When I Married My Mother: A Daughter's Search for What Really Matters - and How She Found It Caring for Mama Jo

As I will explain in the chapters that follow, many don’t dare to uncover the painful truth of what was missing in their mothers because they are unprepared to deal with what this would mean.

For many of the undermothered, life has felt hard. There has been struggle around livelihood, struggle around relationships, struggle simply to feel okay. This struggling is a different octave of the failure-to-thrive syndrome identified in orphanages.

Mothering a man is her way of attempting to overcome her sexual anxiety, for it allows her to deny her fear of surrendering to a man. By acting as a mother, she feels needed and superior.

Even if you had the most wonderful mother in the world, you may eventually have more than one. As I have often told my own daughters, “You are born to one mother, but if you are lucky, you will have more than one. And among them all you will find most of what you need.”

She had chosen someone who resembled her father so she could resolve her childhood fear of being abused. She