Mother of my Invention: A Motherless Daughter Memoir
My mother spent the first 13 years of my life institutionalized in a Louisiana psychiatric hospital. That no one in the family would speak of her convinced me it was shameful to ask questions and that fears of inheriting my mother’s illness were justified.
Long after my mother’s death, and after the deaths of everyone who’d known her before, I obtained hospital records, detailing everyday interactions and psychiatric treatments of the 1950s. These documents and a handful of photos and mementos brought to life the woman I could only imagine in theory. At the same time, I discovered my true inheritance was the contributions of people and experiences that had enriched my life. Mother of My Invention explores the unique challenges faced by motherless daughters and suggests that mothers can sometimes be found in unexpected places, if we’re open to finding them.
Photo Album
Karen, Jon, and Me Nov 1955 
Athletic me! 1952 
Henke-Lundgren merger of 1966 
Admission Notes from Mother’s hospital file – May 1953 
Central State Hospital Residence Hall 
Central La. State Hospital Residence Hall, 2019 
Mother’s last letter to Dad (front) 
Abandoned residence hall – CLSH 
Mother & Dad, Feb. 1943 
Me, Mother, Jon and Karen – 11/26/1955 
Mother & Karen 12/1/1947 
Mother at Douglas College for Women, 1944 
Pensive Mother; Book Cover photo 
Dad at the Broadmoor, Co. Springs, 5/30/1945 
Mother, Karen, & Grandpa Stuart. Feb. 1947 
Jon, Me, Mother, & Karen, 1958 
Mother & Dad at Ft. Myers, FL, 1946 
Mother & Me, 1952 
Dad & Mother, 1944 
Bloom sisters on the Ft. Myers beach 
Mother’s Wedding Announcement, 1946 
Henke kids in St. Paul Lutheran Choir 
Abandoned residence hall at CLSH 
Dairy Barn at Central La. State Hospital
“An exquisitely written account of one woman’s path to discovery, not only about her absent mother but about herself and her place and purpose in the world. ”
Myra Johnson, author of The Flowers of Eden and Till We Meet Again series
“Janice Airhart invites the reader into her story in this honest and vulnerable memoir. Mothers — alive or dead, present or absent — shape our lives whether we like it or not…. they bring us into the world, and after that point, it is a mixture of love and trauma. Airhart opens up her narrative to reach all of us — mothers and daughters.”
Rebecca Beardsall, author of My Place in the Spiral and The Unfurling Frond: A Memoir of Belonging and Becoming
“This beautifully written and keenly observed memoir is heart-tugging and inspirational. As Airhart tells the story of her search to better understand her late mother who was institutionalized with schizophrenia, we are treated to poignant and powerful insights about family, loss, and finding/creating ways forward. This is a wonderful, heartfelt, and moving memoir.”
Laurie Woodford, author of Unsettled: A Memoir
“I was given MOTHER OF MY INVENTION by a friend and was so moved by it. This memoir tells a story many of us have lived. While this account begins in deep sadness, the author brings hope to all those raised without mothers.”
Ellen Herbert, author of The Last Government Girl
COMING SOON
Subject to Change: What Teaching Teen Moms Taught Me
Most women in the middle of their sixth decade are slowing down and planning for retirement. The children are grown; maybe there are grandchildren. That just wasn’t me. I wasn’t ready to chuck it all … not yet. Instead, I launched a new career as a science teacher to teen moms. Without a teaching certificate. Without teaching experience.
My memoir shows it’s possible to overhaul a career and learn new skills, even in midlife. I already had a lifelong love of science and a naïve notion that I could change pregnant teens’ lives for the better. What I hadn’t counted on was how my students would change me.
It didn’t start well. Girls were too preoccupied with sleep deprivation to care about science. Breastfeeding in class, resolving student disputes, and urgent calls from childcare were constant distractions. Hormonal teenagers were brutally honest about dull lessons. And yet…
One student assured me shyly that I was doing fine, when I knew I wasn’t. Another translated concepts for her classmates when I couldn’t get through to them, and I learned to let her. The girls began to engage in lessons when I’d learned to stop plowing ahead with my own priorities and tried to understand theirs. They taught me humility, how to laugh at myself. They touched my heart with their courage in facing the realities of being parents while they were still children.
This is a story of transformation—just not the one I’d envisioned when I chose to dramatically change course at age fifty-five. In eight years, I learned not only what it means to be a teacher but also to advocate for young moms who are carving their own new paths in the world.
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Janice Airhart 