Bruce Lee once said, “Mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them.” Rebecca Wells wrote the book Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. This book tells a story about friendships, lies, honesty, and relationships between generations. At the end, this book portrays an important message to know. In this book Sidda had a difficult life growing up due to her mother Vivian misery and mistakes. But with help from the Ya-Yas (Vivian’s lifelong friends) it gave her understanding of her mom, which gave her the man-power to forgive her mom and learned to love.

In life we all make mistakes, but what we don’t seem to realize is these mistakes can hurt our loved ones. Vivian Abbot Walker grew into a woman of misery. This caused her loved ones to be in pain and eventually have an occasional hatred towards her. After Sidda grows up and is an adult she has a few fond memories of her mother, but there are a lot of bad ones too. In one passage it shows Vivian’s thought which can only end in a bad way. She says, “I want to abandon my children, I want to injure my husband. I want to run away. I want to be unattached. I want to be famous.” These things in her head create an unstable living habit for her and her children. Also if she wanted to leave her kids that would be bad for them because their dad’s never there. When the entire Walker kids got sick Vivi thinks, “Where was my husband? Where was the father of those four children? You show me where it is written that only mothers are supposed to smell crap. I could’ve shot him for leaving me alone like that.” So yes it’s bad for her to think those cruel thoughts. But when you’re alone most of the times raising four kids, it get’s frustrating. So sometimes she couldn’t handle it, and took it out on the kids, which of course was wrong. But after Sidda grows up she comes to realization that her mom was always there, maybe not in the right state of mind, but always there.

Sidda growing into an adult had a hard time with love. In one of her letters to Vivian it says, “My problem is, I just don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know how to love.” This makes Vivian mad. Only because she knows her daughter loves Conner, and wants to marry him. It’s only that she is scared to fall in love. But in some weird way Vivian never truly learned to be love, due to the fact her mom never really loved her (That’s why she got sent to a boarding school). So Vivian never truly showed great love to her husband and kids. There for Sidda is confused if it’s true love or not between her and Conner. In one of her last letters to her mom it says, “I have never properly thanked you for lifting me up onto Lawanda’s back.” This is an overall thank you for everything. Sidda realizes after reading the scrapbook her mom did once love. Vivian loved jack. So in the end Sidda finds love with her mom and Conner and they do eventually does get married.

The way the author writes this story makes the readers more connected to the past and present life we had/ have, and makes us realize what we have and take for granted. Just like Sidda once despised her mother for all the cruel things she did. But toward the end she becomes grateful her mother never left her and does love her. In life the people we love the most can fail us. This can hurts us and makes us who we are. But we need to remember not to hate but to forgive and love even if it hurts sometimes. Just like Sidda and Vivian had a falling out in the beginning, due to Sidda’s feelings of her childhood. But through Sidda reading about her mother’s life she becomes thankful for what she has, and she has Conner to love and Vivian to thank.