A harrowing but hopeful narrative.
Galloway tells the story of her lifelong recovery from child abuse in this debut memoir.
The author writes that when she was a child, she suffered physical abuse from her father, sexual abuse from her grandfather, and neglect from her mother. These experiences, she says, gave her a warped worldview in which she felt that she had no worth, no identity, and no hope. These feelings, and the belief that she deserved to be punished, led her to attempt suicide in college in the early 1970s. She was admitted to the university’s psychiatric ward, which she describes as “the most depressive and oppressive environment I had ever experienced,” and then to a traumatic halfway house. For several years after that, she says that she endured manipulative relationships with her mother, her friend Laura, and Laura’s mother, which led her to completely lose her sense of self. Finally, in 2009, as a “scared, confused, and lonely child in a 61-year old body,” Galloway began getting the help she needed. A good friend provided her with a safe place to live, a skilled counselor taught her new thought patterns, and she read numerous self-help books. Despite occasional setbacks, she says that she has now “integrated [her] various pieces into a new and improved whole person”; in the final chapter, she summarizes how this was possible. Over the course of this remembrance, Galloway reveals her story in a subtle but captivating way by blending expressive journal entries, candid details about her life, and direct pieces of advice to the reader. She also lays out the various elements of her recovery one piece at a time, doing so in an earnest and believable way, making it clear that it all required hard work to accomplish. Additionally, her explicit analysis of the psychological consequences of abuse—and how to mitigate them—is profound and eye-opening. Her insights will surely help fellow abuse survivors make sense of their own emotions, find reason to hope, and begin taking solid steps toward recovery.
A harrowing but hopeful narrative.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-5043-9621-9
Page Count: 108
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
A moving, heartfelt account of a hospice veteran.
Lessons about life from those preparing to die.
A longtime hospice chaplain, Egan (Fumbling: A Pilgrimage Tale of Love, Grief, and Spiritual Renewal on the Camino de Santiago, 2004) shares what she has learned through the stories of those nearing death. She notices that for every life, there are shared stories of heartbreak, pain, guilt, fear, and regret. “Every one of us will go through things that destroy our inner compass and pull meaning out from under us,” she writes. “Everyone who does not die young will go through some sort of spiritual crisis.” The author is also straightforward in noting that through her experiences with the brokenness of others, and in trying to assist in that brokenness, she has found healing for herself. Several years ago, during a C-section, Egan suffered a bad reaction to the anesthesia, leading to months of psychotic disorders and years of recovery. The experience left her with tremendous emotional pain and latent feelings of shame, regret, and anger. However, with each patient she helped, the author found herself better understanding her own past. Despite her role as a chaplain, Egan notes that she rarely discussed God or religious subjects with her patients. Mainly, when people could talk at all, they discussed their families, “because that is how we talk about God. That is how we talk about the meaning of our lives.” It is through families, Egan began to realize, that “we find meaning, and this is where our purpose becomes clear.” The author’s anecdotes are often thought-provoking combinations of sublime humor and tragic pathos. She is not afraid to point out times where she made mistakes, even downright failures, in the course of her work. However, the nature of her work means “living in the gray,” where right and wrong answers are often hard to identify.
A moving, heartfelt account of a hospice veteran.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-59463-481-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
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