THis sounds like one I have to read!! Thanks for reviewing it.
Hey Jordan! I can't wait to hear what you think of this book.
Is there anything more arousing to the emotions than motherhood? Isn't it the most powerful of instincts?
Reading about Cusk's book (I am currently reading her In the Fold) takes me back to more than thirty years to the first weeks after my oldest child was born. My tiny son would cry and I could not console him. He wasn't hungry or wet, I held him to no avail. I felt a paranoid sense that he was crying just to get at me, though I knew this was not possible. Yet I felt it.
Then I read Arthur Janov's book The Feeling Child, a present from my mother-in-law (with which she made up for every other thing she did). Janov discovered how to access early experiences of emotional trauma, and in the book patients describe the intense feelings they suffered when very young. The problem between parents and children is that we forget what it is like to be very small and helpless and utterly dependent on the love of clueless adults. We forget, but we are motivated by those suppressed experiences, made crazy by the evident pain of our children which is a cruel reminder of our own. After reading the book I knew perfectly well what caused the kid to cry. It is so hard to be a mother that I can't imagine what it would have been like raising three children, mostly as a single parent, if I had never read that book.
Dear E. Babcock,
I'm so glad you posted your responses here. You've offered some wonderful insight to this mother and I applaud you for raising three children on your own. I don't know how a person can do one on her own, let alone three. Thank you for posting here. I appreciate it.
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