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Scattering Ashes: A Memoir of Letting Go
When her alcoholic and emotionally abusive mother’s health declines, Joan Rough invites her to move in with her. Rough longs to be the “good daughter,” helping her narcissistic mother face the reality of her coming death. But when repressed memories of childhood abuse by her mother arise, Rough is filled with deep resentment and hatred toward the woman who birthed her, and her dream of mending their tattered relationship shatters. Seven years later, when her mother dies, she is left with a plastic bag of her mother’s ashes and a diagnosis of PTSD. What will she do with them?Courageous and unflinchingly honest, Scattering Ashes is a powerful chronicle of letting go of a loved one, a painful past, and fear―a journey that will bring hope to others who grapple with the pain and repercussions of abuse.
- GenresMemoir
256 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 20, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
December 2, 2016
The stages of aging and eldercare with added complications related to emotional/mental illness and addiction are tremendous difficulties and challenges faced by many families today. In "Scattering Ashes: A Memoir of Letting Go" gifted author/storyteller Joan Z. Rough didn't want her elderly mother living in a facility. Instead, she and her husband Bill remodeled their newly purchased larger home with a nicely designed apartment to accommodate her mother. It becomes apparent that despite Joan's love for her mother, skills and knowledge, the reality of her experience wouldn't follow in the direction of her cherished notions and optimistic intentions.
When Joan and Bill moved from Vermont to Virginia, her brothers viewed their move as abandoning the family. Holiday family gatherings were tense and confrontational. The troubles within the family were traced to PTSD that likely passed down from their father who had served in WWII returning "shell shocked". Joan's mother didn't fare any better raised by a mentally unstable parent, which likely led to her alcoholism. With such a history of family dysfunction, the abusive cycle continued into the next generation. Unable to find acceptance and peace in her family of origin Joan would suffer herself from PTSD, depressive and anxiety conditions. It seemed no one in her family appreciated her sacrifice to care for her mother.
There was a toxic undercurrent of hot anger and hostility between Joan and her mother throughout most of the story. (From the book) "There are times when I absolutely hate the woman. Her incessant negativity takes me down with her, and I wonder how much longer it will be before she dies. Will she ever realize that I've been a good daughter even though I didn't meet all her wants and wishes?"
Going against her doctors orders, Joan's mother in her 80's was unable to quit smoking or drinking alcohol; making her extremely difficult to deal with. Although there were frequent vacations, hired help/nursing care available to assist, services from numerous therapists were needed, there was a noticeable absence of significant storyline involving Joan's adult children. Bill was highly supportive, yet their marriage suffered on occasion. Eventually Joan would reconnect more with her art and creative expression, beading, photography, painting and writing. None of these things could erase the pain associated with trauma and loss, instead, she would discover through her creativity and mother-daughter life story, a direction leading towards healing acceptance and forgiveness.
With special thanks and appreciation for my complimentary signed copy for the purpose of review.
When Joan and Bill moved from Vermont to Virginia, her brothers viewed their move as abandoning the family. Holiday family gatherings were tense and confrontational. The troubles within the family were traced to PTSD that likely passed down from their father who had served in WWII returning "shell shocked". Joan's mother didn't fare any better raised by a mentally unstable parent, which likely led to her alcoholism. With such a history of family dysfunction, the abusive cycle continued into the next generation. Unable to find acceptance and peace in her family of origin Joan would suffer herself from PTSD, depressive and anxiety conditions. It seemed no one in her family appreciated her sacrifice to care for her mother.
There was a toxic undercurrent of hot anger and hostility between Joan and her mother throughout most of the story. (From the book) "There are times when I absolutely hate the woman. Her incessant negativity takes me down with her, and I wonder how much longer it will be before she dies. Will she ever realize that I've been a good daughter even though I didn't meet all her wants and wishes?"
Going against her doctors orders, Joan's mother in her 80's was unable to quit smoking or drinking alcohol; making her extremely difficult to deal with. Although there were frequent vacations, hired help/nursing care available to assist, services from numerous therapists were needed, there was a noticeable absence of significant storyline involving Joan's adult children. Bill was highly supportive, yet their marriage suffered on occasion. Eventually Joan would reconnect more with her art and creative expression, beading, photography, painting and writing. None of these things could erase the pain associated with trauma and loss, instead, she would discover through her creativity and mother-daughter life story, a direction leading towards healing acceptance and forgiveness.
