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304 pages, Paperback
First published February 7, 2017
Do you feel normal now? is the question I get most often from my readers. Almost, I say. Nearly normal.
The hardest things to write about were the times in my life I felt I didn’t matter, that I wasn’t heard by my family, that I wasn’t allowed to feel shame or modesty or have an opinion that differed from my freedom-obsessed family. Trying to navigate my way through the minefield of Person beliefs — homeopathy, astrology, health food, artificial mood enhancers, freedom, nonconformity — and non-beliefs — religion, politics, consumerism, attachment, guilt, regret, expectation, obligation, education, authority, government, discipline — had left me with little room to form my own opinions other than “whatever’s the opposite of theirs.”
Despite the madness of my early years, there was no doubt that I’d learned some unique and valuable lessons. And if I were to acknowledge that my family had put me in danger because they were too selfish or lazy or crazy to care, it seemed even more important to me that I find the positive in those experiences. So maybe it all evened out. Maybe in some weird way, all the hardship had set me up to be the pattern-breaker of dysfunction in my family. Because I knew that those who continued their family’s patterns of destruction not only hurt themselves but also admitted defeat to those who had damaged them, intentionally or not.