Issue #11: Her Namesake, your Youngest Daughter

Healing generational mother wounds one blackberry winter at a time

I call my grandmother, Nan, to wish her a happy 90th birthday. She answers the phone, "Hello," with a long drawn-out melancholy in her voice – a tone of weariness and quiet irritation that seems woven into the fabric of the women in my family. But when I say, "Nani, it’s Wallace," she perks up, her voice lifting like a flower turning toward the sun.

We chat about the weather, her garden, and her dog Leica. She tells me she’s been busy covering the lilac bush with tobacco cloth to protect it from a frost expected tonight. It’s early April and a cold snap – common in Tennessee this time of year – threatens the spring bloom. In the American South, we call this a 'Blackberry Winter.'

Nani, like me, does not tolerate cold weather very well. I am her namesake after all (my full name is Nan Wallace Morgan). Nani lives on Walnut Hollow Farm, a sprawling piece of land that my late grandfather bought in the 70s. During the Tennessee winter months, everything dies. And nowhere is it more noticeable than on more than a hundred acres of pastures and untouched woodlands. If I call in fall, winter, or spring and the sun is out, Nani always makes a point to tell me. And if it’s not, she tells me the last time it was or the next time it will be.

Nani, like me, gets depressed. Especially during Tennessee winter. This is one reason I live in California. But in 2021, I found myself back in Tennessee due to the pandemic, weathering a particularly drawn-out winter that extended deep into spring.

This is when I wrote the song I recently released titled "Blackberry Winter." My mom – whom I get my love of words from – taught me the term, as she described poetically the frost-encased daffodils. I was enthralled by the sound and taste of the words like literary magic that intercedes for deeply complex emotions that otherwise feel out of reach in name.

It was a hard season for most, and one that stirred up undealt-with angst between my mom and me. Having lived thousands of miles apart for many years, we both yearned for closeness between us. We finally had the chance to spend quality time together. I was living at home again for the first time in a long time, but right when warmth would meet us, a bitter chill would blow in, sending us oceans apart despite being together. It was breaking our hearts.

Writing "Blackberry Winter" was one attempt at sorting through this ache. I shelved the idea until last year when, encouraged by my friend and collaborator Aaron Benowitz, I decided to finish the song. As we reimagined the music and recorded the song in the studio with producer Sam Bierman, I began to see more clearly what underlying emotion the song was trying to pinpoint – a specific loneliness that permeates the heart when mothers and daughters are emotionally disconnected.

Since 2021 my mom and I have come a long way in working towards fending off the cold and finding the light between us. In working on healing my mother wound, I have only come to see her humanity more. I see her not just as a mother but also a daughter with her own mother wound. And though I know less about Nani’s relationship with her mother, or my great grandmother Mimi’s relationship with hers, I wonder how many generations it ripples through.

The mother wound, as described in psychotherapy, is the emotional pain that results from a lack of emotional attunement, support, or unconditional love from one’s mother— often unintentional, and often inherited. This lingering impact of unmet needs can leave a child with a sense they are not enough or perhaps, too much. This can lead to narcissism, low self worth, perfectionism, and/or people pleasing depending on how a person copes. It almost always leads to depression, anxiety, and a difficulty in relationships. I see these patterns in my family passed down like a family recipe no one likes but keeps making at holidays for the sake of tradition.

While living in Tennessee, I found myself retreating often to the family farm — where both sweet childhood memories and the bitter aftertaste of family dysfunction lingered.

Often in search of refuge from the loneliness between my mom and I at home, I’d make the 40 minute drive with my guitar in the back seat so I could sit on the dock and write songs with the crickets singing in the background before visiting Nani.

Sometimes I’d walk up to the persimmon tree — my mom’s favorite spot over the hill — or meander through the little yellow farm house, flooded with nostalgia.

I’d think about my siblings and I waiting on the screened porch eagerly listening for our cousin’s suburban coming down the long, steep gravel driveway, giddy with anticipation for the adventures and laughter they brought with them. I’d daydream about trekking through the tall grass and cow pastures in Tevas heading to the algae-covered pond we lovingly referred to as “the lake.” We’d jump the fence, cross the creek over the tree trunk Pops had fastened from one bank to the other to create a sort of balance beam overpass, then race towards the plastic slide at the end of the jimmy rigged dock. We’d take turns on the zipline Pops made from cable wire, a bike handle, and a fishing rod for reeling it back to the wooden platform he had nailed to the side of a tree. Nani, my mom and her two sisters would watch and remind us to keep an eye out for the snapping turtles and poison ivy. Later we’d eat watermelon on the picnic tables back by the creek. Pops would fetch the melons from the spring and slice em’ down the middle in one fell swoop. They were always ice cold. We’d spit out the seeds and throw the rinds over the fence for the cows.

When I wrote “Blackberry Winter,” I was thinking about the 4th of July when my mom would take us blackberry picking up on the road to where they grew along the barbed wire fence. We’d return triumphantly with a bucket full and later savor our efforts over vanilla ice cream and homemade cobbler watching the firework show the boys proudly procured.

I adored spending time at the farm, but at some point I began to feel anxious there. Maybe it was the time the dogs got into a bad fight or the time I got stung by a wasp in the barn or when the boy who lived down the street chased me with a snake. Maybe it was the ticks or the heat or the electric fence used to keep the cattle from grazing in the wrong pasture. Or more likely, perhaps, it was the rising tensions among the adults, thickening like the air before a storm. Eventually, the warmth that once colored summers and holidays faded and the bitter cold of estrangement and loss blew in.