With special thanks and appreciation for my complimentary signed copy for the purpose of review.
May 24, 2016
From a battered child who survived the clashing tides of an abusive home life, to a full grown woman who lives with joy, peace, and acceptance, SCATTERING ASHES: A MEMOIR OF LETTING GO chronicles the peacemaking journey of a daughter who learns to let go of scathing anger, resentment, and hatred—emotions that stoke the smoldering fires of a dragon who resides within. Shining light into the darkest corners of her familial relationships—especially the ties with her mom—author Joan Z. Rough releases herself and her mother from a self-made prison. SCATTERING ASHES is a bleeding-edge memoir that takes a brave and liberating look at family dynamics; one that ultimately leads to love and forgiveness.
September 7, 2016
Scattering Ashes is an engaging and heartfelt story of a daughter who powers her way through her mother’s lifelong abuses to find love and forgiveness. Once I started reading this, I couldn’t put it down.
Rough’s portrayal of the challenges and stressors of taking her aging, ailing mother into her home will resonate with anyone who faces the decline of a parent and is forced to make such a decision. That Rough has suffered a life of abuse by her mother adds to the tension and complexity of the story. Even though my mother was and still is a loving mother, I can relate to the dilemma of watching a mother fail and feeling the obligation to do as much as possible to ease her transition.
Rough’s writing is raw and honest and her subtle sense of humor helped lighten the load of an oppressive situation while also highlighting the author’s resilience and openness to make the best of a difficult circumstance. Her characters are believable and realistic and come alive on the page. Through her descriptions and scenic details, I have a very clear picture of her mother, her brothers, her sister -in-law and her husband as living, breathing human beings with flaws and gifts. Her honest self-reflections also add a dimension of authenticity to her character.
She leads the reader through the deep and complex terrain of a mother –daughter relationship at the end of life and shows us how she found love and forgiveness for the woman who caused her so much pain. It is a story of triumph against incredible odds. When she sees the woman behind the abuse, she transforms the life story she carried around like a burden for years into one of peace and healing. She shows us how there is life after abuse.
A truly inspirational memoir with a universal message about the power of a mother’s love, the complexities of the mother –daughter relationship and the power of the human spirit to heal and move on from abuse.
I highly recommend this memoir.
Rough’s portrayal of the challenges and stressors of taking her aging, ailing mother into her home will resonate with anyone who faces the decline of a parent and is forced to make such a decision. That Rough has suffered a life of abuse by her mother adds to the tension and complexity of the story. Even though my mother was and still is a loving mother, I can relate to the dilemma of watching a mother fail and feeling the obligation to do as much as possible to ease her transition.
Rough’s writing is raw and honest and her subtle sense of humor helped lighten the load of an oppressive situation while also highlighting the author’s resilience and openness to make the best of a difficult circumstance. Her characters are believable and realistic and come alive on the page. Through her descriptions and scenic details, I have a very clear picture of her mother, her brothers, her sister -in-law and her husband as living, breathing human beings with flaws and gifts. Her honest self-reflections also add a dimension of authenticity to her character.
She leads the reader through the deep and complex terrain of a mother –daughter relationship at the end of life and shows us how she found love and forgiveness for the woman who caused her so much pain. It is a story of triumph against incredible odds. When she sees the woman behind the abuse, she transforms the life story she carried around like a burden for years into one of peace and healing. She shows us how there is life after abuse.
A truly inspirational memoir with a universal message about the power of a mother’s love, the complexities of the mother –daughter relationship and the power of the human spirit to heal and move on from abuse.
I highly recommend this memoir.
August 22, 2016
Author Joan Z. Rough has traversed the labyrinthine landscape of Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey, and describes its depths and tough lessons in her enriching memoir, Scattering Ashes, A Memoir of Letting Go, to be released in September. Her journey is familiar, yet unique to each of us: caring for one’s aged mother to the gateway of death, while negotiating the treachery of the past. How does one navigate through the wreckage of childhood abuse on such a trip, when the very object of one’s compassion is a perpetrator of one’s deepest pain? (“I find it sad and ironic that I spend so much of my own time encouraging my mother to remember the hard times in her life while I run from my own demons, hiding from my own story.”) The alchemy of this wise and beautiful book lies in the author’s courage and humility in facing her Self’s struggle to recover and to be free as well as her artful description of the anguished love she feels for her unhealed mother. (“There must be a way to stop the sirens and gongs that go off in my head when my brain detects danger ahead. I’ve tasted too many good days, and I know that every day can be filled with joy and love.”) The outcome may surprise you, and the lovely narrative of this book will make you think. Highly recommended.
