I stayed in bed till 08.30 this morning. I had to finish reading this amazing story. I am a fast reader and normally skip a lot of stuff, paragraphs authors write just to make the book bigger, non-relevant details, or non-sense-D-tours. Not this time. I read each and every word.
Why does this book speak to me?
Maybe because I'm 46 and getting more sentimental about life and quite often find myself contemplating my early childhood, lost years, emotional damage.
Recently I drove through the little town where I was born and raised. It has always been a quite depressing experience and this time I pulled over the car and cried, realising that I could not recall any positive memories from the first twelve years of my life. The ones that could be labelled "moderately positive" are those that come with a huge level of sadness. Sadness caused by an alcoholic father and the realisation that there was nothing I could do to stop him drinking (although I never really tried) and the sense of guilt; "maybe it's because of me that he drinks".
Anyway back to the book. The publisher writes:
The Glass Castle is a remarkable memoir of resilience and redemption, and a revelatory look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant. When sober, Jeannette's brilliant and charismatic father captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly. But when he drank, he was dishonest and destructive. Her mother was a free spirit who abhorred the idea of domesticity and didn't want the responsibility of raising a family.
The Walls children learned to take care of themselves. They fed, clothed, and protected one another, and eventually found their way to New York. Their parents followed them, choosing to be homeless even as their children prospered.
The Glass Castle is truly astonishing — a memoir permeated by the intense love of a peculiar, but loyal, family. Jeannette Walls has a story to tell, and tells it brilliantly, without an ounce of self-pity.
An that's what it is, an astonishing story.
My father has long passed away. He died of illnesses related to his drinking. Only later, when we started talking to each other as equal adults, I realised his life was determined by an unhealthy fear of God; a total absence of grace and affirmation from his own father.
Yet, we do have a choice. Where we cannot change the circumstances we can still decide whether or not to allow those circumstances to dictate or determine our lives.
Yes, stuff has happened in my life. Injustice, unfairness, abuse...
Too many people indulge in their role as victims and feel they are entitled to do so.
Great character emerges in the lives of those who choose no longer to be a victim but victor.
There 's thousands of stories and testimonies of those who did it and came out stronger, able to come alongside those that are still victims and need help of those who conquerered thier demons.
In my life, and in my father's life the Grace of God appeared. For me it was a head-on collision and Grace won. In the life of my father it was a reluctant approach, but eventually Grace pulled him in, just a couple of months before he died.
Just read the book!
I know it is linked to the Exodus. The night before the Exodus the Jews are having some family quality time while disaster happens outside their doors; God is killing all the firstborn sons in Egypt households that don't have the blood of an innocent lamb smeared on the doorposts.
