Pieces of My Mother

A painful yet well written book about the journey a daughter takes to understand her Mother abandoning her as a child. There are times this is a dark book – yet, this was the life she lived. In the end there is peace and hope for a healthy future. NetGalley and Sourcebooks provided an advanced review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

Good read. It reminded me of books like Glass Castle or Wild. Nicely written, sad, but uplifting.

After finishing this book last night, I wanted to let thoughts linger before I wrote my review. The impact was so strong that I wanted time for it to settle.

If I could give this book ten stars, I would. Cistaro has opened up her soul and poured it out onto paper for all of us to see. Insecurities, vulnerability, fear are all exposed.

As a mother, I am keenly aware of the mistakes I have made and this book kept making me wonder what profound impact those errors have had onto my daughter. Cistaro's mother left so much "unsaid" by the end of her life and I feel challenged to not make the same misjudgement.

When you open this book be ready for an eloquently written story, but also for moving self-examination. I believe PIECES OF MY MOTHER will be echoing through my mind for some time to come.

DISCLAIMER: I was given an electronic copy of this book by NetGallery in exchange for an fair and honest review. I will be buying a physical copy of it for myself and my daughter. What a great way to have that conversation I feel compelled to have with her.

This book hit such a chord in me that I really had a hard time discussing it for a bit. My situation is not the same but parrallel. I too made peace with my Mom but it was as I moved her in with me to care for her after her cancer diagnosis. I had the most intense, important, healing, painful, and jarring 4 months of my life. When I held my Mom as she passed I was blessed with a heart that was mended and an understanding of my Mother on a human level. What a gift.

This book can be dark but this is Melissa Cistaro's truth. Not many people can put into words so eloquently the pain and confusion of being denied a mothers love. The thing about Memoirs is they are so deeply personal and to me... brave. For someone to turn their heart inside out for the world to see and judge is an astonishingly brave thing to do. While I am sure there are personal reasons for doing it also lets people know they are not alone.

Thank you Melissa for sharing. Thank you Netgalley and Sourcebooks for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

This book really hit home for me. Both Melissa and I had a mother that we didn’t really understand. We didn’t understand the decisions they made and why they continued doing what they did seeing how it effected their children. While my mother never left us like Melissa’s did, I feel that she left us mentally. I felt a lot of what she was feeling growing up. She asked why her mother wouldn’t stay while I’ve asked why my mother couldn’t stop taking her pills.

Pieces of My Mother is about learning to forgive even when you don’t fully understand the decisions that were made. It’s also about learning to forgive yourself and know that the decisions people make are their own.

I would highly recommend this book for those of you that love a good memoir.

A special thank you to Sourcebooks and NetGalley for an ARC exchange for an honest review.

Join ME Book Blog Tour Host April 21 for an excerpt - Chapter One of Pieces of My Mother.

Melissa Cistaro courageously steps out to deliver a poignant memoir, PIECES OF MY MOTHER, a heartbreaking story, drawn from memory, letters, and early recollections of her own childhood and family trials.

While trying to sort out her troubled family and a mother who left when she was a small girl, she reflects as a grown woman, while looking at her own family, and wonders genetics can spill over and make you question yourself as a mother. Are we destined to repeat our past environment?

Perfect timing as we approach Mother’s Day, to appreciate our mothers, and realize some children do not always have the proper parents—ones to love and protect them, to serve as viable role models for their children. These children grow up always wondering if they were to blame for their parent’s absence, and desperately seek love and validation.

As a child, Melissa sees her mother drive off while her dad informs the family their mother is "taking a break" from everyone and not very forthcoming about the details. They can only hope she will return for their birthday, or possibly a special holiday. However, when she does, is she really there? She and her brothers--Jamie and Eden, alone without a mother.

Now a mother herself, how can she tell her daughter a dark truth, she was leavable and unkeepable. What if there is some sort of genetic family flaw, some kind of leaving gene that unexpectedly grabs hold of mothers like the ones in her family? What if the gene is lying dormant inside of her? What if her own daughter worries she may leave one day?

She pictures her mom, a thousand miles away, and only visiting a few times, while each of the children carried "her leaving" in different ways. She took all the colors with her. She drifted in and out of their lives like live-in sitters, always seeming just out of reach. She wants her own daughter to feel safe and loved, not left the way she has always felt.

Now years later, a mom with children of her own, she finds herself in Washington, as her mother is dying. Her mom has cirrhosis and liver cancer; all the years of drinking have caught up with her. All her fears surface. She is leaving once again. She will only be sixty five in five days and she promises her own family she will be home by New Year’s Eve. Her own family needs her and wants to make sure she WILL return.

Her mom is as mysterious as ever, yet her mother surrounds herself with bits and pieces of life collected; a life she never really knew – the books she loved. Melissa began to fill her own notebooks, only attempting to understand her mom’s leaving, searching for memories that could rescue her. Believing that if she could dig up the goodness in the things that haunted her, there would be a chance she could save her mom, her brothers, her dad, and herself. If she can get the words right, maybe she can keep her alive. She wants desperately to understand a woman who is dying.

As she is going through her mother’s things, she finds folders, letters, treasures, and all the while she recalls the days she was afraid to move to yet another house, for the fear her mom may not be able to find them; if and when, she would come back. Now, letters her mom never sent may provide her comfort and answers. Her mom and dad were both hoarders, coveting treasures and not one of these items will keep her alive. She too suffers from hanging on to things.

However, as she reads her mom’s letters, thirty-six years have passed since she watched the her mom drive away in her baby-blue Dodge Dart, she still wonders what if she had called out to her, would she have stayed? Now she has to make the decision to leave her mom to die, to get back to her own family and a miracle of her own.

