When I Grow Up, I'm Gonna Have So Much Amnesia - Autographed copy

When I Grow Up, I'm Gonna Have So Much Amnesia: How faith, hope and therapy helped me heal from childhood sexual abuse

Book Description:

Heather’s certainty that her children are in danger is strong enough to bend steel bars. The trouble is, she can’t identify the threat, so she protects them from everything. Like an obsessive-compulsive sheepdog, she guards their steps in the daytime, and the slightest noise sends her racing to their rescue at night. This level of paranoia might make sense for a disenfranchised member of the Russian Mafia, but for a suburban soccer mom, it’s on par with wearing a tinfoil hat to thwart government mind-reading satellites.

Then bizarre flashbacks, which include Siskel-and-Ebert style commentary from disembodied voices, convince her she’s down to two choices. Become a card-carrying member of the Tinfoil Hat Conspiracy Club, or get professional help.

Her new psychiatrist diagnoses her with Chronic Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD) as a result of childhood trauma—and she realizes her anxiety is based on fact. Once upon a time, she was in danger, and her children need to be protected from the perpetrator.

With the help of a quirky PTSD therapist trained in a ground-breaking therapy approach, her faith in God, and a rowdy crew of ego states which morphed from childhood imaginary friends, she sets out to relive the horrors of the past in order to enjoy peace in the future.

The sheer volume of trauma she has to process, however, is mind-boggling. Heather always suspected a skeleton lurked in her family-of-origin’s closet. She didn’t expect the entire Mardi Gras Skeleton Crewe’s Ragtime Band to come dancing out, complete with whirling, crowing Baron Samedi in top hat and tails!

Whisked at random from the present to the past and back again by maelstroms of memories, feeling like a sock puppet being quarreled over by a dozen ornery ego states, Heather wonders which will break first—PTSD’s hold on her mind, or her mind itself.  Good thing she’s not a quitter.