When you have an unfulfilled need, there's media for that.

Sexual needs? Porn
Desire for romantic relationships? Romance
Feeling trapped by life? Adventure
Healthy parenting? ......

Has anyone encountered any books (preferably audiobooks) or other media that can or has, at least superficially, filled the need of being around/growing up with/being mentored by healthy parents?

As you know, narcissists are not like normal people. You can’t just tell them your boundaries and then expect everything to be peaches and cream.

Too many of us have turned red in the face asserting our boundaries and repeating ourselves trying to teach a narcissist how to treat us. Until one day, we take the leap of faith and go no contact forever.

What about the time in between? When it’s not yet possible to exit the relationship?

How can we keep our self respect with people who are highly resistant and antagonistic to our boundaries? How do we maintain our dignity with people who only see us as appliances to use?

By implementing meaningful consequences for boundary violations. Narcissists and their toxic ilk respond only to consequences.

The thing is not everyone knows how to set consequences with toxic or difficult people in a way that doesn’t make the victim guilty of reactive abuse.

____________

My story

When in my late 20’s I found myself living at home again with my narcissistic parents, it was a horrifying experience. I had my suspicions but they had seemed supportive. I never could have imagined it would become so unbearable.

What was privacy? They’d barge into my room anytime. Narc mother would barge into me in the shower, use (read: steal) my personal products, rummage through my things and leave my stuff in disarray. The more I communicated with them, the worse they got.

Narc father became increasingly violent using threats to beat me up and physical intimidation. He’d erupt in fits of rage, grab hold of me and refused to release me while I struggled. When I spoke out against this, they began to starve me.

I was starting a business (I guess this was my crime) and funds were tight. I found myself going into credit card debt eating out twice everyday for months because it wasn’t safe to use the common areas if I had the audacity to buy groceries.

Then the verbal abuse, drama, manipulation and chaos. As much as I kept to myself in my room, they just would not leave me alone. They wanted to argue and make crazy everyday, insisting I apologize to my narc father because it was my fault that he physically assaulted me.

What could I do? I was financially dependent ( well they cut me off financially but I lived in the home) living in a city that is notorious for its HCOL. It was an impossible situation. They figured they had me trapped. I would soon run out of money (read: credit cards) and they could really go to town with the abuse.

During this dark period, before I eventually escaped and went no contact, my saving grace was that I did not take the punches lying down. Every single abusive thing they did to me was met with a consequence. However, I did not abuse them, not even verbally.

As my narc father began to test the waters with physical abuse again (he used to beat me as a child and teen), it was imperative for me that he faced repercussions. I could not afford to do nothing, thereby reinforcing the behavior, and giving him “silent permission” to escalate. A mistake so many women make with abusive men.

Ultimately, I escaped. I know firsthand the devastation to mental and physical health being in the proximity of a narcissist can cause. But while I was trapped with them, and in a state of dependency, being able to stand up for myself by setting effective boundaries (through consequences) made all the difference to my self-esteem and my dignity.

___________

I’ve written a guide with frameworks and examples, specifically to help people with setting effective boundaries with toxic and difficult individuals.

Without learning & implementing the steps to setting effective boundaries with toxic people, you will continue to experience disquietude, pressure, annoyance and even severe suffering from interactions with these individuals.

The purpose of the guide is to help you become someone who enjoys freedom, harmony and safety in your relationships, because you understand how to set effective boundaries. And overall, it's to improve the quality of people’s lives and relationships.

I’m giving it away to anyone who is interested and would like to be a test reader. Just comment down below by Jul 02 11:59 PM eastern time.

All I ask in exchange is that you answer 3 quick questions and give your honest review or feedback within a 2 week time frame. (The book is 84 pages, ~ approx 2 hour read).

I’ll add the book below —

How to Set Effective Boundaries with Toxic People.

**Please only comment interest if you’re happy to be a test reader and will provide your responses within 2 week time frame.** Thank you.

