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Time After Time: A memoir
A riveting and devastating memoir, Time After Time reveals the slow and inexorable damage done to a child by an emotionally abusive parent. It's the 1950's, the age of modern conveniences and upward mobility. In a middle class Boston suburb, where mothers stay home to raise children and fathers take trains to the city, life is peaceful. But inside what appears to be a typical nuclear family, one child is living a nightmare. Susan's mother is systematically stripping away her rights, her sense of belonging, her activities, her access to family life and her self-respect, until she has nothing left but food, clothing and shelter. Her father, a devout Christian Scientist, as well as her sister, brother, extended family, neighbors and friends witness the constant bullying and oppression her mother inflicts on her and don't know how to intervene. Susan realizes at an early age that she must endure her situation every day, time after time, for years to come. The author's courage to survive in the face of emotional deprivation, as well as her ultimate triumph, commands us to speak out for the children in our midst who are suffering in silence.
246 pages, Paperback
First published January 23, 2013
About the author
Susan D. Anderson
3 books14 followersI live in the Pioneer Valley of western Massachusetts, a place that makes it easy to integrate daily life with the sacred. The Connecticut River wends its way through the valley and right outside my windows. Surrounding hills are full of hiking wonders. Local farms are primarily organic and fill their roadside stands with healthy produce. My soul is thriving here.
Most of the time I feel a close proximity to the divine. It’s a good place to be when writing memoirs that describe my journey from childhood, through middle age and beyond. They are my personal history and they reflect our shared story as human beings.
The first memoir, Time After Time (Author House, 2012), is the story of living through an abusive childhood. It is especially pertinent reading for students of family dynamics and psychological and emotional abuse, particularly social workers and therapists who need case studies of this elusive form of abuse.
The second memoir, Flying Point (Amazon, 2016), is the story of living alone for two years on an isolated island in Maine. It is for everyone who is navigating a significant mid-life disturbance, especially those who yearn for a prolonged solitude to sort themselves out.
The third memoir, “Hello, grace.” (Amazon, 2022), weaves the threads and themes of my journey into a picture of what has been a life navigated as much by grace as by my own actions and decisions. I wrote this book especially for today’s younger people who are seeking a sense of purpose and meaning to their lives, people who feel drawn to the spiritual side of life and want to know how to connect to their deeper selves.
Each person has a unique theme in life. Artists call it a motif. It’s a concept that rivets our interest and permeates how we create and what we create at work and at home. Each of us also has a unique soul. It’s an inexhaustible inner world where we seek to connect our daily life to the immensity of creation.
Equality has been my motif from the beginning. My blog is called Living As Equals because that’s what I notice all around me and in the news. There you will find well over 100 essays on the small and large instances of unwarranted prejudice in our society, especially the ways we White people attack the humanity of people from other cultures, lifestyles, backgrounds, religions, dress, and languages. Even hairstyles, given names, and gender choices have been subject to blatant oppression.
The essays on Living As Equals name those prejudices and biases, talk about ways we can become more aware of our own discrimination, and offer ideas for becoming less White-centric and more anti-racist.
Long ago (1993), when Charlie Rose asked Toni Morrison about what racism did to her, she whipped her head around to Charlie and asked, “What is it doing to you, Charlie?” She described growing up feeling superior to White people because our incessant prejudice revealed that we are suffering from some kind of collective sickness. Race hatred acts like a neurosis in each and every one of us. It originates in our institutionalized racism and, like any illness, can progress to malignancy, which we have seen repeatedly and blatantly in the political-social sphere since 2017.
I write to offer an antidote to the insanity of our culture in these times: the ignorance, the inability to see one another's humanity, the depravity of gun violence, the immorality of elected officials, the failure to respect other people and their lives and their choices, however different they are from our own.
Most of the time I feel a close proximity to the divine. It’s a good place to be when writing memoirs that describe my journey from childhood, through middle age and beyond. They are my personal history and they reflect our shared story as human beings.
The first memoir, Time After Time (Author House, 2012), is the story of living through an abusive childhood. It is especially pertinent reading for students of family dynamics and psychological and emotional abuse, particularly social workers and therapists who need case studies of this elusive form of abuse.
The second memoir, Flying Point (Amazon, 2016), is the story of living alone for two years on an isolated island in Maine. It is for everyone who is navigating a significant mid-life disturbance, especially those who yearn for a prolonged solitude to sort themselves out.
The third memoir, “Hello, grace.” (Amazon, 2022), weaves the threads and themes of my journey into a picture of what has been a life navigated as much by grace as by my own actions and decisions. I wrote this book especially for today’s younger people who are seeking a sense of purpose and meaning to their lives, people who feel drawn to the spiritual side of life and want to know how to connect to their deeper selves.
Each person has a unique theme in life. Artists call it a motif. It’s a concept that rivets our interest and permeates how we create and what we create at work and at home. Each of us also has a unique soul. It’s an inexhaustible inner world where we seek to connect our daily life to the immensity of creation.
Equality has been my motif from the beginning. My blog is called Living As Equals because that’s what I notice all around me and in the news. There you will find well over 100 essays on the small and large instances of unwarranted prejudice in our society, especially the ways we White people attack the humanity of people from other cultures, lifestyles, backgrounds, religions, dress, and languages. Even hairstyles, given names, and gender choices have been subject to blatant oppression.
The essays on Living As Equals name those prejudices and biases, talk about ways we can become more aware of our own discrimination, and offer ideas for becoming less White-centric and more anti-racist.
Long ago (1993), when Charlie Rose asked Toni Morrison about what racism did to her, she whipped her head around to Charlie and asked, “What is it doing to you, Charlie?” She described growing up feeling superior to White people because our incessant prejudice revealed that we are suffering from some kind of collective sickness. Race hatred acts like a neurosis in each and every one of us. It originates in our institutionalized racism and, like any illness, can progress to malignancy, which we have seen repeatedly and blatantly in the political-social sphere since 2017.
I write to offer an antidote to the insanity of our culture in these times: the ignorance, the inability to see one another's humanity, the depravity of gun violence, the immorality of elected officials, the failure to respect other people and their lives and their choices, however different they are from our own.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
May 24, 2019
In praise of reflection
What a story. The author's true voice comes through, time and again; the longing, sadness, hope, pain, joy in the least "giving", frustration, despair, and anger at every illogical, unwarranted cut. The ending was perfect.
What a story. The author's true voice comes through, time and again; the longing, sadness, hope, pain, joy in the least "giving", frustration, despair, and anger at every illogical, unwarranted cut. The ending was perfect.
Displaying 1 of 1 review