Why my father was abandoned and the empathy I now have for his mother

In this deeply moving episode of 'Conversations,' author Jane Messer recounts her journey to understand her grandmother Bella, a woman vilified by her son Michael as a 'raven mother'—a cruel abandoner who left him and his sister at a boarding school in England at age eight. As Jane grew older and became a mother herself, she began to question the painful narrative passed down through her family. Her investigation led her from pre-war Berlin to Tel Aviv and Melbourne, uncovering a far more complex and compassionate figure: Bella, a Jewish German woman who, despite her own trauma and the horrors of the Third Reich, made impossible choices to protect her children. Jane discovers Bella was not a cold mother but a woman who endured war, loss, and personal sacrifice—working as a nurse in WWI, fleeing Nazi persecution, and later serving in the Women's Auxiliary Territorial Service in Palestine. She also finds evidence of Bella’s love, including heartfelt goodbye letters to her son Michael that he had unknowingly received and forgotten. The story becomes a powerful meditation on memory, shame, and the burden of inherited trauma. Ultimately, Jane’s book 'Raven Mother' is not just a family memoir but a call for empathy across generations and across the Israeli-Palestinian divide, urging us to see the humanity in those whose stories have been reduced to myth.