Sacha T. Y. Fortuné

I chose this from an ARC program because I enjoy memoirs and the opening few paragraphs captured me.

The Premise

The author recounts her life, including experiences of three abortions she had at different times at her life, recalling her reasons and the after-effects both physical and emotional.

The Pros & Cons

An abortion may end one life, but it can save another — Teresa’s story is the epitome of this.

A promising, “stellar” engineering student, her first abortion emerged as the result of youthful promiscuity. After unsuccessfully attempting to contact the father, she decided to terminate it. The experience was traumatic and painful, but most of all confusing. Though an educated young woman, she could barely understand the terminology and the medical jargon.

Her second abortion a few years later was a more calculated decision. In a “frail” relationship because she “still did not know how to love,” she knew that she was still not ready, and refused to be pressured by the father who insisted that he wanted the child.

With her third pregnancy, however, she felt as though a child would be the answer:

Raising this child could be the antidote to my afflictions, like a magical elixir that instantly and irreversibly redacts a script, effectively turning me into the person I have always wanted to be, without any effort of my own. […] I’m ready. Right? […] So, how hard can it be? A blessing. That’s what everyone says. I don’t need to sit here paralyzed, and I don’t need to make the wrong decision. I can make a choice of peace and beauty; a new choice.

This third pregnancy eventually resulted in her daughter Teresita; however, it did not bring the peace and joy she had hoped for, but postpartum depression and addiction.

Over the next few years, she struggled to balance her mental health with her astounding career as an engineer and professor while raising a young child. Meanwhile, her relationships with her family members were fraught with tension, particularly with her mother — an experience that she feared she would pass onto her own daughter. Also, the child’s father John never “came around” to being a father:

[…] There is no “world” hurting Teresita; it’s me. I’m the one who hurts her. […] I am trapped in a generational chain of damage and cruelty. My mother was hurt, so she hurt me. John was neglected, so he neglects. Almost like we do not have free will. Like we are predisposed to mirror what we learned.

Nevertheless, her story is one of triumph: despite everything thrown at her, she makes changes to improve her life, to be a more involved mother, and to start her own journey of healing through therapy and medication.

Notably, Teresa’s experiences take place against the backdrop of the U.S.A.’s changing political landscape, and she learns of her fourth pregnancy on the same day that a critical abortion legislation is signed. This fourth pregnancy becomes her third abortion, and though she considers having the child, she soon comes to terms with her choice:

This was a choice of empowerment. I chose to persevere. I chose to give Teresita the best of me. To give myself the best of me.

Conclusion

This memoir was an emotional journey from beginning to end. Told with raw honesty that is painful to read at times, the author’s voice intrigues the reader as it veers from pragmatic to poetic prose as she opens up her life to scrutiny with her words. Despite the personal, painful topic, the writing was a pleasure to read. I would recommend this to everyone, but particularly to women facing a similar difficult choice.

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I chose this from an ARC program because I am interested in mental illness and the potential for therapy to improve it.

The Premise

A person with Borderline Personality Disorder reflects on her experience with therapy, giving others an insight into her mind as well as the outlook from her therapist’s viewpoint.

The Pros & Cons

It’s rare that we get to experience a person’s thoughts and feelings while they are suffering from mental illness, and this memoir aims to do just that. One side offers Kelly’s flow-of-consciousness while undergoing therapy; the other recounts the same session/timeframe from the therapist’s viewpoint, providing patient notes that offer some insight into Kelly’s state of mind.

Kelly begins from a skeptical view of therapy on the whole, having had bad experiences in the past. However, eventually she forms a close bond with her therapist, and is able to uncover the root of some of her issues, identifying the flaws in the relationship of her parents — her father, “a good man but a bad drunk,” and her mother, “kind and evil [who] always needs to be the hero.”

Their toxic relationship was one of abuse and infidelity, which left an imprint on Kelly as a young child. As an adult, her own relationships were unstable. She recounts the practice of being the perfect woman at the start of a relationship, before revealing her true self, and her desire for extramarital affairs to regain that perfection:

It’s a beautiful illusion. The perfect girl. It is tactical, spontaneous, and improvised. […] I just know that what I yearn for is the days that come with every new relationship. The honeymoon phase. I desperately seek a time before beauty turns broken.

