Coming of Age and Family Chaos

I thought skeletons were hiding with my father’s whiskey bottle

There were many ghosts and monsters in my childhood.

• My father, an alcoholic
• My mother, the codependent
• My father’s drunken friends
• Having to ride in his truck, being taken home while he drove drunk
• My grandmother’s pale, white face, when she was dying
• Hiding places to avoid rage and violence

Struggling to let something out

A story that begins Fire Heart seems out of place, about the ghosts of St. Agnes Sanitarium. But is it?

After all, this is a love story. Yes, but it’s how a woman who has come of age, after being raised in a family battling alcoholism, reaches for love, intimacy and self-trust.

To do that, she must fight her demons and ghosts and monsters. St. Agnes was a real life example of the ghosts and fears that took residence inside the mind of a little girl.

I had to fight mine. I thought there were skeletons in my basement, the place my father went to drink from his whiskey bottle.

I had to overcome my fear because the piano I loved was down there. It was one of my escapes.

What were your escapes?

What were your ghosts?

How did you overcome them?

Did you?

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