Finding Mom

Finding Mom is a story of tragedy, secrets, and forgiveness. As a six-year-old, Steve Messer found his mother's body after she committed suicide in 1961, and for the next fifty years, he and his family lived in silence about her death and her life. This book chronicles the physical and emotional journey the author and his wife took to find his mother again, but this time as a fully human woman instead of a haunting figure shrouded in silence, this time as the mom who deeply loved her son in the midst of her deepening depression. Responding to a gentle but unmistakable nudge from the Lord, leaning on supportive family members, and utilizing his training as a historian, Messer spent six months gathering documents and images, interviewing individuals who knew his mother, and traveling to sites associated with her life. The physical journey culminated with two family gatherings that welcomed Marian Pett Messer back after the decades of silence, but the emotional journey of new-found understandings of family, grace, forgiveness, and what it means to be human will continue for a lifetime.

Stephen C. Messer is a suicide survivor and Professor of History at Taylor University in Upland, Indiana. His primary academic interests are African American History and the cultural landscape of the civil rights movement.