Memoirs - Tumblr Posts
Fog-Borne Snapshots
All would be consumed by shadow if not for an unseen, smudged streetlamp blanketing all beneath it in everlasting burgundy mist. In some space-time ripples, it is evergreen. For other eternities, it is cerulean. Despite the variance, universal commonality is found in its blurred glow.
This light delineates all forms, together interlocked in a state of static, monochrome bliss. These relics change, but never while I see them. Those that have graced my apertures in eye and mind include wet playground equipment, monoliths with tops trapped in mist, and abandoned antique cars.
The aura that permeates my body remains the same. It is the tinge of warmth felt within someone’s embrace, somehow gleaned from facing someplace where this had last occurred at least a decade ago. It is a sign of life found in one of countless mounds of dilapidated structures in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. It is a spiritual sign of the possibility of solace within the cold, concrete walls of an insane asylum whose inhabitants offer only volatility. It is an infinitesimal, but nonetheless unmoving constant in the midst of chaos, contained and concealed forever from the surrounding universe.
In my disillusion, I believe in the approach of a day when I may graze my fingertips across all of the surfaces. Thought ensnares me while my frozen body maintains a glassy stare as my daydreams and memories, whether fabricated or true, turn to burning rubble where no flame dances. I once again watch the fog-borne snapshots fade to charred blackness behind my eyelids.
https://twwrt.wordpress.com/2023/08/04/fog-borne-snapshots/
... Memórias ...
Uma parte importante da vida na maioria das vezes as pessoas só são oque são graças à elas. Pense assim sem elas você não seria você.
... memoirs ...
An important part of life most of the time people are only what they are thanks to them. Think like this without them you wouldn't be you.
So many had written, conversed, and convulsed in these Victorian dollhouse rooms. So many skirts had swished these worn marble stairs. So many transient souls had espoused, made a mark, and succumbed here. - Patti Smith on Just Kids (her thoughts about Chelsea Hotel)
There is invisible string that remembers me about my Dad about Chelsea Hotel and I am just glad I stumbled into Patti Smith's memoir.
The Chelsea was like a doll's house in the Twilight Zone, with a hundred rooms, each a small universe. I wandered the halls seeking its spirits, dead or alive. - Patti Smith
Do you have any DID books? Especially fiction!!
Oh my gOSH I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR SOMEONE TO ASK THIS
AAAAAA, YES!!!!! Unfortunately I don’t have much fiction :(
Books we've read (and now own)
The Girl from the Treehouse & Beyond the Treehouse by Gudrun Frerichs (Women of our Time duo) - fiction, told from multiple perspectives in one body (MC is a DID system). Gudrun Frerichs is a retired a psychologist who worked with DID in NZ
The Girl in the Green Dress by Jeni Haynes & George Blair-West - non fiction
'I didn't know that you're only supposed to have one personality. I didn't realise that having lots of voices in your head was abnormal. But you are protecting yourself. You are protecting your soul, and that's what I did.'
All of Me by Kim Noble - non fiction
“It didn't matter that so much of what they said made logical sense- or that I couldn't find any more plausible alternatives. I didn't have multiple personalities, I just didn't - and that was that.”
We'll only buy books when we really love them; as is probably obvious by the number of sticky tabs in The Girl in The Green Dress..we've read it a lot.
I swear there were way more but they haven't been noted down and now I'm confused where they've gone 😭
Sub category: Books we read and seriously don't recommend
The Half Life of Molly Pierce by Katrina Leno
Books we want to read
We haven't had an opportunity to read these yet but would like to
When Rabbit Howls by Truddi Chase
Tonee: Life with Disassociative Identity Disorder by Robert Becker
Yet Another Alice Fallen by Clair Itey
Brain Storm: A life in Pieces by Dr Shelly Kolton
The Sum of My Parts by Olga Trujillo
An Apparently Normal Person by Bonnie R. Armstrong
Dear Little Ones series by Jade Miller
Rings of Saturn by Xyloh Yugen
The Patchwork Quilt by J. D. Clark
My Mommy has Multiple Parts by Joh Knyn
We have been working on collecting all our trauma and mental health books into one Goodreads shelf - it's taking a while but here's a link anyway
Feel free to reply or reblog with more recommendations! We’re always looking for more DID books (or just general mental health or just book reccs y'all, hit us with 'em)
Five incredible memoirs to add to your tbr
These books have thought me more about life and human relationships than anything else, they are of universal importance.
- Trigger Warning (Themes of sexual and psychological abuse)
1. Instrumental by James Rhodes
In this thought provoking and eye opening story James Rhodes, now a famous concert pianist, reflects on the sexual abuse he had to endure as a child and how classical music safed him from his severe depression and drug addiction. A must read if you want to understand the harsh reality and consequences of sexual abuse, but also a touching manifestation about the powers and meaning of classical music. "This is a memoir like no other: unapologetically candid, boldly outspoken and surprisingly funny".
2. The last expedition by Robert Scott
"In November 1910, a ship called Terra Nova left New Zealand on its way south to Antarctica. On board was an international team of explorers led by Robert Falcon Scott, a man determined to be the first to reach the South Pole. A year and a half later, Scott and three members of his team died during a brutal blizzard.Even in his final hours, Scott found the strength to continue the journal he'd started at the beginning of his adventures; the diary was found beside his frozen body."
3. The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls
A heartwrenching memoir about the troubles writer Jeanette Walls had to face growing up with an alcohol-dependent father: "When sober, Jeannette’s brilliant and charismatic father captured his children’s imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly. But when he drank, he was dishonest and destructive. Her mother was a free spirit who abhorred the idea of domesticity and didn’t want the responsibility of raising a family." 4. The blinding abscence of light by Tahar Ben Jelloun
This technically isn't a memoir but I included it because it was highly based on real life events: "Ben Jelloun reveals the horrific story of the desert concentration camps in which King Hassan II of Morocco held his political enemies in underground cells with no light and only enough food and water to keep them lingering on the edge of death. He delivers a shocking novel that explores both the limitlessness of inhumanity and the impossible endurance of the human will."
5. In the dream house by Carmen Maria Machado
"In the Dream House is Carmen Maria Machado's engrossing and wildly innovative account of a relationship gone bad. Tracing the full arc of a harrowing experience with a charismatic but volatile woman, this is a bold dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of psychological abuse."