Hi RBN nation,

I don't know if this is too self-promotional or in some other way frowned upon, but there isn't an RBN writing sub, (this won't be an actual study so RBNstudies isn't the place) and this is the next closest thing. I'm in the process of writing a book (might actually end up looking more like a case study since I'm only at 26 pages so far) that explains how I personally got sabotaged and derailed from my intended career path because of some of the defeating thought patterns ingrained in me by Nrearing, going into cause and effect how the messages sent by nparents' actions implanted malware in my brain, and trying to provoke thought in the reader if maybe they've gone through something similar. In the foreword I have a caveat stating that though I'm not a credentialed professional, a board-certified psychiatrist helped me reach the conclusions I convey in the book so it won't seem too illegitimate in that facet. Also written under a nom de plume.
The plan is to self-publish as an ebook through Amazon's service for that.

Before I try any such thing though, I want some outside sets of eyes to go through what I've written. I figure there's no better way to sample for objective feedback than strangers on the internet who don't know me IRL.

As I said it's not a finished product yet, but if anyone's willing to volunteer I'll keep you in the loop and find some way to send you my janky manuscripts when they're ready for examination.

I really appreciated "House Rules." It matched so much of my experience with a narcissistic dad and abused/enabler/codependent mother. And with being the kid that dad focuses on, the one who is supposed to live up to all his ideas of what and who a kid should be.

I found the whole thing really validating as a victim of verbal and emotional abuse.

She also has in the second half of the book a ton of good passages about how it feels to go no contact, what happens with the rest of the family, what other people hear, and how she tries to remember that the life she has chosen is real.

I could have highlighted the whole thing.

THIS BOOK IS NOT AVAILABLE ANYMORE. May 2023

The situation for the author is that his NF and NM not only terrorized the family, but also passed their violent and self-centered behaviours on to the oldest brother, and gave him free reign over the rest of the brothers and sisters. Nonfiction.

How To Be A Child

For those that are the victims of poverty or family abuse or whatever. Not a sweet, easy-to-read children's book.

I am in search of any nonfiction/self help books that identify and define the unique relationships between nparents and GCs throughout the various stages of GC’s life (early childhood, adolescence/teenage years, and finally adulthood). I’m looking for the reasoning why nparents favor certain children over others and how this affects the family dynamic as whole as well as within the individual family relationships (ie sibling vs sibling, GC vs scapegoat, Nparents vs GC, nparents v scapegoat, etc. etc.)

Two of my siblings are GCs but they are also still kids and living with my parents. They are most likely currently unaware that they are the GCs while my other sibling (still a child living with my parents) and I are the scapegoats. My nparents actively pit all of of us against each other but I think that my siblings are too young to recognize the dynamics.

When they eventually reach adulthood, I want to have a conversation with each of my siblings individually about the abuse we suffered at the hands of our parents and want to be prepared with as much information as I can be to make my case (knowing full well that my siblings have a long way to go in being controlled/manipulated by my parents.)

I will be appreciative of any suggestions! Thank you!

New book out by Caroline Foster. Sections 4 & 5 are about solutions and healing.

Glennon Doyle has been through alcoholism, bulimia, and her marriage breaking up. She almost never talks directly about her parents and their affect on her, but I found these two quotes in her new book Untamed and I thought they were so helpful for RBN. The first is about setting boundaries with her mom, when her mom isn't comfortable with her new family and same-sex marriage. It really helps me think about how to talk to my enabler mom after going NC with other narcissists in the family. The second is in a response to a letter about not being loved as a kid, and being scared about being a parent.

1:

"She was shaken, and that started to shake me" (190)

"I was on the phone with my mother, and she was asking ot come visit her grandchildren. Her tone was controlled, anxious, shaky. She was still worrying and calling that love. She just couldn't trust my Knowing yet. But for the first time, I did. I trusted my Knowing.

