Rona Maynard’s new memoir explores her troubled relationship with her mother

There is no bond like that of a mother and daughter, endlessly fascinating and always ripe with energy, drama and the spectrum of feelings. Longtime journalist and former editor of Chatelaine magazine Rona Maynard takes a good, hard look at her tumultuous relationship with her own mother in her new memoir My Mother’s Daughter: A Memoir (Douglas Gibson Books, 264 pp.).

It was during her time at the helm of Chatelaine (1994-2004) that she began writing about her own personal experiences, many of which she drew on for the book. “I was prepared as a new editor to write about profoundly big and important things,” recalls Maynard, from her home in Toronto. “But I quickly discovered that the part of me that connected most profoundly with readers were the personal stories. There is appetite for an authentic story that has been considered from all angles by a person who is prepared to be honest. This is huge because a well-told personal story is never primarily about the teller, it’s about the reader, the listener. People use someone else’s story as a window into their own story.”

She set about telling her story in as true a voice as possible, exposing all of the flaws most families work so hard to keep hidden. At the forefront of the story is Maynard’s mother Fredelle, the strong matriarchal figure and talented writer whose own life was molded by her relationship with her dominant Jewish mother.

A gifted storyteller, Maynard uses vivid vignettes, colourfully painted to recount her mother’s marriage to her alcoholic, professor/painter father Max and her sibling rivalry with the perceived warmer, more beautiful sister Joyce. We follow Maynard’s journey through her youth, her quicksand into depression, and the difficulties in her own marriage, motherhood and chasing her career dreams. When her mother passed away in 1989, giving Rona the final blessing to pursue her dream of the editorial ship at Chatelaine, there was a peace that settled in. “There was a lot of push-pull in the relationship,” admits Maynard. “I’ve often said I’ve became myself because of her but also in spite of her. I wanted a better life than hers, which was exactly what she wanted to give me. But we differed on how that better life was going to unfold. I think there is frequently jealousy between mothers and daughters, but mothers think it’s not OK to admit it. If you want the world for your daughter, how can you possibly feel jealous of her? Well, it’s human. We can’t expect ourselves to be paragons of generosity all the time.”

Although the detail and richness that is brought to the book assumes an exhaustive amount of research, Maynard says that most of it comes from memory. Informal interviews with friends and family filled in some of the blanks and added detail while a trip to the University of Winnipeg archives added another layer of depth to the stories.

Although no longer seeking her mother’s approval, Maynard did want to honour her by writing the book and she connects with her readers by showing all the shades of grey that mothers and daughters experience with each other. She succeeds in emotionally connecting with readers because the truth always resonates the loudest. “She was a woman I didn’t particularly like, she was a difficult person, very competitive and self-centered,” Maynard says. “But there were reasons why this was so, and I wanted to capture the complexities of my mother’s character. She was, to me at least, a fascinating, endearing, brilliant, funny, commanding woman, who in addition to being inspiring did some pretty damaging things. I can’t say that she was all good or all bad, none of us are. The hardest part of living like a grown-up is accepting the fact that the people you love and who deserve your love, can do some damaging things.”