For years my grandfather would end his prayer before a family meal with a petition for reconciliation. Though well intentioned, he, nor my grandmother, aunts or mom had the tools – and in some cases willingness – to find resolution. My aunts seemed to lead with anger or manipulations, my mom tried to be the peace keeper but was often unintentionally passive aggressive or enabling. My grandmother avoided and my grandfather, despite well intentions, seemed to make matters worse with decisions regarding inheritances of the farm and the family business. (At least, from my observations and the piece-meal info I absorbed over the years, this is how it seemed to me).

When Pops died from cancer in 2015, my mother was utterly heartbroken. My grandmother, was too, though she showed it differently. In the aftermath, Nani retreated and her world began to shrink, my aunts distanced themselves, and my mom took on the role of caretaker for her mom and the farm.

All of it took a toll on my mom — losing her dad, the never ending disputes and friction among the three sisters, and Nani’s criticisms and inability to offer emotional support.

As long as I can remember, I have been attuned to my mom’s pain. When I was little I tried to make it better. I thought that if I could love her enough, I could fill the void (or the hole in her love bucket as my therapist once said). By my teens years, I grew resentful. What I needed was her emotional support, but I coped with a desperation for independence. Later in early adulthood this turned into hyper-independence in an unconscious effort to get as far away as possible and be low maintenance as to not add burden to my mom’s already heavy load. Eventually, therapy helped me begin understanding and better communicating my needs and name the physical and mental repercussions I had been experiencing for years — depression and anxiety. I began to see the cause not only as the result of personal trauma and unmet needs, but also as part of a larger, inherited story.

The path towards healing has been far from linear. Right when I made a step forward, I felt like I took two back. I flew off the handle. I had panic attacks. Things got conflated.

My mom bore a heavy brunt of this — much of which she did not deserve — but for whatever reason her words, or lack there of, felt the most triggering. We were stuck in a pattern of brief connection, eruption, unresolved conflict, and silence – a painful loop we desperately wanted to end but couldn’t seem to stay emotionally regulated long enough to make lasting progress.

At one point I decided I needed to unleash my anger towards her. Thankfully, I did this on paper – of which I never shared with her or anyone else. I didn’t want to hurt her. And later, I discovered I knew intuitively that I just needed to let it out. I didn’t need her to receive it.

My mom knew I was hurting. And though I had expressed my anger in much less constructive ways in the past that inevitably left her hurting too, she instinctively found a way to extend herself to me. She wanted to better understand me and tried her best to acknowledge the ways she fell short.

Even when imperfect or incomplete, this is the path toward reconnection. And it is one of the most precious gifts a mother can give her child. A gift, I pray she one day receives from her mother.

In this way, I think “Blackberry Winter” was given to me as a gift from my mom and for my mom. A poet’s treasure. A metaphor to help begin. A way forward that feels sacred and tender, instead of angry or sad.

There are few emotions harder to untangle than the ones we attach to our mothers. Without her, I simply would not exist. In my most vulnerable state, I needed her for my very survival, a bond and reliance that has lived in my body well beyond my ability to care for myself.

The love my mother has for me burns like wildfire in her eyes when she looks at me. I know deep in my bones that it will never run cold. Just as I know that mine for her, could never, either.

This mother’s day, she and I went to the farm together to see Nani. I could tell the visit was hard for her, and I could tell me being with her made it a bit more manageable.

On the way home, she thanked me for coming in a deeply genuine moment of gratitude like a kiss from the sun. The loneliness and exhaustion in her voice lifted and we reminisced about getting ice cream at the country mart on the way back from a similar visit a couple years ago.

Healing generational wounds may take as long as it took for them to trickle down, but I sense that we are well on our way.

Summer’s gonna come.

“Blackberry Winter” by Wallace Morgan

I never liked picking blackberries, the thorns and ticks, they scared me

It was hot and bittersweet, like the way you look at me;

I never liked swimming in that lake, I never felt safe

With the snakes and the snapping turtles, little Jacks always in trouble;

Blackberry winter, it came again,

Barely made it out of this one, I’m so anxious, got the taste on my tongue;

I love you more than anyone, It’s why the pain, it cuts more jagged,

Through barbwire fences and frost;

It’s always a blackberry winter with us

Will summer ever come?

I never liked talking bout Jesus to avoid the thorns around us,

What if we really went there for once, could we sweeten these bitter months?

Blackberry winter, it came again,

Barely made it out of this one, I’m so anxious, got the taste on my tongue;

I love you more than anyone, It’s why the pain, it cuts more jagged,

Through barbwire fences and frost;

It’s always a blackberry winter with us

Will summer ever come?

It’s always a blackberry winter with us

Will summer ever come?

Her namesake, your youngest daughter,

Healing wounds from our mothers,

I know it’s not the same, but our hearts both ache;

Hold on a little longer, we’ll make it to summer

She’ll be warm, and so will me and you;

Blackberry winter, it came again,

Barely made it out of this one, I’m so anxious, got the taste on my tongue;

I love you more than anyone, It’s why the pain, it cuts more jagged,

Through barbwire fences and frost;

It’s always a blackberry winter with us

But summer’s gonna come