When the World Breaks Open by Seema Reza broke my world wide open. Disclaimer; I will warn you that this blog may contain more over sharing than you may be comfortable with. But in alignment with the fidelity that I have sworn to bringing to both my own writing and the academic components, here is my sincere, fractured and abbreviated response to this powerful memoir.
I had to read this book in spurts, interspersed with the sweet face of my healthy, happy child. I curled up in the chair of my new safe, life with the blankets pulled snugly around me and a perpetual hot cup of tea at an easy reaching distance. Yet, I found myself crying in public places each day and unable to stop the flood gates. Within the last two years, my daughter and I had to leave our home, our dreams of an intact family and the love of our lives due to ongoing domestic violence. This had been immediately preceded by the death of my infant son, her baby brother, due to his genetic disorder, Trisomy 18.
I come from a life filled with abandonment, neglect, exploitation and violence yet I have always prided myself that I am not a victim. By my teens, I grew to resent being labeled a survivor, as if another person may not have survived the same situations. I just wanted to be normal, to be loved, to have a stable home and family; it seemed reasonable, if impossible. But having never learned healthy boundaries, having no protective family system or community, life just kept coming and I kept running. But my point here is that I appreciate how Reza addresses complex trauma in this piece. "The trauma that brought you here will not be the last one you face. Life will keep hitting you"(228.) The unfortunate truth if that for too many years I literally accepted this as fact, and to an even greater degree, believed him that perhaps sacrificing my self worth may be the cost of maintaining an intact family. I absolutely believed him that I was undoubtedly the damaged one that needed to change. On this side of freedom, I have come a long way in forgive myself for these skewed childish beliefs.
I appreciate Reza's nonlinear format, it is true to living within hell, being focused primarily on the well being of others, working with others experiencing trauma while healing from personal grief and addressing your own losses. I also love how Reza's blend of poetry which capture moments, emotions, events which may fall outside the timeline, or reflect relationships outside the primary unit of the family.
Her use of reflective stanzas, such as in Chicken Soup (142-147) allow her to encapsulate so many internal dialogues, the relationship between herself and her mother, as well as the comparisons between herself and the other woman in her sons' and ex husband's life. It allows her to reflect her own journey of self care, cooking comfort food to an unspoken question of was it her rebellion against her mother which impacted the collapse of her marriage and her feeling of being replaced by another woman in the lives of those she loves most. It is powerful and beautiful and the language choices serve to captures a bit of her spirit and humor, "If like me you like your comfort food to stand up to you, add two whole dried red chili peppers to the pot as well"(145.) Indeed, I do!!
Her poem The Prophet (118-120) touched my heart so much as a mother. It echoed my experiences of the challenges I experienced of working as a child welfare worker while apparently failing my own children; desperate to love each child in the exact way they need to be loved, even though you may be locked behind a wall of grief, drowning in an ocean of sorrow, or frozen, detached beyond all emotion, even the love they crave, deserve, or just going through the motions of daily life, one task at a time. Yet at work, you can put yourself neatly on a shelf, focus on the person in front of you, free of all personal responsibility for the state of their pain and trauma, it matters not to them if your heart is on the ground or a million miles away and here you can see success, healing. When I first arrived in my new life with not even a suitcase, I found myself, "work[ing] rituals into the unused edges of life". All of my children if asked about their mother, would confess that they have: "wait[ed] for her breath to deepen, then slip under the covers beside her, catch the unconscious scraps of her affection." I still struggle to set down the guilt of the confusion I caused my children's hearts, "She stands at the stove and tears stream down her face, you cannot tell if you caused them."
