Writer:

55 year-old Claire with two marriage, three cultures, and five languages and turn out to be right on just about everything. When bright high school student Mia Fontaine trade at the beach for drugs and danger in rural Indiana, her mother Claire Fontaine set out on a gripping journey to save her daughter.

Through Hell and Back, a best-selling memoir that chronicles Mia’s drug-fueled descent into society’s underbelly and her remarkable healing process that led her from being a high school dropout and runaway to a graduate of Georgetown University.

which captures the changing relationship between a mid-life mother and her 20-something daughter. Set against the backdrop of an unforgettable round-the-world adventure, it explores their personal relationship, as well as the mother-daughter relationship in America and in other cultures from China to France.

Mia Fontaine is an author, writer, and motivational speaker whose past appearances include Good Morning America, The O’Reilly Factor, and The Montel Williams Show. She has spoken nationally about drug addiction and the long-term cost of child sexual abuse. With the debut of Have Mother, Will Travel, she will be giving talks about the mother-daughter relationship, both in terms of how to improve it, as well as exploring it from a cultural and historic perspective. In addition to the memoirs she’s co-authored, she has written for The New York Times and blogs for Ms. Magazine.

Claire Fontaine is a writer who has worked with numerous award-winning producers and directors. She is also a certified life coach and certified relationship coach who focuses on personal transformation, relationships, and parenting.(R.5)

Story:

At fifty-one, Claire forgot to plan for life after motherhood; Mia, twenty-five and eager to step outside her role as recovery's poster child. Determined to transform themselves and their relationship once again, the pair sets off on a five-month around-the-world adventure through twenty cities and twelve countries that includes mishaps, mayhem, and unexpected joys, from a passport-eating elephant to a calamitous camel ride around the Pyramids—and finally making peace with their tumultuous past in the lavender fields of France, where they live for the last four months of the trip. Seeing how self-possessed and community-minded twentysomethings are in other countries broadens Mia's perspective, helping her grow, and grow up. a Holocaust survivor, and to create a vision for her second act. Watching her mom assess half a century of life, Mia comes to know her. Claire uses the trip to examine her broken relationship with her own daughter, —as all mothers know their daughters—better than anyone else, and often better than themselves. Wiser for what they've learned from women in other cultures, and from each other, they return with a deepened sense of who they are and where they want to go—and with each embracing the mature friendship they've discovered and the profound love they share.(R.2)

The premise of this book sounded great. A mother and daughter embark upon a travel adventure to raise money for charity. They visit several countries, beginning with China, and in each country they have several tasks to complete in order to compete for points with their fellow travelers. In this way, they can experience the country and the culture more fully. I was ready to come along for the ride.
I appreciated the dual narrative used in the book. First, the mother would speak and tell about one part of their journey, and then Mia would pick up where Claire left off. It started off fine, with some interesting humorous anecdotes about China. Then, the two proceeded to tell about their history. Apparently, Mia suffered sexual abuse as a child and became a mother’s worst nightmare during her teen years. Claire had her shipped off to an Eastern European boot camp to straighten out and Mia’s life and their mother-daughter relationship, was eventually repaired. (R.7)

Highlights vs self- reflection:

1.p.127: “Mia, I’m really, really sorry if I didn’t seem like someone you could talk to the last couple of years. You don’t need to protect me or worry about me. Or worry that I’ll judge you.”

2.p.170:”She loves anything to do with yarn or knitting, because it makes her feel close with Bubbie.”

3.p.185:”If happiness were a landscape, it would have corridors of Italian cypress, lanes of potted lemons, purple tunnels of wisteria, hillsides lush with roses. It would look like the seemingly endless gardens of the Fort Saint Andre Abbey, which tumble into one another as lyrically and naturally as if they’d been there since time began, rather than having been lovingly cultivated over several centuries. Who would have guessed that all this was behind the towering walls of the giant fort we could see from our bluff across the river?

4.p.188: Like nature calling you back, or trying to set you right. If you had seen it in a bigger way, the way you usually do, as a sign from the universe or something woo-woo, you might have sold it before the market tanked.”

5.p.239:”The longer we’re here, the more obvious it is that two women in search of themselves and each other could not be in a better place to do it. For Avignon is a woman if ever a city was. More than that , a Frenchwoman, as much a coquette as any that beguiled a king. For, like a true coquette, she reveals herself only slowly-you must work to get to know her. But she rewards your efforts; her streets reveal hidden gems.

6.p.208: I think of the scene near the end of the Bridges of Madison County, where we see Meryl Streep throwing herself back into her ironing and her family after walking away from Clint Eastwood. How many women must have laid awake after seeing that film. Afraid that they’ll one day know what life they really wanted only by having lived the life they didn’t.

