What Fifteen Writers Don't Talk About With Their Mothers

Every year around Mother's Day, Michele Filgate braces herself for the affectionate photos and social media tributes to mothers. It's not for lack of wanting to see women celebrated, but the painful awareness of her own strained relationship with her mother. That void deepened when the author and literary critic published an essay entitled " What My Mother and I Don't Talk About ," about serial abuse by her stepfather and her mother's denial of it.