The places we call home: a memoir excerpt

Abstract

This project consists of the first three chapters of The Places We Call Home, a memoir. Themes in this project include generational trauma, addiction, and abuse. The first chapter focuses on the relationship between the narrator and her mother, detailing both present and past events, as well as substance abuse and addiction. When the narrator’s mother was arrested in the spring of 2020 on drug charges, their relationship was further complicated. The narrator is forced to reckon with her mother’s dishonesty regarding her drug use and to consider whether she can continue to pursue a relationship with her mother in the future, knowing the dishonesty will continue. The second chapter focuses on the relationship between the narrator and her father, in relation to abuse and generational trauma. This chapter explores how the narrator’s father may have been impacted by his own father’s abuse, leading him to continue the cycle as a father and husband. The narrator looks at her father with nuance, considering how she may reconcile the nurturing and supportive side of her father with the side of him that she has grown up in fear of. The third chapter focuses on the narrator’s childhood home and early memories of her family as they led to her parents’ divorce and custody battle. This chapter explores the brief moment in the narrator’s memory in which her family seemed happy to her, as well as the truth of what was going on beneath the surface. It also tells the story of her parents’ subsequent split and the impact on her and her siblings as their situation shifted drastically, and she was forced to grow up quickly.