Searching for Mercy Street: My Journey Back to My Mother, Anne Sexton

by Linda Gray Sexton

Silence compels us to look at what lies behind it, and revelation brings with it knowledge—which is why some feel as if they must write about the private aspects of their lives, in search of solace and clarity.

Most telling, she let slip an admission I had never heard from her before: that despite her difficult relationship with her own mother, there had actually been some love between them, love that it was now painful for her to acknowledge because its loss was even more painful. She knew that I, too, would face such a day.

These were the magic times. Safe times. Knowing, for that moment, that I could count on her: she would take care of me; she was my mother; she was here.

Nana spun love in a fine mesh net and hung it under the tightrope upon which my mother and our family teetered in our desperate act of balance.

My mother imparted to me her enduring belief: what actually happened is not nearly so important as how you feel about what happened.

She was captured by the idea that through the process of writing about a memory the poet can make it more real, more significant, than the actual event would have been in any case.

In this way I learned to become obsessive about small things: I wanted to control the disorder of our home because I could not control the disorder of our lives.

writing is magic because it harnesses the energy generated by the chaos within.

She encouraged me to think broadly, read broadly, develop my own ideas, and search out the world in ways she was not able to. She provided me a powerful—if flawed—role model of all a gifted woman could stretch for and achieve.

“There’s always money for books, Linda.”

Time passed with the speed of a dream, all of us poised, waiting for the climax that would mean both disaster and freedom.

Life inflicts this subtle cruelty: insight comes only with time.

Ultimately, releasing control of her life and work became a metaphor for letting Mother herself go, for acknowledging that I hadn’t been able to keep her alive then and I couldn’t keep her alive now; to return to life myself I had better let the body drop and settle to the bottom of the pond.

We both understood, intellectually at least, how those who are wounded seek unconsciously to re-create the original trauma. Sometimes we are lucky enough, or persistent enough, to achieve the insight that enables us not to act out these earlier scenes of our lives. Mother had been unable to do that.

Why, when we refer to depression, do we think of it in the main as a state characterized by numbness and low spirits rather than intense suffering?

How often has it been speculated that the madness makes the art? If Mother were alive today she would shake her head in disagreement and remind all questioners that when you are submerged in pain and confusion you are not able to create anything at all. You work too hard simply to survive.