book is so well written that it felt as though I was having a oneonone conversation with the author, It is a heartwrenching tale of a loveless childhood filled with nothing but abuse, and things don't improve for a long time after the author enters adulthood.
This book will make you furious, . . it will also make you shed tons of tears,
Keep the tissues handy, This was a hard book to read but frankly it was much harder for her to live and to write her story, Resiliency is a beautiful thing though I wish no one were in the position she was in needing the resilience she was avle to achieve, I had received mixed reviews about this title, I was told that it did not have a happy ending, I found quite the opposite, Though the ending was not filled with glitter and gold, it was fitting for the life she had lived, Gal had a tough childhood filled with abuse, she survived the emotional baggage her childhood upbringing caused, and she persevered when the people she called family turned on her.
At the end, she forgave them and learned to live in peace and love, The author faced a savage upbringing, of poverty and domestic violence,
This book is a reminder that behavior we find "bad" has roots we often don't see, For me, this book
was one that made me take a step further away from judgments of people, I read this book on the subway and from time to time I'd look up at the people getting on the train or getting off and realized that the story could be anyone's.
You never know what memories and history that a person is holding inside of them that causes them to behave the way they do, Gal went thru a lot in her life but still she would wake up each morning and keep on going, Don't know if I'd be able to do the same if I'd had her upbringing, All I have to say is this book caused many emotions to erupt from within me, And I am so proud of Ruthie and how she overcame the trials and tribulations that she went through,through her childhood, Thank you for sharing your life story, you incredible woman I have to sort my feelings as I write this review, . . I'm left stunned by the torment and desperately sought joys Ruthie had in her life,
It doesn't seem just that a woman could be made to suffer with blood and pain and when she's grown, pour out her time and labor on the source of that pain, getting virtually nothing in return.
In fact, it's hard and cruel, But for Ruthie Bolton, she didn't let it pound her down into nothing, She kept reaching for joy, Kept striving. Kept moving towards the sunlight,
Ruthie started out life in a little piece of the country dubbed Hungry Neck by the locals, It's a town actually called Mount Pleasant in South Carolina, Looking up Mount Pleasant/Hungry Neck, the first images that I see are genteel looking estates and serene waterfronts, But the Hungry Neck of Ruthie's childhood had little peace or gentility, but a whole lot of roughness, ugliness and hate, She had a tough start to begin with, Her mother was no more than a naive thirteen year old kid, looking for love in all the wrong places, Ruthie's father unknown, Ruthie had a connection to the Navy through the family member who is the central character of her nightmare, her grandfather, a combination of all things violent and hatefilled, and a man I'm still trying to comprehend.
The book was powerful and intruiging in more ways than onelittle details of the military life she described for instance, is something I found interesting being a former Navy brat.
But the life she led shocked and horrified me in more ways than one, as well, Her grandfather was a cook on the ships, and in Ruthie's words, leading a whole double life, One part publicly "respectable", the other part ruthless child beater,
Ruthie had a long road ahead of her and it seemed very little hope for what can be called "normalcy", Her grandfather, actually her grandmother's second husband and not her blood relation, was a man caught up in power plays and domination, He was a man that I'd view as someone who went out in the world and dragged back all of the frustrations, furies and lack of any REAL power he had back to the heads of the helpless children in his household.
He was a punk, a bully and a coward, presenting a facade of civility to men who'd have probably crushed his freedom and career into the ground if they'd known the torture he was inflicting on women and children.
As you turn the pages, you WISH that someone had checked him, pulled his fists off of the innocent victims in his grasp, and threw him in the deepest, darkest prison in all of the Carolinas.
Ruthie was a member of a family where love was in such short supply that she grew into a woman who had a monumentally hard time recognizing love when it turned and embraced her.
Her second husband's family, a beautiful group of people from Florida, eventually became the family of her heart, Before she met him and these kind souls, she floated around sometimes taking money for sex, trysts that ultimately only left her feeling empty, and working minimumwage jobs.
Behind the pain, her heart yearned for something much greater, something that was unjustly denied to her, She just barely made it out of the vicious clutches of her stepgrandfather, trying to find her way throughout a winding path,
I shed tears multiple times through the reading of this woman's journey, It is not fair to be treated as if your humanity is invisible, And that's what this evil man who should never have been allowed within one foot of a child, let alone been granted the privilege of raising one, did to her.
He made her feel as if she wasn't worthy of the basic things that make our life worth living, That she was just a thing to be kicked and tossed, an inanimate object, instead of a girl with a mind and a soul, This did things to her emotionally, as it would for anyone, While having the strength to keep moving through life without imploding, it caused her to look for relief in the wrong places at times and with the wrong people.
She was lucky in the fact that she was able to go forward and find love and some measure of peace, but even that was disrupted by the presence of her stepgrandpa.
Even a few of the family members that she grew up with and felt accepted by, turned on her, Later on during her adult years, she actually had the kindness and compassion, not to mention, enormous fortitude, to move from her husband's family home and return to her grandfather's house of torment, caring for his weak, sickly body.
She threw herself into nearly the complete renovation of his house, laying down tile, painting, buying furniture and other objects, just to at his passing, be cruelly told by a relative, her own aunt, that she was "not family" and nothing to them.
She was forbidden from even sitting with her extended family to hear the details of her grandfather's will, the shock and betrayal of it all sending her reeling and sobbing into the street.
Damn, how much cruelty can one human being endure After years of abuse, intimidation and hate from this man, many adults would've liked to have danced a little jig on the old man's grave.
But Ruthie, a person with a soft heart, took care of this wretched human being who caused such sadness in her life, and instead of being hugged, respected and praised, she was in my opinion, figuratively spat in the face.
Was not left by him the house she put so much sweat and labor into, treated with the utmost of contempt from the grave by the same man whose failing body she cared for when so many other abused granddaughters would have flung him into the nearest and worst nursing home.
But again, Ruthie's inner strength kicked in and she did not relinquish hope for her future, She stayed on in the house paying rent even though she asked for an opportunity to purchase, a perfectly reasonable request, but one that was immediately shot down, she continued raising her beloved family, got a good job in a healing environment that she enjoyed, and simply refused to be defeated!
It's not a fairy tale ending by any means.
And of course, everything that she was forced to endure isn't even close to fair, But unfortunately, life can be like that sometimes, Bitter with the sweet. Darkness and patches of light, Sometimes, a person doesn't get what they rightfully deserve and what they should've always had, But maybe heroism can be found with the people who take what they have and determine to build MORE,
That's what Ruthie did, That's why she's such an important human being, and that's why love, the most precious form of allselflovecan be the refuge a soul can find, .
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Ruthie Bolton