Here is the part of the story in which a mother and a daughter become two mothers:

I say, "Mom. No. You can't come. You are still afraid and you can't bring that to us because our children--they're not afraid. We raised them to understand that love and truth--in any form--are to be honored and celebrated. They haven't learned the fear you carry, and I won't have it taught to them through your voice and in your eyes. Your fear that the world will reject our family is causing you to create the very rejection you fear exists. Our children are not carrying the fear that you are carrying--but if you bring it here, they will help you carry it, because they trust you. I do not want that unnecessary burden to be passed to them.

Is this the easiest path for me, for Abby, for Craig, for your grandchildren? Of course not. But it's the truest one. We are making a true and beautiful family and home, and I hope with all of my heart that one day soon you will be able to come enjoy it. But we cannot be the ones to teach you that you can love and accept us. I have to tell you this hard thing, which is that your fear is not my or Abby's or the children's problem. My duty as their mother is to make sure it never becomes their problem. We don't have a problem, Mama. I want you to come to us as soon as you don't, either.

This is our last conversation about your fear for us. I love you so much. Go figure it out, Mama. When you are ready to come to our island with nothing but wild acceptance and joy and celebration for our true, beautiful family, we'll lower the drawbridge for you. But not one second sooner." (193) . . . (re: letter about gay college kid and homophobic grandparents) "She is not yet old enough to be the keeper of the drawbridge; that is still your duty. Do not lower your family's drawbridge to fear--not even if it's from people she loves." (194)

2:

​

"Parents love their children. I have met no exceptions.

Love is a river, and there are times when impediments stop the flow of love.

Mental illness, addiction, shame, narcissism, fear passed down by religious and cultural institutions--these are boulders that interrupt love's flow.

Sometimes there is a miracle, and the boulder is removed. Some families get to experience this Removal Miracle. Many don't. There is no rhyme or reason. No family earns it. Healing is not the reward for those who love the most of the best.

When a parent becomes healthy again, her child begins to feel her love. When the boulder is removed, the water flows again. It's the way of the river, the way of a parent's love.

. . .

You deserved to have the love of your mother delivered to you. You deserved to be soaked through to the bone with her love every day and every night.

But now I need you to listen to me.

The miracle of grace is that you can give what you have never gotten.

You do not get your capacity for love from your parents. They are not your source. Your source is God. You are your own source. Your river is strong.

Soak that baby girl of yours to the bone day and night.

Flow unimpeded." (195-97)

I swear on everything I love that I am not the author or the publisher, lol. It was originally published in 1989, before I was born. I didn't realize I was a survivor of emotional abuse as a child or that other family members were semi-participants until a few months ago. I knew my parents were bad but didn't realize that their expectation setting still effects how my brother and sister see me today. This triggered deep depression and I wanted to learn how to move past all the pain. I found this book via an organization called Adults Survivors of Child Abuse. ( i think it's defunct now but check out their site if you want: http://ascasupport.org)

The book is a step by step guide for realizing if you were abused, figuring our what you need to fix because of it, and laying out what it means to be at a healthy place after it all. It's definitely not a replacement for therapy, but it does help you understand some of your own behaviors and blind spots. I also thought it was helpful to lay out what progress looks like for someone in my situation who felt like I didn't know the next steps. It also provides the story of four people who experienced different forms of abuse (physical, sexual, emotional, neglect) and includes journaling exercises to help analyze one's thoughts and behaviors. Life aint perfect yet, but this was definitely a tool in the toolkit for me. I read through it first and now I'm going back to do all the journaling exercises.

Check it out. Here's the amazon link for it, but if you can find it for free or at the library, more power to you: https://www.amazon.com/SOUL-SURVIVORS-Beginning-Adults-Children-ebook/dp/B00IT4QGPW/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1589327561&sr=8-1

I'd love to hear about any other books, podcasts, movies, etc. that has helped other process trauma. Hope this was a helpful suggestion as well!

Hello. This is my first time posting here, but I have a sort of recommendation for a comic. It's called 'Curse of the Eel' by Jorge Santiago Jr. Not only does it involve coping and recovering from a narcissistic parent, it's also insanely funny, and FREE TO READ ON TAPAS. I highly recommend it!

