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From This House

by Elizabeth D'Amour

300 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); illustrated; catalogue #04-1537; ISBN 1-4120-3709-3; US$32.50, C$37.00, EUR27.00, £19.00

After growing up in an alcoholic home, the author then married a man who emulated her parents. Her healing process eventually reveals a spiritual life of beauty and determination.

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About the Book      About the Author      Excerpts      Catalogue Information

About the Book

Throughout the story the author's psychic symbols of home and family are woven. Each home setting contributes to her learning about relationships in a family setting. She must learn how to contribute as a healthy family member, as a daughter, wife and mother.

She learns that the lessons are hers and not others who abuse her in the name of love that is selfish. She realizes that she is the only one who can make her life worth while, by going about her business of changing herself.

The author married at twenty-six years old, having learned the morés of women's lives in the eighteen hundreds. When the social revolution of the 1960's came in her life, she had four small children. She found herself trapped in a non-communicative marriage with no skills to sustain her in the outer world. The pain of feelings overwhelmed her. This was a perfect milieu to causer her to reach out for the process and freedom that social change promised. That process eventually engulfed her whole life.

The story is a series of remembrances from the first forty-five years of her life. These tiny pictures were put together slowly, in order to answer the questions of how she became so frightened of men, of power; especially what caused her to be so reticent to trust anyone, especially herself.

A thirty-five year odyssey of courageously facing all that she could remember. This demanded an absolute valiant search for truth. She learned how she participated in her own abuse as well as how she came to be in such a sad marriage. The author bravely changed great and small parts of her life.

The author eventually left her children's home for a long time, then began to rebuild these relationships being mindful of all that she had learned.

The author's journey of pain and change eventually reveals a gifted, creative and intelligent warm woman.

Her inner life is candidly described stitch by stitch about her feelings and those of others.

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About the Author

The author was born in 1931 in the summer month of June; the second of eight children. She had five younger brothers and two sisters. Her parents married during the depression and then survived the early 1940's wartime.

The author lived with her parents for 26 years. She married in the late 1950's, knowing only poverty, neglect and violence. She did not know how to live in the world and subsequently married a man who mirrored pretty closely the character flaws and addicitions of both parents. She quickly had four children, spending the first twelve years of her marriage at home, tending to babies and tiny tots.

The author was silent through the first forty-five years of her life, not speaking of her needs, discomforts or opinions. She did not drive, nor did she have friends.

At this time a gnawing pain grew inside of her. The pain grew steadily until it became impossible to ignore. It eventually caused her to leave her husband and children having no previous experience of living on her own. She first had to learn to drive, then to get her education and eventually some meaningful work.

The author worked many years slowly rebuilding herself and her relationships with her children.

The author lives on the North Shore of Massachusetts close to her children and grandchildren. She paints and writes on a regular basis.

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Excerpts

As I look back, graduated from high school, I think the best time of my life was spent in this house and neighborhood, in spite of the fact that my values-formation, my emotional growth and my social development was so severely compromised there. it was a child's time and a safe time in that I had a place in which to return, neighbors that were constant and a school close-by that I attended until I graduated from high school. In the summertime when school closed, there was always the beach, and the cemetary through which I'd walk to the beach. At my younger ages, the neighbor's kids were around with balls and bikes and walking trips. As well, the library, church and theater were all within one block of our house. There was another great asset, a corner store across the street, with a live-in proprietor and a grand variety of penny candies. And in the winter there was a steep hill up the side street alongside our house which offered sliding to our heart's content.

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A week later I was taken to court to talk to him and he was there. It was not something I wanted to do. In fact, I shrunk within myself to a tiny little girl. I was afraid to talk to him if he was there. My mother ordered me to say what happened. I felt this would stay with me for the rest of my life if I were made to talk. Again my silent withdrawal saved me.

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By 10:30 the third child went upstairs for a nap. The two in the yard would come in for lunch at 11:30. Then they would go upstairs for a nap. One at a time. Gloria slept little and was busy doing all kinds of things. I soon discovered she sat on the windowsill talking to a neighbor.

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The tuition money was taken out of the budget whenever there were five paydays each year. I enrolled, got my book list and began to read. One book was titled "How to Read a Book", by Mortimer Adler. This one I began first. I set a lawn chair in the small yard on the shady side of the house and commenced to read.

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Sometime in my early marriage, playing in my dream house in the early morning. I look over the whole house, every little corner and window seat.

My feelings of luxury; it was mine, all mine, me, as I wandered through the house always another ecstacy.

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I've returned to the church as an older woman. If it wasn't for the school, I know I would have been immersed over and over again in Jim's relentless sabotaging of everything in my life. His use of the children especially wounded me.

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There was a thought inside of me and anger as big as a house. I was full of fears. One that was quite debilitating was fear of going outside the house.

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With spiritual life deepening, the gifts of the Holy Spirit are becoming real to me. I remember in high school, the nuns mentioned these gifts through a small prayer, that was taught to the students. I felt drawn to that prayer. Over the years it has been a faded memory, I suppose because I truly didn't understand it at that time. One by one the gifts of the spirit became clear.

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Catalogue Information

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