I received an email a few days ago, with eight online reader links to books coming out from March 2024 to May 2024. One of those titles was Finding the Light: A Mother’s Journey from Trauma to Healing by Marian Henley. At first I thought it was another older title, as the covers were similar, but then I noticed it was not due early March 2024. Now, I have said my reading for 2024 is to be fun, well there really is nothing fun about this love letter to the author herself and partly, to her son. We are talking about a woman who in the 1970s was raped on her college campus, her family and boyfriend miles away, and when she finally is able to get to trial, she is met with the hostility and prejudges of the time. But this book is not about that. It is about how she came to tell her son about it, about her son and how he helped heal her and how she was able to help him. It is about how she would find ways to cope, and the ways she changed her life to make herself strong on the inside and outside. Especially after she was raped a second time. And again, it is not about that. After this event we find how her son and her partner came into her life, how she continues to grow, and how she hopes that by raising her son in a nontraditional way, she has put some good out there; that she has given the world some hope.
There are several trigger issues, including but not limited to, the rapes (while not shown graphicly, the first rape is shown partly and talked about and the second one again, not graphic but the violence leading up to it is intense), there is derogatory language, and gun violence. They are there not to shock, but to lay the facts out and allow us into Henley’s life. The illustrations are realistic-abstract but allow the words to be the focus, yet they are their own character as well. The images are black and white, sometimes realistic and other times dreamlike. But each one is there to not only show the events, action and such, but to capture the feelings Henley and others are feeling. This book is deceptively easy looking, as it flows quickly, there is not a lot to “bog you down”, but it is a strong and difficult book.
As it is a memoir and a slice of the author’s life, some readers might find it a bit of a journal entry they shared and is a bit selfish, self-centered or pretentious.. And while it is a little like that, it has pieces that might be helpful for someone dealing with similar issues/situations. There were several parts that stuck out to me. One was the concept that after a rape a woman is “damaged goods” and even well meaning people can say things that are hurtful. However, Henley never sees herself as “damaged” or “not damaged” after these events, just different. Plus, her coping methods could be therapeutic for several situations. There was also a section where she talks about “in another time” had she had gotten pregnant, what that would mean legally. And while this book was not fun, it was actually an enjoyable read that was thoughtful and thought provoking.