October 15, 2016
I usually don't read a lot of memoirs but when offered this one, it struck a chord in me. My life was very similar to the authors, the only difference is that I did not have my mother live with me in her last days, one of my siblings did that. Living with an alcoholic is difficult. Mine was but only in my high school years. She had not done a lot of drinking in my younger years but she was still very verbally abusive.
Like the the author, I also had resentment and anger towards my mother. But the only way I was to overcome mine was with a loving husband and children who reminded me that I was not to blame for my mother's behavior.
Scattering Ashes is a very poignant, no holds barred story of a woman who eventually comes to terms with her feelings and is finally able to move on. Told with an honesty that will have you feeling the emotions that Ms.Rough goes through during and after the time her mother lives with her. A person in this situation like Joan, goes through anger, guilt and sometimes humor, then forgiveness. Forgiveness not only for herself but for her mother also, because that is the only way you can go on from a situation like this. Fortunately for me, I have four children that I have a great relationship with. I enjoyed reading this book.
Like the the author, I also had resentment and anger towards my mother. But the only way I was to overcome mine was with a loving husband and children who reminded me that I was not to blame for my mother's behavior.
Scattering Ashes is a very poignant, no holds barred story of a woman who eventually comes to terms with her feelings and is finally able to move on. Told with an honesty that will have you feeling the emotions that Ms.Rough goes through during and after the time her mother lives with her. A person in this situation like Joan, goes through anger, guilt and sometimes humor, then forgiveness. Forgiveness not only for herself but for her mother also, because that is the only way you can go on from a situation like this. Fortunately for me, I have four children that I have a great relationship with. I enjoyed reading this book.
June 30, 2016
"During those hateful years, I learned about love, life, death, hate, and how to heal my own soul. I learned that forgiveness is not about forgetting. It is about coming to terms with the human spirit and what drives us to be the people we are. The story you are about to read is about how my mother and I worked out way through her last years, doing the best we could. It's a story about my growth and how I found love and forgiveness amid anger and hate."
This book is the story of the difficult relationship between the author and her alcoholic mother, and of the author's yearning and efforts to make her mother's final years as pleasant as possible. That's no easy task, considering that her mother is a difficult woman, to say the least, and their relationship has never been an easy one. Complicating matters is the childhood abuse the author suffered at the hands of her father, which her mother witnessed but did nothing about. This book is extremely well-written, although it seems to get a bit new-agey and can feel repetitious at times. Still, a worthwhile read. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of this in exchange for an honest review.
This book is the story of the difficult relationship between the author and her alcoholic mother, and of the author's yearning and efforts to make her mother's final years as pleasant as possible. That's no easy task, considering that her mother is a difficult woman, to say the least, and their relationship has never been an easy one. Complicating matters is the childhood abuse the author suffered at the hands of her father, which her mother witnessed but did nothing about. This book is extremely well-written, although it seems to get a bit new-agey and can feel repetitious at times. Still, a worthwhile read. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of this in exchange for an honest review.
September 21, 2016
As someone who has cared for several elderly family members, I knew that Joan Rough’s book would be interesting and informative. I never imagined how compelling this story would be. Despite their rocky relationship over the years, despite her mother’s history of alcoholism and emotional abuse, Joan invited her mother into her home to care for her during her final years. With unwavering courage, the author tells the story of this journey, examining the difficulties she encounters with honesty and vulnerability.
But this is not just the story of a difficult mother/daughter relationship, it’s also the story of the author’s journey to forgiveness and self-acutalization. Telling her story with clear, concise prose, Joan invites the reader into her family and into her heart as she creates a personal pathway toward healing.
I was fortunate to have a close and loving relationship with my mother, yet Joan Rough’s memoir reminds me that even in the best of situations, healing after a parent’s death is a very personal but necessary process, and that one can come out happier and healthier on the other side.
But this is not just the story of a difficult mother/daughter relationship, it’s also the story of the author’s journey to forgiveness and self-acutalization. Telling her story with clear, concise prose, Joan invites the reader into her family and into her heart as she creates a personal pathway toward healing.
I was fortunate to have a close and loving relationship with my mother, yet Joan Rough’s memoir reminds me that even in the best of situations, healing after a parent’s death is a very personal but necessary process, and that one can come out happier and healthier on the other side.
