I enjoyed this book more than I thought I would. Great memoir that is worth the read. ( )

I enjoyed this book more than I thought I would. Great memoir that is worth the read. ( )

It's actually pieces of all mothers---there are those moments in motherhood where running away for at least a few minutes is appealing. Beautifully written----a 12 year effort to get it down in a form that she could finally say "stop" to herself. ( )

This book is a very poignant story of a girl growing up without a mother. The truly heartbreaking thing is that the author’s mother chose to leave her. Melissa Cistaro shares how it was to go grow up with this knowledge.

Throughout her life, Melissa’s mother would come back into her life, only to leave again. In this heartbreaking memoir, the author shares how her mother’s choices affected her. She consistently struggled to connect with her mother but was never quite able to. Melissa tried to find answers as to why her mother kept leaving, and also how to make her stay.

In her mother’s final days, Melissa travels to her bedside. She still hoped to find answers and perhaps a meaningful connection. She finds some unsent letters and searches through them. The letters are to various people in her mother’s life. In the letters, Melissa finally finds some insight into her mother’s thinking.

This book is a painful portrait of a girl abandoned by a very self-centered woman. However, in spite of her mother's ways, Melissa manages to form a life very different than what she knew. This story also shows how what our parents give us does not have to define us. We decide what does that. ( )

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

Please join me **Upcoming Blog Tour Stop Host April 21 West Palm Beach for a complimentary Chapter 1 excerpt from 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. ( )