Hope Edelman

speaker

545 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 16 Jul

Hope Edelman’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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It is lovely to be here, Tamsen.

Thank you.

Sure.

I was 17 years old when my mother died.

Unlike your mom, my mother had a very brief and kind of vicious battle with breast cancer.

She was diagnosed when I was 15, and she died two weeks after my 17th birthday.

It was the summer between my junior and senior year in high school.

And I didn't know any other girls who'd lost a mom other than my sister.

So I went looking for books because I was a reader and I couldn't find any for girls who had lost a mom.

There weren't any at the time.

There were books for adult women who'd lost mothers because that was more common.

Sure.

But those books all assumed I'd be in my 30s, my 40s, my 50s, not 17.

And I looked for that book for about 10 years, and I never found it.

And at that point, I was in a place in my life, in a graduate writing program, and I was encouraged to write it myself.

That's just how it came about.

So interesting.

You know, I've worked with thousands of women who have lost mothers when they were young.

And by far, like the most defining characteristic and the point on which they are looking for others to connect with is the age at time of loss.

And that's because I believe developmentally, the age you were when your mother died is so important.

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