MY SECRET LIFE

A woman seeks to understand her traumatic past and build a better future for her family in Morrison’s debut memoir.

The author was born in Niagara Falls, Canada, in 1978 to young parents, neither of whom had experienced stable relationships. After the births of her two younger sisters, Morrison’s parents separated, and the girls would be ferried between their parents before their mother’s alcoholism resulted in them living with their father and grandmother after a period in foster care. Morrison recounts her joy at being reunited with family before life darkened as her father became her first abuser; the author recounts profound abuse at the hands of her father, her stepfather, and other men throughout her life. Morrison relays shocking tales of the ways in which the men around her treated her—hurting her mentally, physically, and sexually—with a calm voice that not only holds them accountable but also tries to understand what pushed them to become so abusive. The author also discusses the people who let her down and ignored the trauma that she and her siblings suffered. Morrison’s poetry, included between chapters, lends a raw voice to her measured and frank narrative: “If your family stole away your rights to be you, / Robbed your mind and snatched your thoughts away! / Wouldn’t you question what is true? / Their thoughts or mine, this thought haunts me every day.” This is a deeply intimate chronicle of what the author has survived; it ends hopefully with the message that Morrison has been able to break this abusive cycle when building her own family. However, there is the sense of something missing; the conclusion is uplifting, but the narrative abruptly moves through more than two decades of healing—readers seeking support might appreciate a more detailed account of this process.

A brave and hard-hitting memoir about breaking the cycle of abuse.