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A review by tometrinket
What My Mother and I Don't Talk about: Fifteen Writers Break the Silence by Michele Filgate
emotional
hopeful
sad
fast-paced
4.0
Personally, I don't know anyone who has a genuinely good relationship with their mothers. So it took me a long time to get through these short stories cos almost all of them feel to hit me in the jugular one way or another. I often judge a relationship (whether friendship or a romantic one or one with relatives) based on how I behave around them. Like, whether I like the version of me when I'm with them. And I usually evolve and become the better version of myself when I'm around my friends but I seem to stay the juvenile childish version of myself in from of my mom. I'm short-tempered and snappy which is basically not how I behave around anyone else. I take most of the things she says as criticism, and to be fair, sometimes they are but I tend to have way thicker skin around other people. If others say things my mother had said to me, I would probably just walk away and never look back.
There was one story in the book that presented a theory why most people have challenging relationships with their mothers. Most of us are capable of extending sympathy and empathy towards even strangers, we see their points of view, we are able to step into their shoes for a sec. But somehow we fail to do that with our mothers because their story is too intertwined with ours. I have a hard time just talk about my mother without my own feelings and memories messing it all up. I know that's unfair because it's almost like I don't see her existing on her own without me. It might be part of the growing-up process to separate ourselves from our mothers. And judging from some of the stories in this book, I don't think some of us are capable of doing that ever.
To say I enjoyed this book feels weird but these stories are definitely thought-provoking and some even eye-opening. And extremely emotional.
There was one story in the book that presented a theory why most people have challenging relationships with their mothers. Most of us are capable of extending sympathy and empathy towards even strangers, we see their points of view, we are able to step into their shoes for a sec. But somehow we fail to do that with our mothers because their story is too intertwined with ours. I have a hard time just talk about my mother without my own feelings and memories messing it all up. I know that's unfair because it's almost like I don't see her existing on her own without me. It might be part of the growing-up process to separate ourselves from our mothers. And judging from some of the stories in this book, I don't think some of us are capable of doing that ever.
To say I enjoyed this book feels weird but these stories are definitely thought-provoking and some even eye-opening. And extremely emotional.