Reviews

A Miracle Every Day: Triumph and Transformation in the Lives of Single Mothers by Marita Golden

comradebiblio's review

4.0

The first half of this book is so uplifting and life-affirming it was exhilarating to read. The second half felt flat in comparison. While the initial themes were of the resiliency of single mothers, their capacity for creation and creativity, their ability to heal themselves and raise their children wholeheartedly and healthfully, in the second part the overwhelming theme was of the need to rely on an emotional bond with their children’s fathers in order both to be good mothers and to raise “complete” children. To me this externalises the possibility of our wholeness—both for the children of absent fathers and for the mothers of those children—into the hands of another, a person who necessarily cannot be exhorted by any means to meet us where we might wish to meet them. The idea that we must forgive and offer unconditional love to a person who, for whatever reason, cannot love us in a healthy way, is contrary to the message of self-healing and women’s ability to be whole, to raise a whole family, without being dependent on an absent man.