Customer Reviews

Unraveled: The True Story of a Woman Who Dared to Become a Different Kind of Mother

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

With a never-ending tsunami of parental separations washing up ever more children onto the beach of one-parent homes, intensely candid memoirs like this one have much to add to our understanding of what happens when the nuclear family splits apart. However much you may disagree with Maria's risky decision to cede custody of her three young children to her husband, I believe she deserves credit for great courage in sharing with us her unusual story, knowing that so many will find her actions indefensible. While some may accept her rationale for allowing her husband to retain the marital home while she moved to an inexpensive nearby apartment, her subsequent relocation to California for her lover's sake seriously distances her from her kids in NJ and raises many questions about her judgment. Nonetheless, we remember that this is a woman who had suffered the unimaginable loss of her 3-year old daughter to cancer; once freed post-divorce from housewife/mom burdens, Housden was, moreover, successful in turning her terrible tragedy into "Hannah's Gift", a best-seller that many regard as an inspirational gift to parents coping with a child's death. In short, this is a very complicated picture of a woman trapped between responsibilities to her children and a search for personal fulfillment that may require her leaving them. No doubt written as a rebuttal to those who insist that a Mom's only place is at home, I found Housden -- for all her new-agey soulfulness -- far too cursory in responding to the profound questions her story raises. For example, she describes her reaction when first hearing her husband's divorce proposal that he become primary custodian: "I felt as if life was being squeezed out of my heart. 'Are you crazy?' [she exclaimed]. I was willing to entertain a lot of new possibilities in my life, but I could never leave my kids." Imagine then reading a mere two paragraphs later that --within less than a week -- reassurances from her lawyer convinced Maria "there was no need to panic" over loss of primary custody and "intellectually... I could see how [her husband's] proposal might make sense."

Another anecdote that eroded the author's credibility: living in California in her paramour's home and working on her book about Hannah's death, Maria tells of a call from her agent, urging her to fly to NY to meet with editors who had expressed interest in her manuscript. "I had only $700 left in my bank account, the final remnants of my divorce settlement. I had no job, no source of income, and in two weeks, my kids were scheduled to come spend the whole summer with me." Round-trip plane fare of $400 reduced her funds to a pittance for the stay in NY, and the reaction, as described by Maria, of Roger, her lover? "'Are you crazy? You only have three hundred dollars left,' he said." Forgive me if I find inexplicable that this is all that Maria recounts of her interchange with the dreamy man for whose sake she put 3000 miles between her and her three kids! When we learn a few sentences later that she received a $250,000 offer from Bantam, it almost comes across as much a smug rejoinder to Roger as a wondrous reward for her desperate gamble.

Indeed, by the end of her book, I was confused about the nature of the author's relationship with Roger; a huge portion of the book is devoted to the single rapturous week that Maria spent at a silent retreat where, while still married to her first husband, she meets and beds Roger in an idyll she later tells a friend was right out of The Bridges of Madison County; at her wedding, "I looked into Roger's eyes and could think of nothing more to dream." Romantic perfection appears to be her reward for risking all for the man she loves -- that is, until the second to last page of the book, when for the first time she mention's the challenge of dealing with Roger's dark side and continuing doubts about having given first husband Claude primary custody of their kids. In a very brief mystifying epilogue, she seems almost defensive in acknowledging that it is important for the reader to know that she and Roger, although still married and in love, have his and her homes in NY and NJ, respectively, and "live our lives separately and together."

Similarly, we are left with contradictory feelings about Claude, toward whom she had sufficiently positive feelings to be able to leave their two toddlers and young son for her new life 3000 miles away, but who, she reveals at book's end, is -- even years later -- still unwilling to utter or write a single word to her or even look at her when they crossed paths. In the book's final sentence, however, Housden concludes that her love for Claude -- mindful though she was of his setting a terrible example for the kids -- remained 'solid and unwavering'. Go figure!

The riddles of the author's relationship with both Claude and Roger had me wondering about the real feelings that Housden and her children had for each other. By book's end, we have learned remarkably little from Housden about how the children truly adjusted to life without Mom.

In sum, Housden has without doubt boldly journeyed where few other (healthy, sane) women would dare to go (much less tell the world about), but her travelogue is strangely disquieting in its superficial coverage of such an extraordinarily rare experience.

There is simply no reason to buy "Unraveled" -- there is nothing inspiring, educational or even hopeful in this book. It is like reading a bad blog. The author is self-absorbed to the point of absurdity, and nothing in the book gave me any idea how to cope with the tragedy in my own life better or how to live the life I was meant to live. Losing your child is not an excuse to do whatever you want or to abandon your other children. I know this, because I too lost a 3 year old daughter to cancer, and am now going through a divorce. As for the reader who asked, in her review, why Maria wrote this book, the answer is obvious: the money from "Hannah's Gift" was running out, and she needed the income. The fact is, if she had nothing better to say, she would have been better off not writing any more books and going back to her old career in finance.