7.p.181:After a good laugh, my mom and I relax into a contented silence as we drive into the Provencal county side, a landscape that’s a patchwork of rolling hills, fields of crops, green pastures, olive groves, and lavender fields.

8.p.181:”Unless you’re at just the right angle, lavender fields are pretty but unimpressive, a smattering of violet amid green. But when you continue driving and see them from another angle, it’s as though the plants leaped to attention and scurried into perfect formation, forming row after row of what look like fat, happy purple caterpillars. Something about them feels childlike, they’re so unabashedly vibrant and puffed with pride.”

9.p.181:”Like two halves of an oyster opening to reveal a pearl, this small, spare abbey is nestled between two olive-colored mountains. The valley floor around it’s a sea of purple, row after row of lavender in full bloom. From above it looks like the amethyst center of a geode.”

10.p.183:”I don’t see you as fragile. You’re one of the most powerful women I know.”

11.p.285:” There is a scene in that movie where Whoopi Goldber’s character is first shown her room in an abbey. It’s all white and utterly bare but for one chair, one desk,one cup, one bowl, one spoon, one bed, one pillow, one outfit. I can still actually feel the elation I had when I saw it. The utter simplicity of the room, and the life that went with it, felt like a soul strapped bare, and my soul gave me a kick in response, saying Pay attention, notice! How it feels to see stillness and honesty in a place that would elicit the same in the character.”

12.p.106:” In traditional Egyptian households, for example, most girls are extremely close with their mother; socializing outside your family is often frowned upon and a girl’s mother is her primary source of information about education, relationship, child-rearing, and so on. To my grandmother and a lot of European cultures, however, it’s considered strange to be or want to be best friends with your mother, even as an adult. And the question of duty, of what and how much we ”owe” our parents, is one I find particularly troubling…And judging by the interaction between the Malaysian mother and daughter we saw, Vietnam is hardly alone in this.”

13.p.193:”…the French government supports mothers in a way we can only dream of. Four month’s paid leave and job protection, and the state pays for someone to come in to do laundry and assist you after childbirth. Child care is subsidized and you get a few hundred dollars a month for each kid, till they’re in their teens. If you choose to stay home the amount can be higher.”

14.p.304:”I’m currently living in Paris, researching a historic novel. I have no idea where I’ll live when I return, and I’m not really bothered by that. Trust seems to be working pretty well for me these days.”

Golden Sentence:

1.p.10:Eckhart Tolle’s Silence Speaks.”To lose your inner stillness is to lose touch with yourself. To lose touch with yourself is to lose yourself in the world.”

2.p.17:Travel empties out everything you’ve put into the box called your life, all the things you accumulate to tell yourself how you are.

3.p.35:As a writer, she often has one foot in this world and the other in a world of her own making

4.p.37: Price also looks the same in every language.

5.p.169: “You are not supposed to rack your brain! Your best metaphors come from feelings, not thoughts.”

6.p.184:”Time is rarely enough to clean up a painful history in any relationship, especially between moms and daughters. It’s often easier to keep fighting.”

Conclusion:

1.p.292:”A big pair of hands, palms open, with the word Give anchors the bottom in what I call my G section (God, Gratitude, Give, Grace). I want to broaden my concept of authenticity. Being true to who I really am is obviously essential, but without acknowledging the web of relationships I live in, it can also become an excuse for self-absorption, for seeing others solely through the filter of my needs and wants. Which can lead to the kind of disconnect I have with my mother.

Have Mother Will Travel Summery And Questions by Emma Tsai:

Mia's detour ended her youth with a dreadful , unexpected bang.(p.14) Her biggest dream as a woman whose purpose and identity was bound up in being a mom-her daughter home, healed, and happy. Now Claire is beginning the second half of her midlife with a different kind of bang.

With astonishment, Claire, a writer, not a celebrator, invites her daughter, Mia to attend The Global Scavenger Hunt Charity Trip, circumnavigate the glove over the course of twenty-four days, visiting no fewer than four continents and ten countries.

After Romania, they had one exhausting but extremely interesting day in Amsterdam and a final day in Toronto where they just did the scavenges they liked. They were welcomed everywhere they went, invited into homes and hearts, and have a more meaningful understanding of their nation’s impact on the world. Then they head home, after two days straight, they pack up again and head to Avignon, where they’ll have time to relax and reflect, to learn, grow, and to chart a new course for their lives and their relationship.

And they will take a side trip to Budapest to let Mia see where her grandmother, Bubbie is from. The extra time in France will be a rare opportunity to take stock of where they are and chart a new course of themselves, as women and as a mother and daughter.(p.17) Provence is also Claire’s happy place, It brings out a very sensory part of her cerebral existence.