One particular “broken” incident is recalled, whereby she and her husband have a physical altercation, and though she is the one who called the police, they take his side because she appears unstable:

Put catastrophic and calm in the same room and calm will win every time, and he did. Regardless of the scratches and red marks all over me, I was charged with aggravated assault and endangering the welfare of my minor children. […] The system sucks. Yes I did push him. He wanted crazy, so I gave him crazy.

This memoir is quite short and choppy, and I did see some potential to expand it to draw readers in even more, but despite its brevity we do get a fair amount of knowledge and understanding about what she endured. As the memoir covers over three years, we see Kelly’s evolution to healing — not a linear journey, but a rollercoaster of relapses and tiny achievements that struggle to find their equilibrium to salvage her mental health. Eventually she has a breakthrough, and continues to improve with time and marked changes in her life, until she is able to “graduate” from therapy and face life on her own.

Conclusion

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I chose this from an ARC program because I have an interest in persons with special needs so I appreciate learning about their experiences.

The Premise

With humour and honesty, the author reflects on her journey as the parent of a special needs child who is on the autism spectrum, and its impact on her own mental health as someone who suffers from anxiety.

The Pros & Cons

This was a beautifully crafted and engaging memoir that I flew through in a couple of hours without pause.

The author recounts her own foibles as an anxious person and how it led to her experience with one of life’s greatest letdowns: childbirth. Her imagined experience quickly turned into a horror story of pain with an unplanned C-section, a stint in the NIC-U, and a colicky “volatile, mutant” child with superpowers. It was an out-of-body experience whereby she could imagine her “other self” in an alternate universe living her well-planned life.

Her thoughts on early motherhood will resonate with mothers everywhere:

Time started to lose meaning. […] It felt like a long, endless, dark tunnel with no light at the end. […] Burnout set in, and with it came disappointment, bitterness, and even anger that my motherhood experience was so unlike the image I had created in my mind—the image of motherly bliss that I knew my alter ego was enjoying.

Then, it wasn’t until her son was a toddler that she really began to notice he was “different” — and even then, denial was a safer space to exist in than the alternative:

Everyone reassured us that he was fine. “He’s a boy! Boys have lots of energy.” “Boys talk later than girls.” “He’s super intelligent; that’s why he’s so observant.” “So what if he plays differently? That just shows he thinks outside the box.” I wanted to believe them. So did my husband. We both wanted to remain spellbound by our boy’s uniqueness, by his brilliance. In a way, our delusions became a cover for our denial.

However, when a diagnosis was finally made, she felt it “freeing” as it gave her direction and clarity to devise a new plan. As she engaged in the special needs community and found strength in sharing her story and learning of others’ challenges, a new path was forged for his education and additional support. When he outgrew the support his school could provide, the move to another school was a challenge — a heartbreaking moment for a parent when you don’t know how to help your own child.

There are many poignant moments the author captures perfectly. As a special needs parent, distance grows over time with anyone outside of the community with “regular” lives. Also, the things she loved and looked forward to as a child — holidays, snow days, vacations, playgrounds — all of these “special events” only stir up confusion in the “fish tank” her family exists in, so looking at the outside world is unbearably painful.

She demonstrates that despite all the commonalities among the special needs community, everyone’s story is unique. Also, the labels of “mild” or “severe” autism don’t serve any purpose except to adapt the therapies to help him:

It didn’t define who he was. It didn’t predict his future. Acknowledging where my son is on the autism spectrum at any given moment doesn’t mean I’m giving up or lowering my expectations. It means I’m accepting him for the wonderful, amazing little person he truly is—just as he is.

Unlike many other books of this nature, the focus is less on the day-to-day drama of her son’s challenges (though she does recount a few key incidents), and more on her own journey and emotions that range from anxiety and panic to acceptance and love. Her experience as his mother also led her to have a greater appreciation for her own parents, realizing only in retrospect that her humble upbringing was still a charmed one.

Conclusion

The overall message the author emphasizes is that she is no “better, stronger, or faster” than any other parent trying to do the best for their child. By virtue of that, like any parent she has had to shed parts of herself to adapt to her son’s needs — something that not just “special needs” parents but all parents face. But amidst that sentiment of sacrifice is one of immeasurable courage and love. Engaging from beginning to end, I highly recommend this book for everyone, but particularly for parents of children with special needs. It is beautiful and inspiring, providing insight and hope that may capture someone at an overwhelming moment of despair and uplift their spirits.

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