Image of Emily
By Emily

May 7th, 2013

sufferinginsilenceI was about 12 when I began to realize that most families had skeletons in their closet. It wasn’t just the people I knew who had issues like an alcoholic husband, either. The “normal” families that I knew had secrets too. I quickly came to the conclusion that we’d all be better off if we lived in reality and accepted our flaws instead of hiding them and pretending the problems didn’t exist. Since that young age, I’ve found myself drawn to people who are open and honest about who they are and where they’ve been. For me, this includes a huge interest in memoirs – particularly ones that include broken childhoods, mental illness, addiction, etc. I love reading about other peoples lives from their view, and that is exactly what Suffering in Silence by Carolyn Outlaw Kuhn is. It’s her version of her life from before her own birth up through her mother’s death.

The “story” being told is primarily about Carolyn’s relationship with her mother, Helen and how it progressed over the years. It’s a quick and easy read as it feels like you’re hearing the story from a friend. You listen along as Carolyn discusses her childhood, and the various times in her life when she was abandoned by those who should have been loyal to her, and how she eventually overcomes the grudges that she has held for the sake of everyone involved. At times, I found myself inspired by the story. Whenever there is dysfunction in a family, we hope that the cycles can be broken. For the most part, Carolyn is able to break the cycle that her mother started, but there are ways in which she copied her mothers actions, too. I would have liked to hear more about how she felt and what her thought processes were like when she was repeating her mothers behaviors, as that is something that I know is incredibly common, but I have no real understanding of how and why people repeat behaviors that they disagree with. It’s something I would love to understand more, and it feels a bit skipped over in the book.

I appreciated how realistic the book felt. It didn’t feel like anything was “smoothed over” or sugarcoated. There while things did “get better” in the end, they were never perfect and it didn’t have the feeling of the phony “and they lived happily ever after” type ending. The entire book was very realistic and I really appreciated that. There isn’t a “big message” that is pushed, it’s simply the story of one woman’s relationship with her mother. As someone who just likes “getting inside of peoples heads” and trying to understand people, it was a great read.

Part of this book includes child sexual abuse and cover up, so sexual abuse survivors may find parts of this triggering. While I appreeciated that it was very honest, I did have to set the book down for a few days and come back when I felt mentally refreshed and able to dive back into the difficult subject again. However, I am quite sensitive to reading about sexual abuse so I’m sure some people wouldn’t be as bothered by it as I was.

The book is 90 pages long and the paperback version that I was sent was a bit difficult to read (physically) because it was rather firm but thin seems how it is only 90 pages. So I found it a bit awkward to hold and I regularly found myself trying to flatten pages down so that I could hold it easier.

You can connect with Outskirts Press on Facebook and Twitter.

You can purchase Suffering in Silence on Amazon for $10.99 for the paperback version or $4.99 for kindle.

 

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