From This House

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.

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.