April 25, 2017
People observing us from afar often comment on how close Mom and I seem. It always surprises me, because we are close only in that I am a vessel into which I allow her to pour her own challenges. I hold them for her, always there, a container she fills with anger and disappointments. They are more than a distraction. I have my own problems, but I focus on Mom, who ‘needs’ me. That is my addiction. The truth is that even when someone tells us we look so alike, I want to reply, Thanks but I’m not anything like my mother and I don’t want to be!
Scattering of Ashes, p. 28
In Scattering of Ashes: A Memoir of Letting Go, Joan Z. Rough writes with raw truth and emotion about the difficult mother-daughter relationship she suffered. Not only is Rough a writer, she also paints, writes poetry, and is a photographer. From this multitude of creative gifts, Rough draws on each one to bring the story of her life with her mother to the page for her readers.
On a personal note, her writing is so realistic and lucent I often found myself among Rough’s pages and in doing so reached more than once for a tissue to wipe away my tears.
Rough exposes the pain and scars from a childhood of emotional abuse at the hands of her alcoholic mother. Needless to say, Rough’s search for peaceful days and nights in her own family life is often overwhelmed by her mother’s abuses continuing into her daughter’s adulthood.
Rough’s transparency in her writing is appreciated by the reader. It is as if we are looking through the window and watching each scene unfold. Despite Rough and her husband willingly becoming her mother’s caregivers, this abusive parent continues to spew rages and epithets at her daughter without reason. Such emotional invectives create the deepest scars to the recipient’s heart.
That she is able to write her story with such beautiful prose, almost poetic at times, is an amazing gift of creativity. It would be so easy to whimper and whine and show the negative side of everything. But not Joan Rough. She brings every sense of beauty she owns to the page in writing of these most difficult times.
Although her story begins raw and ragged with damage in place and continuing, Rough shines through each page as a disciplined and well-trained writer. The highpoint of her story is found in her dedication of this memoir “ . . . to all mothers and daughters who are seeking to love and forgive each other.”
I highly recommend this memoir to those in complicated mother-daughter relationships. If ever a pathway has been written to self-acceptance, forgiveness, and healing, Joan Rough has done so in Scattering of Ashes: A Memoir of Letting Go.
August 21, 2016
Early in her poignant mother-daughter memoir, Scattering Ashes, Joan Rough writes, “I want to tell her that my heart breaks when I see her drinking. I want her to know that I care about her.” Yet, from an early age, Joan was taught that if something is problematic, you don’t cry, you don’t complain, and you never ask for help. It reminded me of the novel I just finished about a complicated mother-daughter relationship by one of my favorite authors, Elizabeth Strout, called My Name is Lucy Barton, whose message is that love is imperfect and we all love imperfectly.
“I find it sad and ironic that I spend so much of my own time encouraging my mother to remember the hard times in her life while I run from my own demons, hiding from my own story.” Joan is ambivalent. In her self-described “more rational moments” during the seven years she takes her aging mother into her home, Joan feels deep love and compassion for her mother, finds it heartbreaking to watch her slip away. But in the heat of the moment when abuse and anger are furled at Joan, she is unable to see the behavior for all the misery that it is expressing. And when Joan feels trapped, overwhelmed, and sorry for herself as her mother’s caretaker, she wants her life back. “I want to live a spontaneous life, stopping to watch the sunset or taking as long as I want to chat with friends over lunch.” Scattering Ashes paints this dichotomy in vivid color for the reader.
Her mother’s outbursts and criticisms sometimes trigger Joan’s outbursts, and this is followed by the daughter’s guilt and shame and feelings of being out of control. Absent any solace and time for herself, Joan suffers. She argues with husband, Bill, rants at the cashier at the local grocer. While overwhelmed by the situation, Joan fills her life with more and more projects “so that I won’t hear the chatter in my head.” Jewelry beading becomes her new obsession, like the knitting binge she went on a couple years earlier. Gardening. Writing a book about the river. Rescuing cats. Worrying. It is 24/7 when a disabled parent is living with an offspring. And when the parent is an alcoholic, and abusive, and then struck with more and more debilitation—memory issues, then lung cancer, like Joan’s mother—she strikes against the person closest to her. She strikes at Joan.
