A true story about the first and most important relationship in the world.
Verlee Bond Young adds 40 years of counseling experience to her personal story of growing up without a mother on a dirt road in rural Mississippi. It is the mother’s hand that loves, comforts, teaches, redirects, and prepares us for all other relationships. When that influence is absent, everything changes. Mother loss often gives rise to feelings of emptiness and inadequacy that amplify fear of accepting love and nurturing from those closest to us. Verlee’s intimate account proves there are also unique strengths of courage and self-reliance born in the shadows that follow the motherless daughter. Those and other gifts of beauty and meaning wait to be discovered in the memory of Mother Bond.
Mother Bond: Memories of a Motherless Daughter
“There is nothing like a front porch swing, especially if the porch has a tin roof. The swing on our front porch was my refuge. On hot summer nights when the air would be so hot and thick that it would dare you to breathe, I would walk out to the porch and sit in the swing rocking hoping it would stir a breeze. When rain would start lightly hitting the roof, I would take a break from housework or homework and sit in the swing waiting for the sound of crickets. They say if you slow down their chirping to the human ear, the chirping sounds like angelic music. I could always hear the music in their sounds. Sometimes I would play the only 45 record I had. It was a Hank Williams song that always made me sad. “I’m so lonesome I could cry” was one of the lyrics. But it made me feel that I was not the only one who felt that way…”
Verlee with her father Virgil in rural Mississippi.
“Sometimes we have to let go of the old unhealthy patterns we created or that were passed on to us. We have to let go of the old rusty chains that keep us from becoming who we really are.”
— Verlee Bond Young