Daughterhood

By Anonymous

CW: death of a parent & mention of suicide

Image courtesy of Emma Gossett on Unsplash.

Mother. Wound. Growth. I allow the calm, familiar sound of cicadas to push aside the mess of thoughts that constantly pulses across my brain. The smell of trees and soft soil fill my lungs with every inhale and exhale. I feel the presence of others, the dependence I have on them, slipping away. I picture my own mother—Amma, the word “mother” feels unnatural—embracing me in a hug that I have not felt for six years. The blistering wound that festers in my heart slows to a melodic rhythm as I attempt to feel the solidity of myself and of the nature around me. I lie on the earth for what seems like an eternity but in reality is only a few minutes. I watch the stars shooting across the sky, wandering aimlessly. Calm washes over me. I experience this moment almost every year, at a summer camp for kids whose parents have been impacted by cancer. I lie beneath the same stars yearning for my mother, yearning for my wound to heal, yearning for growth that seems to escape me. 

My heart yearns for literature that captures the elusive experience of daughters, of Daughterhood. In my avid search for this literature, I looked to the authors of Waveform: Twenty-First-Century Essays by Women. These women shed light on the power of a mother-daughter relationship and the role it plays in shaping young women. Leslie Jamison’s essay on the “Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain” gave me the ability to empathize with the complex experiences of Daughterhood. She dissects society’s fascination with female pain, pushing against the notion that it is a unifying experience. In doing so, she argues for a world in which we view all pain as valid, multifaceted, and unique. 

The pain present in the lives of authors Michele Morano and Kyoko Mori appear vastly different, but their stories intersect when we look at the influence their mothers had in shaping their sense of self. Time and time again, the lives of women are characterized by the actions of their husbands. In “Cat Stories,” Mori’s mother is characterized by her husband’s affairs: her sense of self is inextricably tied to her husband and to her standing in society. Mori, unlike her mother, takes control of her narrative. She refuses to tie her sense of self to another person, instead choosing feline companionship. Morano describes her mother’s affair and the events that follow in “Breaking and Entering.” Her mother chooses her own children and her love for another woman over a husband with whom love was long lost, a shadow of what it was before. Morano’s sense of self is shattered by her mother’s decision to break into their own home. Jamison gave me the tools of empathy with which I needed to understand the pain present in Mori and Morano’s lives. These two women take ownership of their stories, giving voice, power, and agency to their pain.

In “Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain,” Jamison grapples with empathy and pain in a way that allows the reader’s wounds to become visible. Amma’s cancer, and her subsequent passing, left a deep web of wounds inside my body––threatening to collapse at a moment's notice. The pain is so familiar that I allow myself to become numb to it. When someone asks about my parents, I hurriedly rush through my carefully prepared list. 

 1. My dad is an engineer.

2. My mom was a housewife.

3. But she passed away a few years ago.

4. Yes, it’s sad. Yes, I miss her. Yes, I’m okay. 

After six years, death feels like old news. Jamison makes a distinction between new and old pain, and in doing so points out that we often give more importance to more recent painful experiences. She writes, “Sure, some news is bigger news than other news. War is bigger news than a girl having mixed feelings about the way some guy fucked her and didn’t call.” But she pushes against the notion that we must compare the “size” of our pain. Why do we compare pain? Why do we fail to give voice and power to all types of pain? Why do I fail to give voice and power to my pain? Jamison goes on to explain, “But I don’t believe in a finite economy of empathy; I happen to think that paying attention yields as much as it taxes. You learn to start seeing.” Too often, we offer ourselves a finite amount of empathy. I unfairly decree my wound has healed after each moment of growth, of reflection, of therapy. I convince myself that my teardrops will eventually wash away the pain. But this intricate network of wounds requires an infinite amount of empathy. If I strive to heal, I must start seeing my wounds. Empathy allows us to see and acknowledge the emotional pain with which we build our lives.  

The wounds with which we build our lives require empathy. Mori builds upon Jamison’s desire for a more empathetic society, but she shifts the focus towards self-empathy. In an interview titled “Kyoko Mori on Writing Through Deep Trauma,” Mori says, “You avoid the real story because at once you think it’s too painful and too boring…That is like a deadly combination when you think of the most painful thing that happened in your life as being kind of boring, you know?” Minimizing female pain does not make us any stronger. Jamison and Mori push for empathy, not only for women to better understand one another, but to better understand themselves. Mori spent her life hiding and running from pain, staying quiet in her shared living spaces. I am painfully familiar with this desire to disappear. I spent the first few months after my mom’s passing hiding in my room, trying to ignore my pain. As daughters, Mori and I have become resigned to living without our mothers and instead rely on ourselves to find a sense of belonging. I recently read “Motherless Daughters: The Legacy of Loss” by Hope Edelman and learned of the grief daughters experience when their mothers pass away. Some women wait forty years to fully process the trauma of loss. Why are we so scared of our own wounds? Jamison wants us to stop hiding from pain, new or old. The role of mothers, living or not, in shaping who we are creates our sense of belonging and our ability to find joy in others. Mori created her own joy through cat friendships. I create my own joy through human friendships because people motivate and inspire me to be the best version of myself.