Reza's language and text powerful, beautiful, raw and honest. She entwines all aspects of character development in her memoir. Her tales of Dhaka, her home in the United States, her work identity, her relationships with her own family give you a solid perspective of who she was while her actions tell the story of who she is becoming. Her self reflections keep a level of integrity particularly when discussing areas of herself that she has isolated from other's in her life, such as her lovers. Two of my favorite examples of her level of candor that she expresses about her attempts to fill the void within are expressed in Falling (196) and Apples (176-178.) Apples in surreal in its honest telling of how lovers may become a process of choosing which part of yourself you are willing to surrendure to their "hungry mouths" until there is nothing left to give. In truth, I see more of myself in Falling:
"I am afraid. Of falling....anyone who doesn't promise anything is the only honest man. And he will break my heart and I will wonder what I did wrong....Because what kind of idiot would want to be with me.(196)
But don't worry about me folks, I don't date. It is perhaps in self reflection that we can best see our truths and act accordingly. Allowing others perspectives to define our character, and more so guide our actions, creates unreliability.
In closing, I will state that I think that Perfect Relationship could be the perfect single mother or single person's anthem,
"You'll need to look yourself in the eyes and say,
you could've done better.
Demand of yourself what you know
You are capable of
forgive yourself when you make mistakes.
Lend a hand when you fall....
You will protect this woman
won't let her go
won't call her a lost cause
won't join them
when they turn on her
because no one will ever
love you this much
again
respectfully submitted by
lora
I had to read this book in spurts, interspersed with the sweet face of my healthy, happy child. I curled up in the chair of my new safe, life with the blankets pulled snugly around me and a perpetual hot cup of tea at an easy reaching distance. Yet, I found myself crying in public places each day and unable to stop the flood gates. Within the last two years, my daughter and I had to leave our home, our dreams of an intact family and the love of our lives due to ongoing domestic violence. This had been immediately preceded by the death of my infant son, her baby brother, due to his genetic disorder, Trisomy 18.
I come from a life filled with abandonment, neglect, exploitation and violence yet I have always prided myself that I am not a victim. By my teens, I grew to resent being labeled a survivor, as if another person may not have survived the same situations. I just wanted to be normal, to be loved, to have a stable home and family; it seemed reasonable, if impossible. But having never learned healthy boundaries, having no protective family system or community, life just kept coming and I kept running. But my point here is that I appreciate how Reza addresses complex trauma in this piece. "The trauma that brought you here will not be the last one you face. Life will keep hitting you"(228.) The unfortunate truth if that for too many years I literally accepted this as fact, and to an even greater degree, believed him that perhaps sacrificing my self worth may be the cost of maintaining an intact family. I absolutely believed him that I was undoubtedly the damaged one that needed to change. On this side of freedom, I have come a long way in forgive myself for these skewed childish beliefs.
I appreciate Reza's nonlinear format, it is true to living within hell, being focused primarily on the well being of others, working with others experiencing trauma while healing from personal grief and addressing your own losses. I also love how Reza's blend of poetry which capture moments, emotions, events which may fall outside the timeline, or reflect relationships outside the primary unit of the family.
Her use of reflective stanzas, such as in Chicken Soup (142-147) allow her to encapsulate so many internal dialogues, the relationship between herself and her mother, as well as the comparisons between herself and the other woman in her sons' and ex husband's life. It allows her to reflect her own journey of self care, cooking comfort food to an unspoken question of was it her rebellion against her mother which impacted the collapse of her marriage and her feeling of being replaced by another woman in the lives of those she loves most. It is powerful and beautiful and the language choices serve to captures a bit of her spirit and humor, "If like me you like your comfort food to stand up to you, add two whole dried red chili peppers to the pot as well"(145.) Indeed, I do!!
Her poem The Prophet (118-120) touched my heart so much as a mother. It echoed my experiences of the challenges I experienced of working as a child welfare worker while apparently failing my own children; desperate to love each child in the exact way they need to be loved, even though you may be locked behind a wall of grief, drowning in an ocean of sorrow, or frozen, detached beyond all emotion, even the love they crave, deserve, or just going through the motions of daily life, one task at a time. Yet at work, you can put yourself neatly on a shelf, focus on the person in front of you, free of all personal responsibility for the state of their pain and trauma, it matters not to them if your heart is on the ground or a million miles away and here you can see success, healing. When I first arrived in my new life with not even a suitcase, I found myself, "work[ing] rituals into the unused edges of life". All of my children if asked about their mother, would confess that they have: "wait[ed] for her breath to deepen, then slip under the covers beside her, catch the unconscious scraps of her affection." I still struggle to set down the guilt of the confusion I caused my children's hearts, "She stands at the stove and tears stream down her face, you cannot tell if you caused them."
