Personal Narratives Podcast: The Tale Of Motherless Mothers

The so-called everyday stories of ostensibly ordinary people are often more poignant and revealing than many extraordinary tales put together. This podcast is one such ‘ordinary’ story.

The series is called ‘Earshot’, and like its name suggests, the podcasts play by the ear. And gently at that. A kind of social commentary that is tender and strong as well as powerful and restorative. The series focuses on people and their stories as well as places and their histories, but the overall idea is to look deeply at some deceptively minor narratives to get a better understanding of the larger picture.

I particularly recommend the episode on 'becoming a motherless mother'. In a moving half an hour, it tells the story of Olivia Humphreys who discovered she was pregnant. So, you may well ask. Olivia grew up without a mother of her own. And becoming pregnant and eventually a mother brought about an emotional storm that she had not anticipated and threw up questions that she struggled to find answers to.

Will I be able to mother well without having seen my mother do it? How will my loss affect my child? How will my grief for my mother change now? Olivia says becoming pregnant threw her grief in sharp relief — she was never as aware of her mother’s absence as when she was pregnant. The feeling continued when she became a new mother. Simple things such as her baby's first steps or first day at daycare would make her wish she had a mother to share it with.

Hope Edelman, author of Motherless Daughters, says many women, like Olivia, face the challenging task of parenting without support or advice from their mothers. And interestingly enough, they share many common parenting traits — like hoarding memories or making an effort to teach their daughters about menstruation from a really young age. (What if I die too is the question that haunts them, Hope believes.)

Ultimately, it is not just a tale of grief but also of nurture and hope. Precisely why it matters.