If you had to choose the Sum of My parts or Magic Daughter...which would you pick?
The Sum of My Parts is pretty graphic in the first five or six chapters, but you could actually skip those and just read the second half of the book where she talks about the process of getting to know and heal her parts. Her therapy sounds extremely similar to the IFS therapy I am doing, but she doesn't mention that. I found it very helpful for me to compare my experience of parts with hers. That's what I was looking for in a memoir. Very selfish of me, but nobody--seriously nobody seems to "get" what I am dealing with. Probably because I can't seem to talk about it. Also, I was particularly interested in this memoir because she has fibromyalgia, and so do I.
I loved
The Magic Daughter. It was the first book like this I ever read. Read it when I was in a residential program last spring. It practically jumped off the psychiatrist's shelf at me, and I asked if I could borrow it. The author is a professor, and she does talk about her trauma, but the book is prmarily about what it's like for her to live day to day. It's quite well written, as is the Trujillo memoir.
I have on my list for next ups
When Rabbit Howls and
First Person Plural and
We Are Annora. I'm glad for the warnings about Rabbit.
The other book I have been poking at and which is really, really good is called
The Boy Who Was Raised By A Dog (recommended to me by my mentors at a therapeutic program I attended this winter). It isn't a memoir. It is a psychologist's gathering together stories of the profoundly abused and traumatized children he has worked with and the stories of their resilience and healing. It is horrifying what happens to these kids, but so amazing how they heal. The field of psychology, psychiatry, and social work has so much to learn, and this book offers stunning lessons.
