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Returning To My Mother's House: Taking Back the Wisdom of the Feminine

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Gail Straub had a record of success: foreign exchange student to Paraguay; Peace Corp worker in Africa; co-creator with her husband of Empowerment Training Programs, a business with an international clientele.

By the time she was in her thirties, however, she was seeing the "ample underbelly" of success: a life out of balance. Ironically, while she was teaching other people how to achieve their dreams, her own life was in great part motivated by the desire to live her own mother's "unlived life."

Regaining proper balance required Straub to examine her relationship with both of her parents and consider how they influenced the choices she had made. In Returning to My Mother's House: Taking Back the Wisdom of the Feminine, Straub describes her journey, both physical, spiritual, and emotional, to reclaim her feminine wisdom and for the first time begin to live her own life.

Straub remembers a childhood of "abundant happiness" in a home that was a "creative partnership" between her mother, a former artist, and her father, a teacher and woodcrafter. During those years, her mother was imaginative, loving, and "at home with herself." By the time Straub was in her early teens, however, Jacqueline Straub had become obsessed with fitting into the "upscale conservative society" to which her wealthy neighbors belonged. At this time, says Straub, the "subtle interior compass that guided her was replaced by exterior standards and outer status symbols," and her mother "began to leave her own house." Straub responded to the family's tension over money and her mother's fragile health by retreating with her father into the "rational masculine," denigrating the emotional feminine exemplified by her mother and focusing on achievement--and, in the process, abandoning her own authentic self.

Following her mother's premature death, Straub continued to be driven to achieve. She would later see this as an attempt to live out her mother's unfulfilled dreams: both the unconventional (living in a hippie commune) and the conventional (gaining social and economic status). But finally, she crossed the "fine line between passion and workaholism," and became engaged with her partner-husband in "an archetypal power struggle of reason over emotion, sharp insight over diffuse awareness--masculine over feminine."

In therapy after her father's death, she came to recognize that in her youthful desire to please him and "the dominant culture he was inextricably linked to," she "had pledged [her] allegiance to the masculine--reason over emotion, doing over being, the universal over the personal..." Cultivating a "conscious relationship with [her] own masculine," she set out on the "journey back to [her] mother." Healing trips to Bali, Russia, China, and Ireland in the company of feminist friends helped her to "reclaim [her] own wisdom and understand [her] mother more fully." Recognizing the "footprints" of her Catholic mother's mysticism, but rejecting the patriarchal church for the injustice her mother received at its hands, Straub became a "spiritual mother": her Grace Spiritual Growth Training Program now serves people "hungry for the nondogmatic and all-inclusive nourishment of the feminine." Finally, she learned to embrace "Lady Death" as the completion of life.

Although the memoir is an indictment of the "potent societal forces" at work in male-dominated Western society that were "waiting to steal away [her mother's] untamed imagination," Straub also ponders the issue of choice. She wonders, for example, whether the independent Jacqueline Walsh, deciding in the early 1940s to "uproot herself from her family, her faith, and her place" a "generation ahead of herself," had any idea of the results of "such radical choices..." Later she asks, "How much of my mother's abandonment was her own doing, and how much was she at the mercy of a culture that routinely betrays the feminine?"

Jacqueline Straub's "demons," the author concludes, were "insidious and complex." The answers her daughter seeks are "complex and intertwined." One of the most telling of the many questions Straub poses is suffused with compassion: "Was Mom just doing the best she could?"

The "betrayal of the feminine" Straub describes is indeed universal. In fact, I chose to read the book because my mother, like Straub's, lived in a community where she had little creative or intellectual stimulation, and who did the best she could; and I have lived much of my life trying to make up for her disappointments. Only pages into the book, I discovered other similarities: Straub and I are nearly the same age; Jacquelyn Walsh Straub and my mother were born in the same year; they both suffered from heart disease that was at least in part attributable to emotional stress; and Mrs. Straub died of heart disease in the same year my mother suffered a near-fatal heart attack. In Straub's story I see a reflection of my own; I feel as if this book were meant for me.

Returning to My Mother's House is Gail Straub's declaration of love, compassion, and understanding for her mother, for herself, for all women. It is an excellent book for older women who need to look back and heal. It's also an excellent book for young women who would better understand themselves, their mothers, and the world in which they live.

by Kathy Waller
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women

I was inspired on so many levels. I felt a particular, deep lesson repeating itself, that relieves me from my conscious, deliberate planning of the future. In Gail's reclaiming of her feminine soul, we see how one piece of her life births the next piece of life. It is an uraveling and building of heartfelt, unpredictable steps toward wisdom and grace. She could not have planned or known this staggeringly amazing journey from the beginning. And so, I am clearly reminded of the organic, magical and mysterious path of life and the trust I must have in its unfolding, in absolutely the right way. What a reflief!

