My favorite books about people breaking from their pasts to claim their lives back

I loved this book because, for the first time in my life, I understood that I was not the only broken and damaged person in the world.

Because of her honest portrayal, I felt less alone and more like there were other souls out there who understood my fears of not belonging, of not being able to be “good enough,” of not being wanted, and of being ignored by one parent while being belittled, abused, and blamed by the other.

Allison wrote clearly about the effects of poverty on family dynamics and the dysfunctional family and explained to me for the first time why I felt defective and why the rest of the world seemed so normal. It gave me hope. 

In this book, I saw my dysfunctional family mirrored back at me, but his writing was so good it made me laugh at the absurdity of it at the same time.

As a child, I also looked for the ‘why,” as in “Why am I being treated like this,” but with this book, I finally saw that there was no why. It just is…and that made me feel less to blame and more like a victim of circumstance…of other people’s problems.

Although that was still a lot to handle emotionally, it opened a door for me to stop blaming myself, get professional help, and see my troubled childhood as the product of my parent's mistakes. And that was huge. 

Reading this book left me shocked and heartbroken at how people can be oblivious to how their unconventional parenting and unstable lifestyle affect their children.

I saw firsthand how poverty and turmoil created fearful, insecure children, who like me, were afraid to create new relationships or bonds with outsiders, knowing like they did, that if I got too close, my family or circumstances would embarrass me. Like the protagonist, I had to settle for loneliness.

I saw that her parents weren’t bad, just flawed. A major revelation for me. I saw that I was not alone and that there were all types of weird families out there, but the trauma for the children was the same. I loved it.

I identified with Tara Westover while reading her memoir because of her secluded and restrictive upbringing. Like her, my upbringing made me feel left out, “other,” different from normal kids, not allowed the usual activities that other kids could do and kept from learning and growing in my own way.

I didn’t understand how these rules affected me until I saw my angst in her own words of isolation, yearning, and rebellion. It gave me hope that our desire for self-fulfillment and actualization is universal and stronger than the people who try, for good reasons or bad, to keep us down.

It is an amazing book. I could barely put it down. 

I loved this book because I saw in it how good kids without parents get lost in the sometimes cruel world and how these kids choose to do the wrong thing out of necessity, the need for love.

Like my own life, I saw how relatives and neighbors stand by and watch, unable or unwilling to help these tossed young souls who suffer and struggle to find their way. I could relate to Demon being willing to do almost anything to be loved, and how even when help is given, it can be retracted at any time. Knowing this is not easy when you’re a kid but it’s something to remember.

I found it painfully hard to read at times, yet hopeful that there is always a way out.