Love, Mom
51 pages • 1-hour read
Iliana XanderLove, Mom
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Themes
The Complex Nature of Grief and Trauma
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, child sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and cursing.
Throughout the novel, the main female characters struggle with complex grief and trauma, which not only shapes their internal worlds but also affects their relationships and creative expression. Mackenzie’s journey of discovery after her mother’s death shows that grief can take many forms. At the same time, Elizabeth’s diary entries reveal a close relationship between trauma and creativity. In the opening chapters of Love, Mom, Mackenzie struggles to identify her grief after the death of the woman she believes is her mother. Ironically, it is only after Mackenzie realizes that the dead woman is Tonya, and not her mother Elizabeth, that she can fully feel her grief. Mackenzie imagines her grief as “a monster that grows teeth [and] claws, scratching at [her] heart, making it bleed” (281). The image of an actively growing monster demonstrates that grief is a constantly changing entity that can attack at any moment. Mackenzie’s response to her grief is complicated. She feels a “helplessness so profound that [she] want[s] to scream and lash out and break things and yell” (240). The paradox of a helplessness that causes her to lash out highlights that Mackenzie’s grief is complicated and can take many forms simultaneously. Mackenzie’s grief journey across the novel underscores that the experience of loss can be dynamic.
Elizabeth’s diary entries demonstrate that her trauma journey was as complex as Mackenzie’s experience of grief. After her sexual assault by three foster care peers, Elizabeth “withdrew into herself” (166). The diary entries explain that she “didn’t want to be out there, attracting attention,” preferring to live “in the shadows” (23). Elizabeth remained a “loner” throughout college, which underscores that the trauma in the foster care home had a profound impact on her personal development. However, the novel also shows that the traumatic events of her life shaped her creative journey as a novelist. Elizabeth’s diary entries reveal that “the gruesome details of what was done to the main heroine” of her first novel mirror her own traumatic experiences (34). Mackenzie describes the novel as “batshit crazy with its roots obviously in the past” (15), but the novel implies that the writing process is therapeutic for Elizabeth. Elizabeth argues that “writing the past down and changing the outcome was therapy” (44). A therapist later tells Mackenzie that “it’s not the therapists who do most of the healing, but art” (89). Elizabeth’s use of her painful experiences in her creative journey reflects the complex nature of experiencing, processing, and healing from trauma.
The Fickle Reality of Literary Fame
Elizabeth’s career as a writer highlights that literary fame is not as appealing as it might seem on the surface. Her journey underscores that literary fame can be exploitative and built on shallow relationships. From the beginning of her career as a writer, the people around Elizabeth exploited her. After she shared her writing with her college boyfriend, Ben, he encouraged her to pursue a career as a writer. As Elizabeth fell in love with Ben, his friends told her that “the only reason Ben ke[pt] [her] [wa]s for [her] talent” and that “he’d never look twice at someone like [her]” if he weren’t sure of her future success (23). Ben himself “often joked that when [Elizabeth] got famous and rich with [her] books, [she]’d be his sugar mama” (71). These explicit admissions of Ben’s desire to take advantage of Elizabeth’s talent demonstrate that the production of literature can be exploitative. Ben’s plan to exploit Elizabeth’s talent escalates when Tonya decides to kidnap Elizabeth, steal her identity, and force her to write more novels. Tonya calls Elizabeth her “golden goose,” another exploitative term that shows that Tonya sees Elizabeth as a resource, rather than as a person. Later, Elizabeth’s literary agent, Laima Roth, refers to Elizabeth as a “cash cow.” The use of a second animal metaphor indicates that no one involved in the production of Elizabeth’s novels sees her as a real person. The consistent exploitation of Elizabeth’s talent across the novel dramatizes the exploitation possible in the literary community.
Tonya’s actions while posing as Elizabeth further demonstrate that the literary community can be built on shallow relationships. Mackenzie remembers Tonya-as-Elizabeth hosting elaborate dinner parties “with dozens of guests” from the literary community, including her “latest protégé, some industry professionals, and of course, her agent, Laima Roth, who [Mackenize] can’t stand” (30). The use of the word “latest” to describe the protégé and the vague reference to “some” professionals demonstrate that these were not deep or lasting connections; rather, they were a rotating series of shallow relationships that Tonya hoped to exploit. The addition of Laima is further evidence that these relationships were not based on respect. The very fact that no one recognized Tonya’s fraud demonstrates that the relationships formed in the novel’s literary community are surface level. The novel’s depiction of the highest level of literary fame thus argues that it is not a goal worth achieving.
Nature and Nurture in Personal Development
The novel reflects contemporary debates about the influence of nature and nurture in personal development. While for Elizabeth and Mackenzie, innate traits and familial bonds have greater influence in shaping identity than environmental trauma, the opposite is true for a character like Tonya. Dianne’s description of Tonya’s early life in the foster care system demonstrates that she was permanently affected by the harsh environment in which she was raised. On the other hand, the relationship between Mackenzie and her birth mother, Elizabeth, shows that there is an inherent connection between parent and child that determines personality. The events of the novel ultimately argue that inherent traits can outweigh difficult circumstances.
Dianne describes the children she supervised at Keller Foster Care as “damaged, angry, [and] cruel” (160). She compares these foster care youth to “lone wolf cubs—harmless until they learn how to bite” (166). This metaphor emphasizes that a “harmless” personality can be nurtured into cruelty by a difficult environment, like a foster care group home. She categorizes long-term residents like Elizabeth and Tonya as “the undesirables” and “rejects” and explicitly attributes Tonya’s future crimes to her experiences with Elizabeth at the group home. Dianne’s description of Elizabeth and Tonya’s time at the Keller Foster Care group home reveals that she believes a difficult environment can overpower a good nature.
Despite Dianne’s belief in the corrupting power of environment, the novel’s depiction of Mackenzie and Elizabeth ultimately highlights that some personality traits are inherent and inherited from family. Although they are separated days after Mackenzie’s birth, Elizabeth and Mackenzie show remarkable similarities. Like her mother, Mackenzie is a talented writer whose work won her an award in her first year of college. Both women prefer to be alone, rather than with others: Mackenzie calls herself “a recluse, a loner” (30), and Elizabeth’s diary entries similarly describe her as “a loner.” As Mackenzie reads her mother’s diary entries, she recognizes her sadness and loneliness. The diary entries cause her to conclude, “I am truly my mom’s daughter, and my head might have some madness of hers” (101). When Mackenzie is finally reunited with Elizabeth, she recognizes her as her mother instantly: “[H]er gaze shifts to me […] whipping me back to the diaries and the story of the beautiful mind who was cut off by an unspeakable act of cruelty” (313). The fact that Mackenzie immediately recognizes her mother shows an innate bond between them. The intensity of the relationship between Mackenzie and Elizabeth and their similarities despite their decades-long separation emphasize that certain personality traits are inherited and can allow one to overcome difficult circumstances.
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