Morano depicts the desire of young girls to feel a sense of belonging, and the way in which our mothers shape our capability to achieve that belonging. While Mori focuses on finding meaning through cat companionship and independence, Morano finds meaning through objects, things she takes from breaking and entering into her own home. She writes,“...all I knew from the days leading up to this night was that I would soon be reunited with the things that matter most. My things. Things that gave me shape and depth, that pointed toward the future. I’d wanted, and that force of that wanting had been bigger than anything around it.” She, like Mori, looks for shape and depth in everything but her mother. As imperfect daughters of imperfect mothers, we desire a world in which we can rely on something, anything. For Morano, pop band posters are reliable. For Mori, cats are reliable. In my case, friends are reliable. Over time, these things become flimsy bandages. We somehow forgot the alcohol wipe because Oh, it stings! As Morano put it, “that force of that wanting” to avoid pain “somehow had been bigger than anything around it.” Our wounds need care, just as daughters need care to find our sense of belonging.

Wounds manifest themselves in different ways for each author. While Morano paints a picture of her childhood trauma, Mori paints a picture of the impact her childhood trauma has on who she is today. Both of them disrupt essay structure with personal reflections to give themselves a voice and a space to understand how their mother-daughter relationship impacted them. Morano writes about the importance of structure in “Creating Meaning Through Structure.” She asks herself, “‘So what?’ Why should readers care? To answer this question, it’s important to remember that...we don’t read creative nonfiction in order to find out what happened. We read to understand how a writer makes sense of experience and carries it forward in life.” We know Morano’s mother is a lesbian. We know Mori’s mother commits suicide. We know what happened, but the reason I cry when I re-read these stories is because of the way the authors vividly convey their pain. Morano goes on to explain, “We read for perspective. And perspective is often very closely tied on the page to structure.” Morano and Mori are fixated on their experience and their telling of trauma and pain through the lens of a young woman searching for meaning and failing to find guidance from her mother. As a reader, I care about their perspective because of the way their lives are presented. Morano leaves her readers with an image of herself discovering the power of silence, of keeping her mother’s affair with another woman a secret. Mori ends her essay with her own silence—one which she shares with herself and her cats. Both women slowly give the readers a depiction of their mother-daughter relationship, building a structure in which the reader discovers each woman's perspective in due time. These slow, methodical revelations built my anticipation. Morano and Mori leave the reader with an image of growth—of one moment of healing. 

I admire Kyoko Mori, Michele Morano, and Leslie Jamison. They have not conquered pain in the way I always thought I was supposed to. They have grown, reflected on, and created their own meaning from their mother-daughter stories. Jamison begs us to stop comparing our wounds. Instead, she pushes us to explore the wound—rehashing our pain. In exploring our wounds, in wincing when the alcohol wipe reaches them, Jamison allows us to reflect on what empathy is and why we possess it. Why do we bother to step into each other’s shoes? She writes, “Empathy isn’t just something that happens to us—a meteor shower of synapses firing across the brain—it’s also a choice we make: to pay attention, to extend ourselves… It’s made of exertion, that dowdier cousin of impulse… ” 

I think about the stars, wandering aimlessly, as I lay on the ground at summer camp. The meteor shower becomes less aimless when I allow my thoughts to slow, when I allow myself to exert self-empathy. In an interview, Morano stated that, “Sometimes we care for another because we know we should or because it’s asked for, but this doesn’t make our caring hollow. The act of choosing simply means we’ve committed ourselves to a set of behaviors greater than the sum of our individual inclinations.” Jamison pushes her readers and the readers of Mori and Morano to make a choice; are we willing to push beyond our individual inclinations? Am I willing to understand the wounds and growth spurred from mother-daughter relationships beyond my own? 

Mother. Wound. Growth. I go back to the moment where the cicadas fill my ears and the smell of trees and soil fill my lungs. I remember the summer camp where I rediscover joy every year. I lie on the ground and feel the roots beneath my back, the roots that support my wounds. I think of Amma and the ways in which she pushes me to be the best version of myself. 

I see in my wounds buds of growth. Mori and Morano remind me that growth is not linear. Growth is a cycle. Jamison fosters in me the importance of infinite self empathy. I picture myself laying on the ground, at summer camp, thinking of cycles—of my mother, my wound, and my growth.

For information about publishing articles anonymously, please contact the Editor-in-Chief (swentzel@wellesley.edu). From the April/May 2021 issue.