I am an avid reader and always have a book on the go. A good friend recently recommended a book to me entitled “The Home for Unwanted Girls” by Joanna Goodman. A novel set in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, there were many reminders for me of having grown up in Vankleek Hill, Ontario where the blend of French and English existed as part of our childhood.
Every book has the potential to affect you in some way; this quote especially touched me: “Elodie closes her eyes. Maybe I’ve died, she thinks. The feelings inside her are too good, unfamiliar. There’s sadness, too, of course. This she accepts as the most natural, inevitable aspect of her life. Sadness lives in her cells, alongside her sense of injustice and outrage toward Sister Ignatia and God. These things cannot be transcended. They are as much a part of her being as her limbs and her organs and Nancy. But tonight, there’s something else: hope.”
For anyone who has ever experienced trauma and lives with its aftereffects; it is to know that it becomes cellular; a part of you. But as it exists as a part of you, so then does resilience, so then does courage, so then does hope.
“The Home for Unwanted Girls” by Joanna Goodman is a worthy read.
Photo credit: http://Photo by Lina Trochez on Unsplash