There are times in life when it is best to quit while you are ahead and perhaps this author should have paid heed to that advice. While I loved 'Hannah's Gift', sadly I did not enjoy this book at all. I agree with the premise that there are times when givng the father primary custody is the best thing to do but........I am not sure this is one of those situations. She shows her ex-husband to be physically abusive, noncommunicative, unsupportive and seemingly unaware of the emotional needs of others and yet this is who she leaves her children with? I suspect the hired nanny ended up being the primary caregiver because I found it difficult to imagine her ex-husband stepping up to the plate.
In my opinion, Maria seems to have a very cavalier attitude towards childbearing and I found this disturbing. She realizes early on that her marriage is troubled yet keeps having child after child, seemingly on the spur of the moment.
Clearly, she is her children's main source of comfort and emotional support then she leaves them to 'find herself' as an artist. Anyway you slice it, this would have to be devastating for a very young child. I have to agree with her friend who called her 'selfish'.
The part about hooking up with this guy while she is on a retreat that is supposed to help her heal after her daughter's death was just plain creepy. And it read like a Harlequin Romance novel. I can only imagine the complete and utter devastation the death of a child brings, and I kept trying to see her actions through the lens of a still grieving parent, but ended up just as puzzled by her choices.
In the end I would have to say," No Maria. It wasn't woth leaving your children to write this book".

The author's first book, "Hannah's Gift" has a wonderful natural flow to it, while this book seems to go overboad with her constant "insights". Her analogies are a bit overboard, "a little paper boat of hope on the river of the world". The thing that bothered me the most is her new aged "wisdom" of justifying all her selfish actions (committing adultery actually made her feel closer to God!). Every other sentance is "my life", "my wants", "my dreams", "my being". "Me, me, me" and "I, I, I" permeate the entire book. She simply can't be the "woman I know I was meant to be" and "the life I know I was meant to live" and all other sorts of nonsense without LEAVING HER CHILDREN to live 3,000 miles away from them to live in California (another one of HER dreams). Her youngest was only 3 years old! That is undeniably SELFISH and no amount of psycho-babble can excuse her behavior. When you have children, you raise them! She calls herself "brave" and has loads of "courage" for leaving to live her new life. She travels to Moracco for a spiritual walk. She moves to England. She basically does whatever the hell she wants & sugarcoats her behavior with her lame insights.....all the while, her kids have no mother! She does "visit" them every other weekend. Big deal! She also has the nerve to criticise her ex-husband for no longer wanting to speak or see her after their divorce. Well, I don't blame him! If you loved Hannah's Gift and feel you must read this book, get it from the library like I did. I'm glad I didn't fork out any money to encourage more books like this one from the author.

She left her husband to go have casual sex with a yoga instructor? That's not daring. It's banal.

She also abandoned her children. That's not a "different kind of mother" that's quitting as a mother.

I hope that the author failed to find her true self -- otherwise she is truely an awful human being.

I read Hannah's Gift, by the same author, and so I know she is capable of writing a very touching and well written book, and that she is a caring, loving mother. If I hadn't known that, I would have not found out from this book. I have no idea why she wrote it. So she is not the primary custodial parent after a divorce---I don't find that terribly unusual or shocking! She needed a retreat for a few weeks after going through the hardest thing a mother can go through---understandable, but not really worth a book. She found a new man and married him---okay. Maybe I am way off here, but I felt like the hidden reason for this book was to tell how mean her ex-husband was, in a way that says she is NOT doing that---she goes out of her way to be kind to him, but lets us know through facts that he never communicates with her, doesn't allow her in the house her children live in, doesn't let her even know when they are hurt or in special events...lots of things like that. It seems like the book is very defensive, and I don't think the author needed to be. She has done nothing wrong, and doesn't need to write a book to explain herself. In fact, I think not much will be served and a lot could be damaged by putting out in print the context and events leading up to her first intimate encounter with her current husband. Do her children really need a book like that to be written? I don't want to be critical or mean, but I really don't understand what this book was written for, and don't feel it taught me a lot or opened up any new insights for me.

This is a personal account of how low a person can sink and still be considered human. It's not the major life changes she decided to make ten years after Hannah died at the age of three. The book HANNAH'S GIFT should have eased the sorrow she felt; the child lived a year after being diagnosed with cancer and knew she was dying (the way the mother prepared her for the final battle is a precursor to the way she set out on her own for self-preservation ten years later. Will was seven (the age I was when my mother died of cancer), and after some miscarriages, the mother has two more daughters, one before Hannah died.