A deeply moving complex, honest portrayal of family, of motherhood, yet uplifting and captivating; alternating between Melissa and her mother, we see firsthand how a parent’s choices impact their children’s lives for generations to come with emotional devastation.

From regret, understanding, acceptance, to forgiveness; a book of the strong bonds of love and motherhood. What doesn't kill you, will fortunately make you stronger.

Thank you NetGalley and Sourcebooks for sending the ARC copy in exchange for an honest review.

Reading this book was a heartbreaking experience for me. It was really sad. I never read a book like this before. When I read the description, I never imagined it was going to be as painful as it was. I haven’t experienced the same situation as Melissa, however, I live far away from my family, in another country. There are situations that I haven’t solved or give the appropriate closure. Situations that are hard to confront. There are times when I find myself thinking: “what if something bad happens to any of them and I cannot be there on time to say goodbye?”. In different ways, we all are constantly looking for answers, especially to the hardest situations we go through in life.

I want to thank Melissa for writing such an honest book. I cannot imagine how hard it was for her to open her heart and show us not only her vulnerability, fears, insecurities, sadness, mistakes, self doubt and imperfections but also those of her mother, grandmother, father and brothers, her entire family. When a writer has the bravery to pour out her heart and show us who he/she really is, it makes the story more believable. Credibility, especially in Memoirs, is always well appreciate it. Melissa’s writing style is beautiful, well executed. I think it is what holds the entire story together. She shows us what happened and how hard it was to grow up without a mother and all her fears on parenting her own children but also, a hope for a better future, that sense of hope it was always present for me in the book.

Told from Melissa’s Point of View, Pieces of my Mother is the story of Melissa and her mother. Going back and forth between the past, when Melissa’s mother left the house, and what it was like for Melissa and her brothers to grow up motherless, and the present, when Melissa’s mother is dying and she goes to Olympia to stay with her in her last days, where Melissa finds a series of letters her mother wrote throughout the years to her and her brothers but never sent and how she hopes these letters would contain the answers to all the questions she has had for so many years. The search for that something that would give her some sort of closure.

This book gave me a sense of Self-Examination. It made me think what the impact of having so much “unsaid” in life can have on people around you, especially the ones you love. Family, friends. It also helps us to understand that our situations in life may be different but we all deal with the consequences of our decisions. We all face doubt. We all at some point in our lives try to avoid the same mistakes our parents or brothers made or are making. It teaches us that we always have to try to understand why people do what they do or why the make the decisions they make and not to judge them because at the end, there is always a story behind the why’s. For some people is harder to open up about their lives and explain why, like I feel is the case of Melissa’s mother but that doesn't make her a bad person. It makes her human.

Pieces of My Mother, a book that will be in my mind for more years to come. All the lessons I learned that I will keep in my heart. Forgiveness, love and learn from our mistakes.

A touching and heartfelt story about a daughter's loss and a mother's struggle. No matter how difficult Melissa Cistaro's childhood and adulthood were, she never stopped trying to understand the reasons her mother left her at such an early age. I applaud her honesty and her desire to dig deep into places her relatives never dared to go.

It didn’t occur to me that becoming a mother myself could wash to shore the wreckage of the past. To tell my daughter this truth is tell myself the darkest truth. That I was leavable. Unkeepable.

This prose starts with a note to its reader reminding them the influence a parent as on its children. That their relationship whether they are physically/emotionally present or absent, shape us in countless of ways. This prose does not blame her mother for the distress she has, but she desires to understand so that she can in turn love her own children and find love in herself.

Mellissa was abandoned by her mother when she needed her mother the most. Leaving her and her brothers left her in pieces and broken and with relationship issues that with time are beginning to heal. Broken where there are dark and ugly places that have been locked up. Unable to trust others because of the abandonment of her mother, she lives in fear of all relationships. She picks up pieces of her mother thru letters that were never sent in a deep need to connect with her ailing mother before she dies.

The narration is told in the past and as Mellissa stays with her mother as she waits for her to die. Having two children of her own now, her children are pieces of her that she treasures and leaving them is unthinkable. That is what makes her relationship with her mother so hard to comprehend. What will she find? Going back, Mellissa sees her mother for who she really is. Her own insecurities and with grace, she realizes that she would not want any other mother but the one she has. Her mother in her own way has taught her much about what love is and who she really is.

This story was very personal to me. My own mother left my brother and me when I was 4 as well. About the same time that Mellissa’s mother left in the late 60’s. I remember every moment at the airport saying goodbye and not understanding. I also longed for my mother for 6 years. I did not see her again until I was 11. I thought of her every day and imagined my life differently. My relationship with my mom is good but there is a tension that will probably never go away. I guard my relationship with my husband and children fiercely because of my past. Everything she wrote resonated with me.

Some of the quotes are profound.

I am glad for time alone. It’s deeply wired in me. The long stretches of time that I spent in my room as a young girl balanced me. In my room, the world felt small and manageable.

You left, you took the easy road out. I wish I could trust you. Sometimes I wish I had that mom.

It’s not a lack of love but a fierce desire to be alone. I need it often, this solitude, this time to think and figure things out.

That in overcoming the pain you have not had to close off your emotional self. That you are keeping in touch with your soul.

It is no mistake that I have a daughter to teach me about the things I still need to learn.

I write to understand myself and lure the voice inside me out of hiding.

I wouldn’t trade my mom for any other in the world.

Sometime amends come in other ways…that you have great family.

Such an emotional read that will leave you vulnerable and a longing for the tender hearts of children.

A Special Thank You to Sourcebooks and Netgalley for ARC and the opportunity to post an honest review.