I got the permission from one of the mods to post it. Here it is :

http://www.tomato-of-justice.com

I wrote it to help and show that reconciliation and progress is possible. I hope you enjoy it.

Have fun

I read this letter from Willa Cather (most famous for "My Antonia") to her little brother on the Brain Pickings blog. Her description of her family and the way she criticizes herself for them attacking her reminded me so much of my experience and RBN posts, that I decided to read the book she wrote after writing this letter, Pulitzer Prize winning "One of Ours." I enjoyed the book, it's a little naive and sexually repressed and classist, but this kind of white middle class, upwardly mobile, suburban/rural, repressed narcissistic family is the entire point of the book imo.

I don't get the impression that Cather really got out of the fog, there is this kind of self-criticism throughout the book, but it's also about how some people need to escape to survive. In the book WWI is the means of escape, but I think it validates how some of us need RBN and need to go no contact in order to survive.

I just had to share this excerpt which could be a post on RBN, describing the main character, Claude's, family dynamic, and his father's relentless narcissistic teasing, passive aggressive violence, and ableism, and his mother's enabling:

Claude couldn't bear ridicule very well. He squirmed before he was hit; saw it coming, invited it. Mr. Wheeler had observed this trait in him when he was a little chap, called it false pride, and oftne purposely outraged his feelings to harden him, as he had hardened Claude's mother, who was afraid of everything but schoolbooks and prayer-meetings when he first married her. She was still more or less bewildered, but she had long ago got over any fear of him and any dread of living with him. She accepted everything about her husband as part of his rugged masculinity, and of that she was proud, in her quiet way." (26-27)

Claude had never quite forgiven his father for some of his practical jokes. One warm spring day, when he was a boisterous little boy of five, playing in and out of the house, he heard his mother entreating Mr. Wheeler to go down to the orchard and pick the cherries from a tree that hung loaded. Claude remembered that she persisted rather complainingly, saying that the cherries were too high for her to reach,a nd that even if shehad a ladder it would hurt her back. Mr. Wheeler was always annoyed if his wife referred to any physical weakness, especially if she complained about her back. He got up and went out. After a while he returned. 'All right now, Evangeline,' he called cheerily as he passed through the kitchen. 'Cherries won't give you any trouble. You and Claude can run along and pick 'em as easy as can be.'

Mrs. Wheeler trustfully put on her sunbonnet, gave Claude a little pail and took a big one herself, and they went down the pasture hill to the orchard, fenced in on the low land by the creek. The ground had been ploughed that spring to make it hold moisture, and Claude was running happily alongin on of the furrows, when he looked up and beheld a sight he could never forget. The beautiful, round-topped cherry tree, full of green leavesand red fruit,--his father had sawed it through! It lay on the ground beside its bleeding stump. With one scream Claude became a little demon. He threw away his tin pail, jumped about howling and kicking the loose earth with his copper-toed shoes, until his mother was much more concerned forhim than for the tree.

'Son, son,' she cried, it's your father's tree. He has a perfect right to cut it down if he wants to. He's often said the trees were too thick in here. Mabe it will be better for the others.'

''Tain't so! He's a damn fool, damn fool!' Claude bellowed, still hopping and kicking, almost choking with rage and hate.

His mother dropped on her knees beside him. 'Claude, stop! I'd rather have the whole orchard cut down than hear you say such things.'

After she got him quieted they picked th cherries and went back to the house. Claude had promised her that he would say nothing, but his father must have noticed the little boy's angry eyes fixed upon him all through dinner, and his expression of scorn. Even then his flexible lips were only too well adapted to hold the picture ofthat feeling. For days afterwards Claude went down to the orchard and watched the tree grow sicker, wilt and wither away. God would surely punish a man who could do that, he thought." (27-28)

There are also some great passages throughout the book on Claude's amazement at visiting other happy families, and how he can't believe they can be friendly and nice to each other, how he repeatedly sits there with nothing to say, not knowing how to participate in a friendly conversation. Here is the description of meals iwth his own family:

"He had never heard a family talk so much, or with anything like so much zest. Here there was none of the poisonous reticence he had always associated with family gatherings, nor the awkwardness of people sitting with their hands in their lap, facing each other, each one guarding his secret or his suspicion, while he hunted for a safe subject to talk about." (41)

When I was in middle school, my school library had a book that I would rent every couple months because I related so heavily to the main character. I'd read this book and cry myself to sleep. But I can't remember the name of this book for the life of me, or what about it I related to so much, I think rereading this book could give me some clarity on childhood abuse I experienced. I was hoping someone here might be able to tell me, since it was a book about a girl in an abusive home, and I remember some details. The girl rode her bike to the CVS in the first few chapters, she ended up living in a car with her mom at some point, had an older sister and they would take turns grocery shopping and cooking dinner for the family, I think there was a baby brother too. I doubt I'm gonna find it, but if anyone has any ideas of how I could go about finding this I'd be super grateful!

This gripping short memoir piece describes exactly why you shouldn't go back once VLC or NC. Especially if you have kids of your own. Stop the cycle.

The Peaches: How to Punish the Fruit of Your Own Flesh

Lindsay C. Gibson explains why you were abused and how to get the heck away from your Narcs and their bad behavior. And how it has affected your life.

The book is Facing Co dependency. Breaking Free is her workbook that help you understand where you are and how to ... break free !

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UnSk1QuL7A

What if all the Greek Gods were narcissists, and you, Circe, were the only one among them (other than Prometheus) capable of self-reflection?

This book is incredible. Beautiful, complicated, surprising, profound. This whole scene feels so vividly like almost every dinner growing up, and the last line is exactly how I feel.

Here's an example that I think will ring true and ring loud for those on RBN. Page 12, I don't think it's a spoiler it's right at the beginning. Her father is Helios, riding the sun across the sky in his chariot. Circe (narrator) has just ridden with his to see his infamous white cows.

"I remembered how my father had once told me that on earth there were men called astronomers whose task it was to keep track of his rising and setting. They were held in highest esteem among mortals, kept in palaces as counselors of kinds, but sometimes my father lingered over one thing or another and threw their calculations into despair. Then those astronomers were hauled before the kinds they served and killed as frauds. My father had smiled when he told me. It was what they deserved, he said. Helios the Sun was bound to no will but his own, and none might say what he would do.

'Father,' I said that day, 'are we late enough to kill astronomers?'

'We are,' he answered, shaking the jingling reins. The horses surged forward, and the world blurred beneath us, the shadows of night smoking from the sea's edge. I did not look. There was a twisting feeling in my chest, like cloth being wrung dry. I was thinking of those astronomers. I imagined them, low as worms, sagging and bent. Please, they cried, on bony knees, it wasn't our fault, the sun itself was late.

The sun is never late, the kings answered from their thrones. It is blasphemy to say so, you must die! And so the axes fell and chopped those pleading men in two.

'Father,' I said, 'I feel strange.'

'You are hungry,' he said. 'It is past time for the feast. Your sisters should be ashamed of themselves for delaying us.'

I ate well at dinner, yet the feeling lingered. I must have had an odd look on my face, for Perses and Pasiphae began to snicker from their couch. 'Did you swallow a frog?'

'No,' I said.

This only made them laugh harder, rubbing their draped limbs on each other like snakes polishing their scales. My sister said, 'And how were our father's golden heifers?'

'Beautiful.'

Perses laughed. 'She doesn't know! Have you ever heard of anyone so stupid?'

'Never,' my sister said.

I shouldn't have asked, but I was still drifting in my thoughts, seeing those severed bodies sprawled on marble floors. 'What don't I know?'

My sister's perfect mink face. 'That he fucks them, of course. That's how he makes new ones. He turns into a bull and sires their calves, then cooks the ones that get old. That's why everyone thinks they're immortal.'

'He does not.'

They howled, pointing at my reddened cheeks. The sound drew my mother. She loved my siblings' japes.

'We're telling Circe about the cows,' my brother told her. 'She didn't know.'

My mothers laughter, silver as a fountain down its rocks. 'Stupid Circe.'

Such were my years then. I would like to say that all the while I waited to break out, but the truth is, I'm afraid I might have floated on, believing those dull miseries were all there was, until the end of days. (11-13)

I highly recommend this well researched, highly validating book to fellow survivors. The real witch Hunt has always been against children who dare to speak up about being abused.

"In the 1980s, a series of child sex abuse cases rocked the United States. The most famous case was the 1984 McMartin preschool case, but there were a number of others as well. By the latter part of the decade, the assumption was widespread that child sex abuse had become a serious problem in America.

Yet within a few years, the concern about it died down considerably. The failure to convict anyone in the McMartin case and a widely publicized appellate decision in New Jersey that freed an accused molester had turned the dominant narrative on its head. In the early 1990s, a new narrative with remarkable staying power emerged: the child sex abuse cases were symptomatic of a 'moral panic' that had produced a witch hunt. A central claim in this new witch hunt narrative was that the children who testified were not reliable and easily swayed by prosecutorial suggestion. In time, the notion that child sex abuse was a product of sensationalized over-reporting and far less endemic than originally thought became the new common sense.

But did the new witch hunt narrative accurately represent reality? As Ross Cheit demonstrates in his exhaustive account of child sex abuse cases in the past two and a half decades, purveyors of the witch hunt narrative never did the hard work of examining court records in the many cases that reached the courts throughout the nation. Instead, they treated a couple of cases as representative and concluded that the issue was blown far out of proportion. Drawing on years of research into cases in a number of states, Cheit shows that the issue had not been blown out of proportion at all. In fact, child sex abuse convictions were regular occurrences, and the crime occurred far more frequently than conventional wisdom would have us believe.

Cheit's aim is not to simply prove the narrative wrong, however. He also shows how a narrative based on empirically thin evidence became a theory with real social force, and how that theory stood at odds with a far more grim reality. The belief that the charge of child sex abuse was typically a hoax also left us unprepared to deal with the far greater scandal of child sex abuse in the Catholic Church, which, incidentally, has served to substantiate Cheit's thesis about the pervasiveness of the problem. In sum, The Witch-Hunt Narrative is a magisterial and empirically powerful account of the social dynamics that led to the denial of widespread human tragedy."

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18427487-witch-hunt-narrative

I don't know if this book has been mentioned here before, but it seems like a prime candidate.

Eve Ensler's father sexually and physically abused her as a little girl, before continuing to be awful in her adulthood. He's long dead now. Still, as many of us will understand, she still craved some explanation that would help her make sense of what happened -- and she craved an apology. One that would have been impossible coming from her father when he was alive, and one she lost hope of when he died.

This book is his apology, imagined up -- summoned up -- by her own self. A gift to herself I guess. I way to finally make sense of it, and to fill the empty space that had spent so many years waiting for the apology that would never come.

It's a very difficult read. It's explicit, and describes what she imagines as his point of view through every stage of his abuse of her.

However, if you are willing to test the waters and see if it's something you'd be comfortable reading, it might be worth it. It was really moving to me, meant a lot to me... and I think I'm even considering writing my own, private version from my own mother. Maybe. I don't know.

I hope this attempt to give herself her own closure -- since we all know the people who hurt us will never give that to us -- has worked for her. Or at least worked as well as anything can.

I can't say how much this book now means to me.

This is a really dark, emotional collection of short stories. And as maybe I should have guessed from the title, most of the stories are about narcissists.

A couple seem to be about lifelong loneliness after trauma. But in so many of these stories, she really digs into the dynamic between narcissists and enablers, and the effects on kids.

There is no hope in this book, but I did find it valuable to see a bunch of different stories about letting narcs in your life or trying to get them out. The stories as really well written and jolting.

"Liliana"could have been a post on RBN.

I've gotta chat about this book with other ACONs. It's so powerful. It describes enmeshed, narcissistic, and abusive family dynamics so well.

SPOILERS

But it also so powerfully shows why we go back. Why children of abusers go back again and again, against all reason. Even when she has everything, the world available to her, she goes back to fix it. Because the abusers manipulation is so powerful.

And it gave me the key to understanding a mom who is loving and sometimes supportive but so codependent, so unable to see me, that she would toss me to the wolves again and again.

I'd love to have comments and just talk through this book.

The situation for the author is that his NF and NM not only terrorized the family, but also passed their violent and self-centered behaviours on to the oldest brother, and gave him free reign over the rest of the brothers and sisters. Nonfiction.

How To Be A Child

For those that are the victims of poverty or family abuse or whatever. Not a sweet, easy-to-read children's book.

Steinbeck gave a very good description of a person with a personality disorder (the character of Cathy):

"Just as there are physical monsters, can there not be mental or psychic monsters born? The face and body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul?

Monsters are variations from the accepted normal to a greater or a less degree. As a child may be born without an arm, so one may be born without kindness or the potential of conscience. A man who loses his arms in an accident has a great struggle to adjust himself to the lack, but one born without arms suffers only from people who find him strange. Having never had arms, he cannot miss them. To a monster the norm must seem monstrous, since everyone is normal to himself. To the inner monster it must be even more obscure, since he has no visible thing to compare with others. To a criminal, honesty is foolish. You must not forget that a monster is only a variation, and that to a monster the norm is monstrous."

Mary Oliver died yesterday. Most people know her as a nature poet. But in this interview with On Being, she talks a bit about her extremely abusive family, and her abusive father.

https://onbeing.org/programs/mary-oliver-listening-to-the-world/

​

I especially want to share these words that I found in the unedited interview, which is not transcripted online:

Ms. Tippett: There's a place you talk about, you are one of many thousands who've had insufficient childhoods.

Ms. Oliver: Yes

Ms. Tippett: But, but that you spent a lot of your time walking around the woods. In Ohio.

Ms. Oliver: Yes. I did, and I think it saved my life. I um, to this day, I don't care for the enclosure of buildings. It, it was a very bad childhood. For every member of the household, not just myself I think. And um, I escaped it. Barely. With years of trouble. But I did find this, the entire world. In looking for something. That was another great part of my life. Well, you could forget almost everything but there's some things you can't forget, quite. And some people want very much to talk about it and some people find themselves uncomfortable with it, and I find myself one of the uncomfortable ones. So I don't really go there. I think it's apparent in some poems. But, I got saved by poetry. And I got saved by the beauty of the world.

​

​

I will repeat that to myself over and over: "I escaped it, but I did find this: the entire world."

​

This is from the edited interview transcript online:

MS. TIPPETT: I mean, there’s another — there’s that poem in there, “A Visitor,” which mentions your father. And there’s just, to me, this heartbreaking line, which also — I have my own story. We all do. “I saw what love might have done / had we loved in time...”

MS. OLIVER: “...had we loved in time.” Yeah. Well, he never got any love out of me.

MS. TIPPETT: Yeah.

MS. OLIVER: Or deserved it. But mostly what makes you angry is the loss of the years of your life. Because it does leave damage. But there you are. You do what you can do.

MS. TIPPETT: And I think the — you have such a capacity for joy especially in the outdoors. Right? And you transmit that. And it’s that joy. If you’re capable of that, how much more — how much more of it would there have been?

MS. OLIVER: Well, I saved my own life by finding a place that wasn’t in that house. And that was my strength. But I wasn’t all strength. And it would have been a very different life. Whether I would have written poetry or not, who knows? Poetry is a pretty lonely pursuit. And, in many cases I used to think, I don’t do it anymore — but that I’m talking to myself. There was nobody else that in that house I was going to talk to. And it was a very difficult time, and a long time. And I don’t understand some people’s behavior.

MS. TIPPETT: But I — and I guess what I’m saying, I think, is that it’s a gift that you give to your readers to let that be clear. That this, you know, that your ability to love your wild, your “one wild and precious life” is hard won.

MS. OLIVER: Yeah.

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I'm halfway through this one and it's been really good, lots of great references along with personal anecdotes.