"Many of the bereaved moms I knew had spent weeks after their child's death refusing to get out of bed or hiding in the bottom of a dark closet. My life hadn't afforded the same possibility to me, and because of that, I felt that my children had suffered more than they needed to due to my shortcomings and exhaustion as a bereaved mother. I was anxious to go on my retreat, in order to rest and figure out what needed to happen next. I also longed for even simpler comforts -- being able to sleep late, not having to worry about making a meal, or about picking up after anyone else. Life without Hannah would be bearable only if I were able to integrate what she had taught me about being honest, about what mattered, and if I were able to be the mother my children needed and deserved." At the retreat, another person enters her life, and she actually became 'unraveled', a good title for this odyssey which shows clearly that she had to escape the agony. 'Unraveled' in this case means mentally unstable (some might say, deranged) and unable to think about anyone but herself.

Other women have endured worst marriage experiences; some even killed their children in the throes of insanity. It wasn't the child's death which sent her on a spiral into being an "independent woman, no matter who gets hurt." Those other little girls, Margaret and Madelaine, didn't ask to be born. The youngest is now eight years old, a very impressionable age. This woman had it all, money, trips, cars, Las Vegas vacations, living on both coasts; you'd think she is Joan Crawford and Debbie Reynolds rolled into one. One thing for sure, her children (Will would be seventeen now.) will not respect her after this book.

This is a disturbing in-depth (doesn't she know that some things are better left unsaid?) account of her unsettling 'take' on motherhood. She will find herself alone and abandoned in her old age, a bitter old woman maybe still writing about going off to Europe "to find herself." But, who cares? When a woman has sex which results in the birth of a child, she is responsible to see that child gets emotional support through the many phases of growing up.

This different kind of mother is totally irresponsible, and the day will come when she wakes up and realizes the gross harm she did to those children. What amazes me is her gawl in revealing what most families deem their 'dirty laundry.' It shows a total lack of morals and integrity, a female Truman Capote, caring only for self. She's living her dream now but, eventually, age will catch up with her -- and Roger and Claude will both find younger women. She's not so unusual. Many women have led secret lives fulfilling their fantasies while still able to care for and nurture the children they brought into this world. It's easy to become 'unraveled,' not so easy to become complete again. Her child's death is not an excuse to flaunt convention. Writing such 'confessional garbage' at her age is not adequate therapy. What goes around comes around; we pay for our sins sooner or later.

I started this book but I had to stop reading it. I just can't grasp how someone who went through the loss of a child could abandon her three remaining babies. And then she writes a book about it, hoping to profit from her selfishness. She makes me sick.

Although I found this book interesting, the more I read, the less I liked or agreed with the choices the author made. I didn't read her first book, because as a mom myself, I guess I'm a coward, I can't read about dying children. The more I read this book, the more the author's selfishness came through. It's all about her, her choices, her this, her that. I tried not to be judgemental, she lost a child and how can that not change you? But to leave her three young children with a man she describes as emotionally abusive and in at least one incident, physically abusive, shows her consideration was not for her children but for herself. I wonder how the children will look at this when they are grown. I hope for her sake, her choices are worth the day to day loss of her children, and the possible loss of the respect of her children when they are grown.

I read this book in one sitting, at least one sitting as allowed by three young children, and the words moved me more than any book I've read in recent history. The questions she deals with face every woman and mother. To follow her journey is to follow your own heart as her words resonate so deeply into the spaces we don't have time for or don't pay enough attention to. I would imagine that the first reaction to the book is one of eyebrows raised; a leap to immediate judgement about a mother who would give up primary custoday. That is the magic of this book - because when you read the beauty, love and committment of this mother and woman, it simply can't be taken away from her and her children. I learned a great deal about myself because this push and pull between judgement and recognition was palpable. We all have to challenge our assumptions and expectations of what a family or a mother is supposed to be - should be - or is expected to look like. Whether or not one believes in the "ideal" family unit or the "perfect" mother, that is simply not the truth or reality for the majority of us. Here is a woman and author who has the courage to face that, live with it, and be true to herself and her family. One may not agree with her choices and I suppose that is the point of the book. We don't have to agree or disagree with her choices, but should examine and make our own with the same kind of courage and insight. It is inspiring to see her determination, faith and love in every choice she makes. Whether or not her children are ultimatley the better and happier as a result of her choices is, of course, unknown - but that is the universal truth of being a mother. There is hope here, and I think that is the key.