“Being a caretaker is a sticky, thankless job,” Joan writes. When Joan and Bill take a well-needed one-week respite, hiring around-the-clock nursing care for her mother, they get a call within two days that her mother has tried to fire the nurses. Joan’s fury leads to moaning her fate: “Why must I have a mother like her, and why don’t I just put her in a nursing home and forget about her?” Her husband’s words of wisdom put the reader smack into life’s reality: “Because she’s your mother and you love her. You don’t ever get to choose your family members. It’s just what you’re given.”
Slowly, Joan learns to care for herself in the same way she is trying to care for her mother. She tries to find common ground with her mother, like their solace in nature. She finds comfort through a Buddhist meditation group. She learns “we’re all suffering in one way or another and are seeking a way to be more comfortable in the messes we find ourselves in. She speaks with the hospital chaplain who tells her to first take care of herself. “She’s given me permission to take care of me—something I haven’t done in a long time.” Bill and Joan send her mother to respite care for a week to get a needed break. But crisis and chaos is never far away.
After her mother dies in 2007, Joan begins to reexamine her past and this elusive relationship with her mother. She seeks to discover who she really is. The mending and healing happens slowly, in fits and starts, forward and then backward again. She begins to put the puzzle pieces of her mother’s life together, understanding the pain her mother endured and secrets she withheld. In time, Joan learns that she grieves for the loss of her childhood and, at times, has blamed those around her for the tragic abuse to which she had been subjected as a child. She accepts the diagnosis of PTSD that several members of the medical community have told her she suffers from, and recognizes this condition is not something she caused. With courage and honesty and conviction, Joan Rough battles her own demons and wins. She grows from victim to survivor. “I’m learning to accept whatever I am dealt and to love and forgive myself no matter what, even if it’s very hard. I’m beginning to greet each day with a smile and to live it as if it were my last.”
In lyrical prose, Joan describes the journey to scatter what’s left of her mother’s ashes in the places she loved, on the south and north shores of Long Island, also places of Joan’s past. For the final rite of letting go, Joan empties the last of her mother’s gritty ashes into the gentle swells of Long Island Sound. “She is absorbed back into the salty sea from whence we all came. I wish her well, tell her I miss her, and blow a kiss into the air. It’s a perfect day, a perfect place, and I completely accept her into my heart . . . Not only have I found forgiveness for her, I’ve found it for myself.”
“I find it sad and ironic that I spend so much of my own time encouraging my mother to remember the hard times in her life while I run from my own demons, hiding from my own story.” Joan is ambivalent. In her self-described “more rational moments” during the seven years she takes her aging mother into her home, Joan feels deep love and compassion for her mother, finds it heartbreaking to watch her slip away. But in the heat of the moment when abuse and anger are furled at Joan, she is unable to see the behavior for all the misery that it is expressing. And when Joan feels trapped, overwhelmed, and sorry for herself as her mother’s caretaker, she wants her life back. “I want to live a spontaneous life, stopping to watch the sunset or taking as long as I want to chat with friends over lunch.” Scattering Ashes paints this dichotomy in vivid color for the reader.
Her mother’s outbursts and criticisms sometimes trigger Joan’s outbursts, and this is followed by the daughter’s guilt and shame and feelings of being out of control. Absent any solace and time for herself, Joan suffers. She argues with husband, Bill, rants at the cashier at the local grocer. While overwhelmed by the situation, Joan fills her life with more and more projects “so that I won’t hear the chatter in my head.” Jewelry beading becomes her new obsession, like the knitting binge she went on a couple years earlier. Gardening. Writing a book about the river. Rescuing cats. Worrying. It is 24/7 when a disabled parent is living with an offspring. And when the parent is an alcoholic, and abusive, and then struck with more and more debilitation—memory issues, then lung cancer, like Joan’s mother—she strikes against the person closest to her. She strikes at Joan.
“Being a caretaker is a sticky, thankless job,” Joan writes. When Joan and Bill take a well-needed one-week respite, hiring around-the-clock nursing care for her mother, they get a call within two days that her mother has tried to fire the nurses. Joan’s fury leads to moaning her fate: “Why must I have a mother like her, and why don’t I just put her in a nursing home and forget about her?” Her husband’s words of wisdom put the reader smack into life’s reality: “Because she’s your mother and you love her. You don’t ever get to choose your family members. It’s just what you’re given.”
