Our first Dispatches from New Motherhood piece of 2021 is MOTHERLESS DAUGHTER by Louise Murphy Ackerman. It’s an incredibly moving account of five months in her daughter’s life, and the author’s own as a motherless mother. With intricately expressed memories and intimate reflection, Louise’s piece moves towards a powerfully emotional and uplifting conclusion.
Louise says, ‘Motherless Daughter was written in a process of grief. I lost my mother at age 9 when she passed away unexpectedly of a heart attack. Growing up without a mother was my normal and I told myself that I knew no different so it didn't impact me. But falling pregnant and giving birth opened me up to the Grief I'd been ignoring for the previous 25 years. Facing motherhood without a mother highlighted a loss I'd never considered. Not only was I missing out on a biological norm of having my own mother guide me through this, my daughter would never know her Nanna.’
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Motherless Daughter
Louise Murphy Ackerman
My daughter is barely five hours old. The relentless heat of weeks has turned into rain, trickling down the window of our cosy cubicle. She lies against my chest wrapped snugly in the lilac blanket, marked Hospital Property. My fingers trace the edges of the cloth as my mind is pulled to a memory of you. I was five years old, and shivering as salt water dripped from my pale skin onto the sand as you enveloped me into a bright velvety beach towel. I was instantly warmed. As I nuzzle my daughter into my neck I try to give and feel the safety that’s long been taken from me. In that moment I silently vow to be there for her.
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It has taken five long days but we are finally home. I breathe a sigh of relief to be in my nest, and let the name Mummy wash over me, officially accepting my new title. I place my daughter, lying safely in the carrycot, under the watchful eye of the frame that holds the only three photos I have of you. I capture the image, perhaps an attempt to link the three of us. Though I don’t need to contrive this connection: my daughter looks just like me, and me like you. I haven’t seen your face since I was nine years old. I was watching you prepare for a night of freedom; you were sitting at the dressing table brushing your hair. You told me to be a good girl while you were gone. Unaware that before the next day began, your beating heart would suddenly stop – and mine would break. That was the start of the May half-term, and the first day of a new me: a motherless me.
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My daughter is five weeks old. I bite my lip and count to ten, waiting for the burning to stop searing through my breast as she suckles. It should be better by now, but I refuse to give up. The anger boils. I will not fail her. I think of teenage me, so indignant, so bereft but unable to accept that you did not let me down: you simply died. After school I'd visit your resting place. Sit on a nearby bench, and inwardly scream at you. Why didn't you go to the doctor? Why didn't you take better care? Now I sit for hours with my nursling, exhausted, ignoring my own rising hunger. I understand it now: I see how you took no time to tend to your own garden.
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Five months have passed since my daughter came into this world. I gave her your name, and we call you Nanna as we greet your photos most days – my heart is less shattered by the absence of you; she has somehow binded the fragments I believed too damaged to reconstruct. I am a motherless mother but I know I will never be alone again.
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Motherless Daughter by Louise Murphy Ackerman appears in the Mothership Writers anthology Dispatches from New Motherhood. All 50 pieces from the book will be published here over the year to come, creating an online library of what it really means – right here, right now – to be a new mother.