‘Willie you will live longer than me’: an autoethnography of reclaiming mothering my first-born^†

† This autoethnography is the personal story of the first author. The second and third authors are included as this article would not have been written without their considerable guidance, encouragement and editing.

ABSTRACT

Writing the stories of the lives of my three children who died of unrelated causes had unexpected consequences. I found myself released from exile. I had long felt banished from the world of mothering. This is an autoethnography on mothering Toni, my first-born child. She died in 1983 aged 13 years, 4 years after a diagnosis of leukaemia. The key to reclaiming my mother-love for Toni was to peel away the armour and expose my ambivalence about mothering. My ambivalence included the harrowing roller coaster ride of high anxiety, deep resentment and the pure ecstasy of mother love. My ambivalence, heightened by the years of Toni's illness, included my secret thoughts of wishing it was all over. Mortified by my ‘bad’ thoughts, I find my freedom by researching my and Toni's life and the motherhood literature to reach an acceptance of my past. I have a renewed sense of my mothering self.

KEYWORDS:

• maternal bereavement
• mothers and daughters
• child death
• maternal ambivalence
• autoethnography

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to express their appreciation for the reviewers of the original paper. Their detailed review was sensitive to the subject matter and incredibly insightful. It has assisted us in writing a much improved paper. Thank you.

Notes

† This autoethnography is the personal story of the first author. The second and third authors are included as this article would not have been written without their considerable guidance, encouragement and editing.