I totally love my mom -- in many ways she's my hero -- but nobody presses my buttons the way she does. Reading Gail Straub's book, Returning to My Mother's House, was like a year of therapy for me.
Straub weaves together her own story and that of her mother in a way that is both intimate and highly readable. Her life as a global activist is a fascinating story, but what really touched me was how she gradually uncovered the power of her mother's influence, the magnetic pull of a mom's unlived life. Each insight that Straub uncovered seemed to trigger one in me too, and in the days since reading it, I find myself rethinking my relationship with my 80 year-old Mom in ways that I'm hoping will make the ever-smaller time we still have together a little richer.
Does this add up to capturing the wisdom of the feminine? That's a big question, but I sense it's nudging me along in that probably lifelong process.
This is a book I'm recommending to a lot of my closest friends, and I'm nagging them to read it soon! Cause I can hardly wait to curl up and have a long conversation with them about all the thoughts and feelings it kicked up for me.
If you're like me, cherishing your mom yet longing for a very different life, you will love this book.

One of my first reactions to Gail Straub's book, before even finishing it, was to call my 88 year old aunt in Arizona and make a date to visit her. Much as I love her, my primary goal was to discuss with her her remembrances of my mother (10 years her senior) from their childhood. For years I have been aware of the disparity between my vision of my mom as her daughter and the tales and photos I have of her from her early years. Such is the power of this rather excellent "read"...one is moved to contemplation, action and an expanded vision of relationships and personal narrative.
Ms. Straub is a gifted writer and in her incredibly honest exposition, gives us the tools we need to explore this important part of every woman's development.
A highly recommended book for those wanting to know more about the unfolding of their own sacred femininity.
Kayla Gluck

Those who have had the good fortune to take Gail's workshops over the years know that she is a thoughtful, caring, and inspiring teacher. Her new, beautifully written book explores deeply personal yet universal themes. She invites readers -- men and women alike--to explore our life choices and core relationships, and consider strategies that might help transform the world we've created for ourselves. Thank you for the lovely book, Gail.

On first read, I was jealous that Gail had a mother that at least opened up the idea of the feminine. Growing up with a German heritage in a family dominated by the masculine, the feminine was hard to find. Thanks to this book, after a lifetime of resentment, I can begin to let my mother "off the hook." I can now see that nothing in her lifetime offered her a lifeline to herself. And, more importantly, it showed me how crucial it is for me to pass on to the next generation every possible piece of feminine wisdom I have gathered. I can't wait to read it again!

In her book "Returning to My Mother's House" Gail Straub offers us amazing insight into the importance of linking understanding of life relationships to living a life free from the wounds of the past. Her lyrical writing is an added bonus that makes this a compelling read.

Vera Salter Ph.D.

I thought it was quite ironic that in a book that proposes that women reconnect to their feminine roots would use masculine terms:

The Five Most Common Ways a Woman Loses
Her Innate Female Wisdom

1. Closing her heart and running away from her emotions. Often, a seminal event forces a woman to stop expressing her feelings, stop trusting her intuition, or shut the door on her inner life altogether. This catalyst could be rape or incest, illness, divorce or marriage, the birth of a child, the death of a parent, or any loss.

Seminal refers to semen the masculine seed. Why not germinal or hallmark events? Emotionally complex events? Change our vocabulary so that it better represents a more gender-inclusive or feminine view on life.

Vicky

Gail Straub's book should be read by anyone who has a mother -- which means all of us. Whether you know your mother, whether you like your mother, whether you have issues with your mother, whether you mother is your best friend or your worst nightmare, whether she is absent, present, overwhelming, underwhelming doesn't matter. She has had a major effect on you, and you owe it to yourself to better understand your relationship with her.

But Gail doesn't stop at just examining the relationship. In her wise and totally candid way, she helps us discover who we are as a result of, and even despite, our experience of being mothered. I came away from this book knowing more about myself, liking more about myself, being grateful for the mother I had (even though no relationship is ever ideal) and appreciating the sensitivity and honesty with which Gail examines her own life.

If dogs & cats could read, I would tell them to get this book. Perhaps you could read it to your beloved pets? I'm sure they would listen!

Each and every chapter is a gift unto itself. Gail's description of her mother's estrangement from her true self led me to greater understanding of my mother's life experiences and choices.Her description of her own search for her feminine nature aligned with my heart's search for my own inner authority. I found myself savoring Gail's experiences while realizing her life's journey is all of ours, whatever the individual scenery. Reading this book enriched my understanding of my life, my mother's life, my sisters' lives...Thank you, Gail.