Reza's language and text powerful, beautiful, raw and honest. She entwines all aspects of character development in her memoir. Her tales of Dhaka, her home in the United States, her work identity, her relationships with her own family give you a solid perspective of who she was while her actions tell the story of who she is becoming. Her self reflections keep a level of integrity particularly when discussing areas of herself that she has isolated from other's in her life, such as her lovers. Two of my favorite examples of her level of candor that she expresses about her attempts to fill the void within are expressed in Falling (196) and Apples (176-178.) Apples in surreal in its honest telling of how lovers may become a process of choosing which part of yourself you are willing to surrendure to their "hungry mouths" until there is nothing left to give. In truth, I see more of myself in Falling:
"I am afraid. Of falling....anyone who doesn't promise anything is the only honest man. And he will break my heart and I will wonder what I did wrong....Because what kind of idiot would want to be with me.(196)
But don't worry about me folks, I don't date. It is perhaps in self reflection that we can best see our truths and act accordingly. Allowing others perspectives to define our character, and more so guide our actions, creates unreliability.
In closing, I will state that I think that Perfect Relationship could be the perfect single mother or single person's anthem,
"You'll need to look yourself in the eyes and say,
you could've done better.
Demand of yourself what you know
You are capable of
forgive yourself when you make mistakes.
Lend a hand when you fall....
You will protect this woman
won't let her go
won't call her a lost cause
won't join them
when they turn on her
because no one will ever
love you this much
again
respectfully submitted by
lora
Lora, thank you for this very open and intimate meditation on this week's reading. I really admired the way you wove your experience of Reza's memoir with personal narrative and the parts of the book you picked out. One point of clarification: Are you saying here that the following quote is misguided?
ReplyDelete"The trauma that brought you here will not be the last one you face. Life will keep hitting you"(228.)
My feeling was that this was a quote meant to build resilience in her veteran clients as opposed to childish logic. Perhaps I misread that or don't catch your meaning. Regardless, so glad to have read your reaction to the memoir!
Thank you so much for sharing these detailed passages about your own life. Honesty and authenticity are so important and this book has so much to say about trauma and domestic abuse, and I really hope the experience of reading it was a positive one for you. I can definitely relate to what you said about feeling as though your previous experiences have damaged you, that therefore you must be to blame for any problems in your relationship with this person. Being a survivor can feel like an overwhelming burden that demands very specific behavior and attitudes all the time, and wanting to lay down that burden and go ahead and live your life seems perfectly reasonable. Yet like Reza said, life can sometimes seem to keep knocking us down--particularly because it seems to me like the more I run from my past history of trauma, the more the past comes knocking at my door in the form of new but similar traumas. I hope you know how these "skewed childish beliefs," like you said, are thoroughly ingrained in us in this society, both as trauma survivors and as women. The entire issue with emotional labor is that even "good" men often fully expect women to take steps to control them [because they can't control themselves], to set limits and mother them and prevent them from being abusive with their anger. This is not our job, it's theirs, and I am so glad you managed to leave when it was right for you. I know how terribly hard that can feel and how devastatingly the loss of the fantasy of the perfect family can be, from personal experience.
ReplyDeleteYour words about being a good mother particularly touched my heart. Of course it's impossible to respond fully to your children's needs when you are locked down emotionally, frozen, just trying to survive. Harder still is that children do not always understand why adults need to leave, and have been known to blame the wrong person, to take their anger out on the person who left because she is "safe" (as Reza's son did in the book). Yet sometimes being a good parent means doing something that seems impossible, because safety is paramount.
Much love to you.
-Ariadne Wolf
Lora,
ReplyDeleteit felt necessary to have some disclosure in writing this because it positions you in relationship to the text, so Not over-sharing. In fact, you verified some of the interesting choices she made in terms of structure and inclusion.
nicely done
e