing her life story with the reading public. This series of vignettes flow through time and draw from the central theme of motherhood. Bordwell tenderly takes readers to the hearts of motherless daughters and mothers who give up children to adoption. They stretch to include women who struggle with their identity as good enough mothers. Bordwell's life was forever altered by the death of her own mother when she was six, and her feelings of grief and confusion in addition to her challenging relationship with her step-mother persist as she adopts a son and daughter of her own. Bordwell's honesty about this aspect of her life is the strength of this book and will sound true to any woman who has faced similar life events. --Ann Murphy O'Fallon, author of Kiss Me Goodnight: Stories and Poems By Women Who Were Girls When Their Mothers Died In her striking memoir, author Martha Birkett Bordwell takes her readers back in time to the tragic loss of her mother at a tender age where she learns to navigate life without her most essential caregiver. As she grows up with a loving father and a stepmother with whom she remains emotionally distant, Martha decides she would like to become a mother herself, hoping to recreate the connection she once lost. Through her painful experience with infertility and her bittersweet adoption of two amazing children, Martha bridges the many ways in which she and her family have been profoundly impacted by missing mothers. For anyone who has experienced heartbreaking loss, which will ultimately be all of us, this beautifully written memoir offers the promise of healing and a message of hope. --Christine Friberg, Founder: She Climbs Mountains--Creating Community for Motherless Daughters

Martha Birkett Bordwell describes a family's experiences of loss, motherhood, and international adoption in her memoir Missing Mothers. Despite the complexities of modern life, this story is woven together as beautifully as a Guatemalan fabric. --Jim Johnson, author of Text For Our Nomadic Future By framing her memoir around missing mothers, author Martha Bordwell raises the ethical dilemmas and emotional consequences trans-national adoption has on families. Missing Mothers addresses a challenging and necessary subject in accessible and intimate prose, inviting readers on a complex parenting journey. Through compelling considerations of race, grief and privilege, we uncover a deep empathy for people in families acting to transform loss and the unknown into acceptance, understanding and love. --Patricia Cumbie, author of The Shape of a Hundred Hips Much appreciation is due to Martha Bordwell for sharing her life story with the reading public. This series of vignettes flow through time and draw from the central theme of motherhood. Bordwell tenderly takes readers to the hearts of motherless daughters and mothers who give up children to adoption. They stretch to include women who struggle with their identity as good enough mothers. Bordwell's life was forever altered by the death of her own mother when she was six, and her feelings of grief and confusion in addition to her challenging relationship with her step-mother persist as she adopts a son and daughter of her own. Bordwell's honesty about this aspect of her life is the strength of this book and will sound true to any woman who has faced similar life events. --Ann Murphy O'Fallon, author of Kiss Me Goodnight: Stories and Poems By Women Who Were Girls When Their Mothers Died In her striking memoir, author Martha Birkett Bordwell takes her readers back in time to the tragic loss of her mother at a tender age where she learns to navigate life without her most essential caregiver. As she grows up with a loving father and a stepmother with whom she remains emotionally distant, Martha decides she would like to become a mother herself, hoping to recreate the connection she once lost. Through her painful experience with infertility and her bittersweet adoption of two amazing children, Martha bridges the many ways in which she and her family have been profoundly impacted by missing mothers. For anyone who has experienced heartbreaking loss, which will ultimately be all of us, this beautifully written memoir offers the promise of healing and a message of hope. --Christine Friberg, Founder: She Climbs Mountains--Creating Community for Motherless Daughters

Author Information

Martha Bordwell writes about current events, family life, and travel. The recipient of a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota, she is a retired psychologist whose academic writing has appeared in professional journals such as Teaching Exceptional Children and Ours Magazine. She has been a featured speaker at Children's Home Society of Minnesota, speaking on the subject of Korean adoption. Her writing has also appeared in MinnPost and on the opinion pages of the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Missing Mothers is her first book.

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