One of the best books I’ve read in the last year! You don’t want to miss out on this book. I was totally captivated by the life this woman showed strength, courage, and unwavering determination got her through. I highly recommend this book

This is the tale of a strong woman, a survivor. It feels strange to review it, because it feels like reviewing someone's life. I mostly want to thank Stephanie for sharing her life and her memories with us. I'm glad you are a survivor, because I am sure the world is more beautiful with you in it.

This memoir is filled with a raw honesty that pulls the reader in and empathize with the author. The miraculous ability to survive and assist others by sharing her story about growing up with a mentally ill mother and the impact that it had on her life is inspiring. The road to forgiveness is inspirational. Have your tissues ready when you read this one.

Stephanie lived in and out of foster care her whole life. She survived not just one, but two auto accidents which should have killed her. The neglect and abuse she suffered would have crippled most people. Instead, Stephanie became everything she ever wanted in a mother. A successful businesswoman, a wife, a mother of three healthy, well adjusted children and finally, the caretaker for her mother. Her mother spent too many years in and out of jail, psychiatric hospitals, and had more boyfriends than a mom should expose her children to.
Stephanie spent the last years of her mother's life learning about the trauma her mother endured, the family that she never knew about and most importantly about the power of forgiveness. This book does not let you go from the first pages. A beautiful story of a life lived well, forgiveness and the love of a family and how it can change you.
Thank you NetGalley for the chance to read this book.

I loved the author's ability to tell her story without focusing primarily on all of the, obviously, horrific events of her childhood. While they were very important pieces in understanding the story that was being told, only the necessary amount of time was spent on them. Stephanie's quest to discover who she was and where she came from is one that many people have embarked on. Some to find no answers, others to find answers they may wish they had left untold. However painful though, it is important to know where you come from. It was an engaging read that, for a memoir, had more twists and curveball than I was expecting.

This is a harrowing tale of a young girl's childhood, living with a mentally ill mother. She is in two devastating accidents before the age of six, and blinded in one eye by age 10.
One wonders how children manage to survive in these terrible conditions! Stephanie Plymale is a survivor, and I applaud her courage in exploring this history.

Stephanie lived a childhood of abuse almost impossible to imagine.Surviving becoming the woman she is today is an awe inspiring story.#netgalley #greenleafbooks

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing this book in exchange for an honest review.
This is such an incredible story. So many emotions went through me the whole time I read this book. I, like many others, wondered how the author turned out so well after what she experienced growing up and even more as an adult I highly recommend this book.

A truly mesmerizing and painfully heartbreaking memoir detailing the author’s beyond troubled childhood with her drug addicted and mentally ill mother. A truly breathtaking memoir. Love, pain, loss, redemption, hope...it’s all here.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48895801

Stephanie Thornton Plymale had a rough life, to put it mildly. She grew up with an absentee addict mother who spent years in mental institutions and jails, with a similarly addicted and apathetic crook of a stepfather. When her mother was around, she was emotionally manipulative to Stephanie and her three siblings, refusing to be a provider, putting her kids in danger constantly, showing herself to be a pathological liar, intervening where she wasn't wanted, so much so that Stephanie took out two stalking orders against her mother. As a child, Stephanie spent years in and out of California's foster system as the dependent of a state, spending a good chunk of her life in a home where her foster father sexually abused her. Her three siblings grew up to also be addicts, to spend time in jails, to be bad parents. But Stephanie lived her life intentionally, striving to be unlike her mother in every way, to be in a stable marriage, to raise her children in a loving, warm home, and to be the picture of a success story. Now, Stephanie is the head of a small but successful college of interior design, mother of three, and proud homemaker.

In some ways, Plymale's story is terrifying, depressing, uniquely awful and miserable. In other ways, it is all too common a story in the United States: for children to be in the same situations that Stephanie found herself in time and time again. In the epilogue to the book, Plymale reaffirms that she is indeed "an American daughter, in the most optimistic sense of the phrase [...] and [she] was an American nightmare."

The book is told largely in present day, with occasional flashbacks describing her childhood memories. Stephanie is interviewing a prospective student for her interior design college when she gets a phone call from her mother. Her mother says that she has lung cancer and not much time to live. Despite all the trauma, abuse, and animosity, Stephanie still loves her mother - and she sees this as a now-or-never opportunity to mend the relationship one last time. Throughout the book, Stephanie visits her mother as her health worsens; she wants to learn what really happened in her mother's life. How did she become the person that she is? Stephanie learns the truly unspeakable histories of her mother's past, trauma that happened to her that could never be erased and affected her for the rest of her life. Stephanie also deals with her own demons, in smaller but just as important ways. Her failing marriage; her need to spend money to cultivate the sense of safety and security she never had growing up; dealing with the myriad ways that her mother affects her wellbeing.

This book is wonderfully written. I admire Plymale for putting her story to paper, sharing what must be extraordinarily difficult stories of sexual, emotional, and physical abuse - her own and her mother's. I also admire her strength in overcoming the horrifying situations she came from and forge a path for herself. I admire her willingness to make amends with her mother, to try to understand the trauma that her mother experienced and forgive her for her wrongs. I admire that she shares her mistakes, that she doesn't try to paint herself as a saint, and she shows us that you can still make things right no matter how wrong they seem. I admire that she acknowledges her privilege in being able to overcome her upbringing, noting that there are many thousands of children who grow up in the same situation as her and are prevented from achieving their true potential because of systemic, racial, or political barriers. There is so much to admire here in such a simple, straightforward memoir of stories and memories.

This book is a relatively quick read, although what you read will certainly sit with you for a long time. Although it's undoubtedly a sad subject, Plymale leaves you with a hopeful feeling, a feeling of resolution and optimism for the future. I highly recommend picking this up. Thank you to Greenleaf Book Group for the ARC via Netgalley.

"You see, even then, I still loved her, all my life, I've always loved her. No matter what."

Stephanie survived her abusive childhood from her mother, to the foster care where she was placed. This memoir was heartbreaking. But when she investigates the family history and found the truth that her mother had told her about her own life, it was devastating as well. Forgiveness and her love for her mother.

"You healed her ❤️ heart."
Stephanie is a beautiful person and with love and support of her husband overcame so much in her life and became so much more than what she had been put through. I absolutely loved reading this. She wrote this memoir as if she was sitting right across from you and you felt you were there right with her. Grab a copy of this book!

"Why am I the resilient one?"

Thank you to publisher and NetGalley for the eARC.

I initially read just the prologue one sponsored post of facebook. That little blurb stayed with me until I stumbled upon the book on Netgalley.
This book is along the lines of authors like Patti Smith. It is a page turner.