Slowly, Joan learns to care for herself in the same way she is trying to care for her mother. She tries to find common ground with her mother, like their solace in nature. She finds comfort through a Buddhist meditation group. She learns “we’re all suffering in one way or another and are seeking a way to be more comfortable in the messes we find ourselves in. She speaks with the hospital chaplain who tells her to first take care of herself. “She’s given me permission to take care of me—something I haven’t done in a long time.” Bill and Joan send her mother to respite care for a week to get a needed break. But crisis and chaos is never far away.
After her mother dies in 2007, Joan begins to reexamine her past and this elusive relationship with her mother. She seeks to discover who she really is. The mending and healing happens slowly, in fits and starts, forward and then backward again. She begins to put the puzzle pieces of her mother’s life together, understanding the pain her mother endured and secrets she withheld. In time, Joan learns that she grieves for the loss of her childhood and, at times, has blamed those around her for the tragic abuse to which she had been subjected as a child. She accepts the diagnosis of PTSD that several members of the medical community have told her she suffers from, and recognizes this condition is not something she caused. With courage and honesty and conviction, Joan Rough battles her own demons and wins. She grows from victim to survivor. “I’m learning to accept whatever I am dealt and to love and forgive myself no matter what, even if it’s very hard. I’m beginning to greet each day with a smile and to live it as if it were my last.”
In lyrical prose, Joan describes the journey to scatter what’s left of her mother’s ashes in the places she loved, on the south and north shores of Long Island, also places of Joan’s past. For the final rite of letting go, Joan empties the last of her mother’s gritty ashes into the gentle swells of Long Island Sound. “She is absorbed back into the salty sea from whence we all came. I wish her well, tell her I miss her, and blow a kiss into the air. It’s a perfect day, a perfect place, and I completely accept her into my heart . . . Not only have I found forgiveness for her, I’ve found it for myself.”
May 17, 2017
An honest and insightful account of a daughter's experience as she cares for narcissistic and abusive mother in her last years of life. Rough holds nothing back, making it a terrific read for those going through similar situations. Readers will appreciate the uplifting ending.
August 31, 2017
Really, really enjoyed this book! It captures the communication of a borderline mother in no other book I've read. I felt myself transported back to childhood several times. I'm happy to hear Joan found forgiveness. I hope to follow on her path.
There were some minor editing mistakes but it's an excellent read.
There were some minor editing mistakes but it's an excellent read.
September 1, 2016
Joan Rough had a complicated relationship with her mother. When she decided to take her into her home and care for her during the final years of her mother's life, Rough hoped for a healing experience. She hoped they would finally bond and have some quality time together.
Instead repressed memories of childhood abuse surface and her mother's cantankerous and narcissistic behavior make it challenging for Joan to even remain pleasant to her mother. Rough's dream of reconciliation fails miserably. But she soldiers on.
It is as if Rough has tucked us into her pocket and we are allowed to observe her days as she experiences them. She is unflinchingly honest, sugarcoating nothing. She describes her own failings and lack of patience as well as the tender moments that surface at the most unexpected times.
After her mother's death, Rough has to make a decision about what to do with her mother's ashes and how to let go of the legacy of pain she carries. She shares her "Letting-Go" rituals, each one taking her closer to forgiving herself and her mother and finding peace.
Anyone who has a difficult relationship with a parent, is a caregiver for a parent, or yearns to find peace in the aftermath of a traumatic relationship with a parent will resonate with the truths Joan Rough shares.
by Jude Whelley
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women
Instead repressed memories of childhood abuse surface and her mother's cantankerous and narcissistic behavior make it challenging for Joan to even remain pleasant to her mother. Rough's dream of reconciliation fails miserably. But she soldiers on.
It is as if Rough has tucked us into her pocket and we are allowed to observe her days as she experiences them. She is unflinchingly honest, sugarcoating nothing. She describes her own failings and lack of patience as well as the tender moments that surface at the most unexpected times.
After her mother's death, Rough has to make a decision about what to do with her mother's ashes and how to let go of the legacy of pain she carries. She shares her "Letting-Go" rituals, each one taking her closer to forgiving herself and her mother and finding peace.