The name to celebrate the big selling for the book of Come Back which was rejected fifty-six times and actually , Claire also wanna run away from the hot potato: putting money into the house , good for nothing, at the peak of the market and the mortgage is almost double.

They experienced old patterns, new insights, and saw what was and wasn’t working in their relationship, even if they didn’t have the time to explore what would work better. Mostly , they learned to trust each other. (p.123)Mia took this trip to figure out what’s been going on with her mom, and considering understanding her mom will help understand herself. (p.299)Claire learned the hard way ten years ago that the kind of control is an illusion and a barrier. You can’t even control the inner life of your daughter when she’s a toddler; you can only control her environment, and not always even that.

Questions:

1.      p.170:”She loves anything to do with yarn or knitting, because it makes her feel close with Bubbie.” Anything you like to do and keep it as a great habit to get closer to someone who is important to you forever?

2.      p.185:”If happiness were a landscape, it would have corridors of Italian cypress, lanes of potted lemons, purple tunnels of wisteria, hillsides lush with roses. It would look like the seemingly endless gardens of the Fort Saint Andre Abbey, which tumble into one another as lyrically and naturally as if they’d been there since time began, rather than having been lovingly cultivated over several centuries. Who would have guessed that all this was behind the towering walls of the giant fort we could see from our bluff across the river?” Do you believe travel will be the best way to solve the conflict between mom and daughter?

3.      p.188: “Like nature calling you back, or trying to set you right. If you had seen it in a bigger way, the way you usually do, as a sign from the universe or something woo-woo, you might have sold it before the market tanked.”  In your heart, is any place keeps calling you back to the nature?

4.      p.208: “I think of the scene near the end of the Bridges of Madison County, where we see Meryl Streep throwing herself back into her ironing and her family after walking away from Clint Eastwood. How many women must have lain awake after seeing that film. Afraid that they’ll one day know what life they really watned only by having lived the life they didn’t. “How do you think about woman’s destiny?

5.      p.183:”I don’t see you as fragile. You’re one of the most powerful women I know.” Claire comfort her daughter Mia with drug addiction and sexual abuse. How do you see the role as a mother?

6.      p.106:” In traditional Egyptian households, for example, most girls are extremely close with their mother; socializing outside your family is often frowned upon and a girl’s mother is her primary source of information about education, relationship, child-rearing, and so on. To my grandmother and a lot of European cultures, however, it’s considered strange to be or want to be best friends with your mother, even as an adult. And the question of duty, of what and how much we ”owe” our parents, is one I find particularly troubling…And judging by the interaction between the Malaysian mother and daughter we saw, Vietnam is hardly alone in this.” What’s the best mother-daughter interaction type you learned from different countries?

7.      pl193:”…the French government supports mothers in a way we can only dream of. Four month’s paid leave and job protection, and the state pays for someone to come in to do laundry and assist you after childbirth. Child care is subsidized and you get a few hundred dollars a month for each kid, till they’re in their teens. If you choose to stay home the amount can be higher.” Any perspective you got from different countries about fertility benefits?

8.      p.304:”I’m currently living in Paris, researching a historic novel. I have no idea where I’ll live when I return, and I’m not really bothered by that. Trust seems to be working pretty well for me these days.” Do you agree to deal with hot potato, is not to deal with it? How about your experience?

9.      What’s the most impressed part of the book for you?

Related Reading:

1.       Questionares: http://bookjuicy.com/blog/2016/02/23/have-mother-will-travel-discussion-questions/

2.       Have mother will travel review: https://www.amazon.com/Have-Mother-Will-Travel-Themselves/dp/0061688398

3.       Their memory brings them together: https://www.bookreporter.com/blog/2010/04/28/claire-and-mia-fontaine-writing-their-memoir-brought-them-closer-together

4.       Claire and Mia Fontaine’s 5 things I do tell them teem me: http://www.lizandlisa.com/blog/2012/07/claire-mia-fontaines-5-things-id-tell-the-teen-me

5.       Claire and Mia Fontaine: https://speakerpedia.com/speakers/claire-and-mia-fontaine

6.       Have mother will travel: A mother and a daughter discover themselves, each other and the world.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13426242-have-mother-will-travel

7.       Have mother will travel reviews: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13426242-have-mother-will-travel

8.       Eckhart Tolle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eckhart_Tolle

9.       Stillness Speaks: https://www.amazon.com/Stillness-Speaks-Eckhart-Tolle/dp/8188479462

10.    Under the Tuscan sun: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_the_Tuscan_Sun_(film)

11.    Chongzhen emperor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chongzhen_Emperor

12.    Whoopi Godberg: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whoopi_Goldberg