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Bloodroot: Tracing the Untelling of Motherloss
From the writer whose earlier books have been described as “a radiant prism of colour, memory and longing” and acclaimed as “ripe â ready to move into song” comes Bloodroot, Warland's personal telling of the loss of her mother.
In this compelling and beautiful work of creative non-fiction, writer and poet Betsy Warland takes the reader with her as she negotiates her mother's growing incapacity and death. Her narrative traces the story that bound them together in the mother-daughter relationship, and her reflections help her find clarity, understanding and acceptance. Warland weaves a common ground that moves beyond duty and despair, providing both questions and guideposts for readers, particularly those faced with ageing and ill parents and their loss.
In this compelling and beautiful work of creative non-fiction, writer and poet Betsy Warland takes the reader with her as she negotiates her mother's growing incapacity and death. Her narrative traces the story that bound them together in the mother-daughter relationship, and her reflections help her find clarity, understanding and acceptance. Warland weaves a common ground that moves beyond duty and despair, providing both questions and guideposts for readers, particularly those faced with ageing and ill parents and their loss.
- GenresMemoirPoetryNonfiction
196 pages, Paperback
First published May 15, 2000
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 6, 2022
A few passages from Bloodroot:
*
My mother used to say accusingly, “My Children moved as far away from me as they could.” She herself had been the only daughter to stay on the farm, two kilometers across the section from her parents.
“Times are different,” we’d assure her; most of the kids we grew up with had also moved to where jobs and lifestyles better suited them.
Truth inside out.
Or.
Truth cut in half reveals itself.
*
And so we embody the dead. Their most characteristic gestures, preferences, postures, signatures of speech & perceptions, possess us, take up residence in those of us who remain.
*
During the last year of my mother’s life I finally understood her still birth as a mother (who was still a mother). And, I laboured in earnest to relinquish my need that she open her heart to mothering me. I gave myself to birthing her.
It wasn’t that she didn’t provide for my basic needs as a child – she did. But the motherly instincts of nurturing, taking delight in, & enjoying the female companionship of her only daughter, remained outside her imagination.
There was, in truth, only one possibility between us.
It was up to me. Up to me to birth my mother into the accepting arms she so longed for the embrace of.
She had been waiting. A lifetime.
I had been waiting. A lifetime.
It was not me versus she, but we who needed mothering.
How to
was all that mattered.
*
*
My mother used to say accusingly, “My Children moved as far away from me as they could.” She herself had been the only daughter to stay on the farm, two kilometers across the section from her parents.
“Times are different,” we’d assure her; most of the kids we grew up with had also moved to where jobs and lifestyles better suited them.
Truth inside out.
Or.
Truth cut in half reveals itself.
*
And so we embody the dead. Their most characteristic gestures, preferences, postures, signatures of speech & perceptions, possess us, take up residence in those of us who remain.
*
During the last year of my mother’s life I finally understood her still birth as a mother (who was still a mother). And, I laboured in earnest to relinquish my need that she open her heart to mothering me. I gave myself to birthing her.
It wasn’t that she didn’t provide for my basic needs as a child – she did. But the motherly instincts of nurturing, taking delight in, & enjoying the female companionship of her only daughter, remained outside her imagination.
There was, in truth, only one possibility between us.
It was up to me. Up to me to birth my mother into the accepting arms she so longed for the embrace of.
She had been waiting. A lifetime.
I had been waiting. A lifetime.
It was not me versus she, but we who needed mothering.
How to
was all that mattered.
*
January 3, 2015
Choice words throughout, so much said, in so few words. Betsy chose just enough images to tell the story of her mother's death, leaving threads to ponder.
July 1, 2015
Most beautiful memoir story I've ever read.
May 3, 2022
I had to read this book as an assignment. I was not very happy about the choice of that book by the facilitator of the workshop. The book is about 200 pages, but it could easily fit in a 40-page book if it wasn't spread so much in those 200 pages. Many pages have only one line of text, and most pages fill less than half a page. I had the feeling the author decided to go with this format so she could ask for the price of a standard 300-page book (I paid CA$25 for it). In the essay that the author felt obliged to add at the end of the book in the second edition, she explains that she first had written it like the thoughts came to her, and she would go to the next page when she would resume the writing.