Anyone who has a difficult relationship with a parent, is a caregiver for a parent, or yearns to find peace in the aftermath of a traumatic relationship with a parent will resonate with the truths Joan Rough shares.
by Jude Whelley
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women
August 26, 2016
"Scattering Ashes: A Memoir of Letting Go" by Joan Z. Rough is about a daughter wanting to take care of her alcoholic, abusive, ill mother and to finally have a healthy relationship with her. She invites her mother to come live with her and her husband when the mother’s health starts to decline. The years of abuse she suffered as a child by her parents come rushing back mixed with the ongoing emotional abuse that still spews from her mother’s lips. Somethings never change. She does her best to take care of her mother even though she doesn’t make it easy. While the author’s resentment and hate build, she also feels love for her mother and wants the relationship that she isn’t even sure her mother is capable of giving her. After Joan Rough’s mother dies, she still feels the hate but also realizes she misses her. I’ll stop there because saying anymore would be giving too much away. I enjoyed this book and felt for the author and all she had endured. While reading I found myself wanting to tell the old woman off and to tell the author to remember who she is and what she has accomplished, not the words and actions of her parents. For me to have that reaction made this book worth the read.
Thank you, NetGalley, for the opportunity to read and review this book.
Thank you, NetGalley, for the opportunity to read and review this book.
June 13, 2016
"Scattering Ashes: A Memoir of Letting Go" by Joan Z. Rough is about a daughter coming to terms with her mom dying. This is not a story of a normal mother and daughter relationship as the authors mother was emotional abusive and an alcoholic. It was a very interesting read on how the author had to learn to handle taking care of a parent at the end of their life who was abusive even near the end. This was a very powerful book and very helpful on knowing how there are others out there if you know someone that is emotional abusive and the abuser is at the end of their life or having serious health issues. She wrote about in one part of the book about trying to get medical people to realize she is telling the truth and her mother is trying to scam them I really understood that as we have seen that with a family member on my husbands side. I could not put it down once I started reading, I will admit it was emotional upsetting at times but worth the read. This was a very powerful book and I highly recommend it.
I was given this book from NetGalley for my honest review and was not required to give a positive review.
I was given this book from NetGalley for my honest review and was not required to give a positive review.
October 1, 2016
This was not an easy book to read, but it was a worthy one. This is a consistently well-written memoir with occasional incursions of beautiful, almost poetic, prose about a very painful subject: the continuing abuse of a daughter, now a mature woman, by a mother she is caring for through to death. I felt enormous empathy for the author who seemed to struggle her whole life for a little bit of peace, beauty and joy that it is clear she wholly deserved. Owning that understanding -- that she deserved it -- is her central therapeutic work and she takes the reader along with her as she learns to embrace her worthiness.
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Mountain Keeper
May 4, 2020
"Scattering Ashes: A Memoir of Letting Go" touches my heart in knowing that the lifetime damages from a brutally abusive family are so difficult to overcome and to heal. Beautifully written, Joan Rough's journey is familiar to anyone caring for an aging parent. While negotiating the treachery of the past is one of the author's main missions in caring for her terminally ill mother, the dysfunctional mother-daughter relationship compounds feelings of the author's failings, lack of patience, suppurating anger, and self-sabotage as the mother sinks into deeper dementia, despair, and fright. Courageously, the author allows her vulnerability to surface in tender moments at the most unexpected times, in the hope of a reconciliation that does not happen. The most lacerating moments are the author's best. Joan Rough recognizes that there is something in herself she hopes her mother will understand, but her mother can't. Ultimately, the daughter has to heal herself (at the age of sixty) in order to let go of her mother reaching from the grave: "Not only have I found forgiveness for her, I've found it for myself".
"Scattering Ashes" cuts to the bone and the soft tissue of the personal. A powder-keg of a memoir--highly recommend!
"Scattering Ashes" cuts to the bone and the soft tissue of the personal. A powder-keg of a memoir--highly recommend!
August 12, 2018
A must for daughters
While I am not facing the imminent death of my mother,like the author, this book is a must read for anyone with a complex mother daughter relationship. There were countless moments where I could relate fully and I know this book is something I will pull references from as that relationship goes down the inevitable road.
While I am not facing the imminent death of my mother,like the author, this book is a must read for anyone with a complex mother daughter relationship. There were countless moments where I could relate fully and I know this book is something I will pull references from as that relationship goes down the inevitable road.
December 16, 2018
A raw book about the authors relationship with her mother and her abusive childhood and adulthood
October 15, 2016
Powerful story of dealing with challenging circumstances
i truly appreciated Joan's transparently. a window into her world. Her struggles with PTS. With failings of the health care system. and grieving.
i truly appreciated Joan's transparently. a window into her world. Her struggles with PTS. With failings of the health care system. and grieving.
September 21, 2016
Joan Zabski Rough, author of Scattering Ashes, is a painter, a poet, and photographer. She is also a memoirist who summons her artistic talent in order to lay bare her life story, particularly her complex relationship with a narcissistic, alcoholic mother suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. In this memoir of letting go, the author paints a picture of the violence of her childhood and the search for solace through art, taming the dragon lady within, using bold strokes of black, yellow, and red, evident in a colláge she recalls constructing in her journey toward peace.
In Scattering Ashes, the reader observes writer Rough fighting to let go of guilt, shame, and self-doubt as she says a long goodbye to her elderly mother during seven years of caring for her in her own home, becoming a mother to her own mother. Face to face with the woman who birthed her, she is forced to confront scars of childhood that have left her feeling victimized with low self-esteem, a demon she has grappled with her entire life. As a reader in thrall to the unfolding tale of the dutiful care-taker daughter shackled to an ungrateful mother, I wanted to shout, “Stop, you’ve done enough. You are good enough. You are enough!”
Through metaphor, the artistic author vividly describes her muse: her ideal, stable family carved of marble. Then she deciphers the dilemma of her journey with travel imagery:
The crossroads I’m at is not your usual four-corners kind of deal. It’s a hub of sorts, with innumerable roads shooting off in all directions. I’m afraid I’ll choose the wrong road. I know I can’t stay where I am for long, and I certainly don’t want to go back the way I came. But where do I go? And what does it mean to be free of the burdens I’ve spent these last years carrying?
Joan Rough’s memoir begins like Picasso’s Guernica with images of violence and animosity, her home a war zone. It ends as its author promises in the book’s dedication “ . . . to all mothers and daughters who are seeking to love and forgive each other.”
I highly recommend this memoir to all who struggle to make sense of a complicated mother-daughter relationship. This true story lights the way to self-acceptance, forgiveness – and eventually, to healing.
In Scattering Ashes, the reader observes writer Rough fighting to let go of guilt, shame, and self-doubt as she says a long goodbye to her elderly mother during seven years of caring for her in her own home, becoming a mother to her own mother. Face to face with the woman who birthed her, she is forced to confront scars of childhood that have left her feeling victimized with low self-esteem, a demon she has grappled with her entire life. As a reader in thrall to the unfolding tale of the dutiful care-taker daughter shackled to an ungrateful mother, I wanted to shout, “Stop, you’ve done enough. You are good enough. You are enough!”
Through metaphor, the artistic author vividly describes her muse: her ideal, stable family carved of marble. Then she deciphers the dilemma of her journey with travel imagery:
The crossroads I’m at is not your usual four-corners kind of deal. It’s a hub of sorts, with innumerable roads shooting off in all directions. I’m afraid I’ll choose the wrong road. I know I can’t stay where I am for long, and I certainly don’t want to go back the way I came. But where do I go? And what does it mean to be free of the burdens I’ve spent these last years carrying?
Joan Rough’s memoir begins like Picasso’s Guernica with images of violence and animosity, her home a war zone. It ends as its author promises in the book’s dedication “ . . . to all mothers and daughters who are seeking to love and forgive each other.”
I highly recommend this memoir to all who struggle to make sense of a complicated mother-daughter relationship. This true story lights the way to self-acceptance, forgiveness – and eventually, to healing.
September 8, 2016
I received this book in a giveaway and it turned out to be pretty disappointing I liked the first half of the book that starts of talking of her mothers passing and brief rememberences of her childhood however by the mid way through it started getting extremly tedious in her complaints and frustrations of her mother I know that's the main topic of her book but I found it over kill and lost all and complete interest.
December 29, 2023
We all will either scatter ashes or be the ashes in the end.
June 13, 2018
I admire the author's willing as to share with an audience this journey of trauma, love, guilt, and understanding oneself. It is fascinating to see how she handled so much adversity and still was able to put the pieces of herself together again and heal. That said, this memoir was obviously written more as a journal for the author than for a reader, with a lot of skipping around and introspection that confused the narrative. It is worth reading if you have experienced a complicated relationship with a parent and have lost them, but primarily because it lends to a sense that one is not alone for feeling any number of emotions.
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May 28, 2019The author was beaten by her father, her mother denied it. She had two younger brothers. The author decided to invite her mother to move to her city and then into her home during her last years. They didn’t get along. The book describes how she unburied her past - post traumatic stress - and came to love both her father and mother. I could relate to certain parts and the last couple of years of my parents.
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