Book #64: Global Mom: A Memoir by Melissa Dalton-Bradford

It's only five hours before 2013 is over, and I wanted to be sure that I reviewed the last book that I read in 2013 before it ends. I asked for this book for Christmas from my mom, because I had read about it in a bunch of different places and heard just stellar, amazing reviews about it. Global Mom is a memoir by Melissa Dalton-Bradford, an LDS woman who has raised her family of four kids in eight different countries (and still adding to that list). The book is a lot about her experiences living in all of those different places and all the richness this variety and these different customs have added to her life and the lives of her children, which is really inspiring and beautiful to learn about in and of itself, but what makes this book so powerful is when she writes about the loss of her eldest son in a water accident just one week after he left for college at BYU-Idaho. Dalton-Bradford writes so powerfully about the way she and her family has survived that earth-shattering loss and how their international lifestyle has continued and affected their healing process as well. This quote on almost the last page of the book defines well what I think this book is about:

"Of all the borders I've crossed, of all the addresses I've inhabited and of all the lands I've been privileged to call my home, there's but one terrain that's defined me more than any other: that is the land of loss. The very soil that no soul wants to visit. The one topography no parent ever wants to feel underfoot. The haunted land of loss has taught me more than any foreign land ever could. Unlike other geographies one might know for a year or two or even decades, the landscape of loss becomes a kind of permanent overlay to whatever and wherever follows. As much as I 'know' France or Germany, and as much as I at times feel quite Austrian or deeply Norwegian or even a little bit Singaporean or Swiss, no matter where I go or what language I speak, I am always and primarily a mother who buried her firstborn child."

I won't deny that I cried long and hard through about three chapters of the book while reading about her son's accident and the aftermath, not just because of hearing about the raw facts of the incident but also understanding and sharing Dalton-Bradford's experience with it and hearing her voice and her longing and sadness. I really can't emphasize how beautiful and poetic her writing is--you can tell it has been crafted by an experienced poet or musician (the latter of which she is) but it doesn't feel forced or fake. The language was just part of why I thoroughly loved this book. The experiences Dalton-Bradford shares from her time in different countries and the lessons she weaves through her stories about community and "blooming where you are planted" (as cliched as that saying is, that's really what she emphasizes again and again) are compelling all on their own as well. I also admired how she shared her testimony through the book--it was never outright or even explicit, but she mentions again and again her reliance on prayer through difficult experiences and her knowledge and love of God and what He is to her. Not that I mind explicit testimonies in books or anything, but I felt like how she wrote about it felt very organic and worked extremely well with the book as a whole.

I really, truly loved this book--it's one that I think I will want to re-read as a mother as I grow and change.