However, her agent explained to her that no publisher would accept to publish the book with so much empty space. She then accepted to remove the empty space, and she sent the book to many "first readers". Not hearing anything back from them after a few months, she investigated and discovered that none of the first readers felt the desire to finish the book after reading about half of it. She then decided to put back the empty space, and she sent back the book with the new format to the same readers. Apparently, they were delighted with the book in the new format. I say: if you need to play with the format to make a book interesting, then it probably means that the content is not that interesting! (However, she managed to convince the publisher to publish the book with the empty space.)
Personally, I found the story interesting, but I found a lot was missing (and there was plenty of space to add the missing content, which the author partly did in the second edition). For example, she mentioned that she was abused in her childhood (in the essay of the second edition, she specifies she was "sexually abused"), but we don't know who abused her or any of the impacts this abuse had on her life. She did mention though that she was probably neglected by her depressive mother when she was a toddler, although she didn't elaborate further on this subject.
I didn't understand some of her formatting decisions. Firstly, of course, her decision to waste a lot of paper by not taking advantage of the space available on the page (having difficulty to turn the pages because of a degenerative illness, I was annoyed to have to turn pages every 10-15 seconds). She mentioned in the second edition's essay that she felt it necessary to convey the feelings she had when she wrote the book, but I didn't feel it did convey that kind of feelings. Second, why some times use the symbol "&" and other times use the standard "and"? I didn't see any logical reason for that and thought it was just an immature decision to try to convince people that she's different (she never used that symbol in the essay of the second edition written 20 years later). Another strange decision I thought was the use of the French word "sans" instead of the standard English word "without". Did she want to show that she can also speak French?
In conclusion, I think this book was written specifically (and not very well) for women who experienced the last days of their needy, dysfunctional and delusional mother dying on a hospital bed. I don't recommend it to any other people. ( Now I hope I can use this review at the workshop this week!)
However, her agent explained to her that no publisher would accept to publish the book with so much empty space. She then accepted to remove the empty space, and she sent the book to many "first readers". Not hearing anything back from them after a few months, she investigated and discovered that none of the first readers felt the desire to finish the book after reading about half of it. She then decided to put back the empty space, and she sent back the book with the new format to the same readers. Apparently, they were delighted with the book in the new format. I say: if you need to play with the format to make a book interesting, then it probably means that the content is not that interesting! (However, she managed to convince the publisher to publish the book with the empty space.)
Personally, I found the story interesting, but I found a lot was missing (and there was plenty of space to add the missing content, which the author partly did in the second edition). For example, she mentioned that she was abused in her childhood (in the essay of the second edition, she specifies she was "sexually abused"), but we don't know who abused her or any of the impacts this abuse had on her life. She did mention though that she was probably neglected by her depressive mother when she was a toddler, although she didn't elaborate further on this subject.
I didn't understand some of her formatting decisions. Firstly, of course, her decision to waste a lot of paper by not taking advantage of the space available on the page (having difficulty to turn the pages because of a degenerative illness, I was annoyed to have to turn pages every 10-15 seconds). She mentioned in the second edition's essay that she felt it necessary to convey the feelings she had when she wrote the book, but I didn't feel it did convey that kind of feelings. Second, why some times use the symbol "&" and other times use the standard "and"? I didn't see any logical reason for that and thought it was just an immature decision to try to convince people that she's different (she never used that symbol in the essay of the second edition written 20 years later). Another strange decision I thought was the use of the French word "sans" instead of the standard English word "without". Did she want to show that she can also speak French?
In conclusion, I think this book was written specifically (and not very well) for women who experienced the last days of their needy, dysfunctional and delusional mother dying on a hospital bed. I don't recommend it to any other people. ( Now I hope I can use this review at the workshop this week!)
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews