As part of my "let's read 52 books this year" challenge (maybe a little foolish given that I started in April), I read Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott. I can't honestly say whether it's actually a good book or not, because something in it was like a hook digging deep into the heart of me on a very, very personal level and tugging and tugging and tugging until something came pouring out of me and I lay in bed sobbing jaggedy sobs that scared my cat but left me finally feeling warm after a long period of numbness.
I am in the process of working things out inside my own head and my own heart, and part of that has been asking the question "why am I like this" and finding that part of the answer is "because my ancestors hurt terribly, but they couldn't afford to feel the hurt or to allow their children to feel the hurt, in order to survive" and that by "ancestors" I mean as recent as my grandparents, and now I am here bruising more easily than a peach because I am the only one in my family who feels because they weren't quite able to burn the softness out of me the way they have done for generations. I have writhed with despair lately because I've felt prickly and calloused and judgmental and all of that feels at odds with who I want to be and how I've always considered myself to be, but it is how my family has survived for generations, and I have been a little burned, I have become a little calloused, maybe I've even had some spikes installed.
But I am in a safe place — my survival is not a question as it was for so many generations of my family — and I can afford to be soft. In fact, I need to be soft. My softness is a defiance of all that was done to threaten and hurt my family. And my softness allows me to look back and see where they came from, and why they did what they did and who they became, and I can pick up the threads of story and create a memorial honoring them, not with my blood but with my words, because that is the part of me that might carry on.
