Day 5: Who are the "Other Mothers?"

Ann-Marie:

When you search variations on the hashtag #TheOtherMother in Twitter you get a hodgepodge of tweets/posts in terms of its meaning, but generally the same reference point. That is, someone not your parent.

You coined the phrase as the book title (along with rememoir) and in my perspective have wrapped its use around both men and women. I can pinpoint several individuals in my lifetime that have and continue to play an "other mother" role in my life. Your comment this week on FaceBook regarding the BBC article "Memories pass between generations" struck home with me... "So if we can inherit the fears of our biological relatives...maybe Bryne Miller's 'womenism' about not being stuck with the family you inherit is more important than we realize." 

I would say very important.

Teresa:

Hopefully soon when you Google "Other Mother" the top search hit will be Bryne Miller's leaping smile on a beautiful cover of "The Other Mother: a rememoir." Right now if you type in "Other Mothers" you come up with a lot of writing around same-sex parenting. But the term goes back much further ~ anthropologists writing about slavery in this country coined the term "fictive kin" for when female slaves were sold off the plantation but their kids weren't. These motherless children were left to be raised by other mothers.

So it turns out there are may ways to define other mothers but you know it when you feel it. They can be that favoirte teacher, a special coach or mentor but for me the key aspect of other mothers is that they are not genetically responsible for you.  They have no biological ties to your identity so they're free to see only who you are or might become.  They don't start out with the deep background on all your successes or failures so they champion your potential without any baggage. When I gave my TEDx talk in Charleston this year I described my other mother ~ Byrne Miller ~ as being able to see right through me.

The cool thing about celebrating the love of other mothers is that we can pay it forward and become other mothers ourselves ~ at any age, for any length of time and whether we have kids of our own or not. It's "other" in the most limitless way possible.

The Other Mother: A Rememoir by Teresa Bruce

Tell us about an "other mother" in your life...