Another description of Adytum

By Mary Cools 

This description of Adytum was solicited by another client, and they requested 300 words. While the content in my memoir is difficult for me to revisit, as I said before, it is a refresher for me to guard against my triggers. I hope . . . 

While Adytum is of a serious nature for the most part—a recollection of PTSD episodes that shaped my future. I also recall some of my mother’s stories within the memoir. I did this because the lightness of her stories made me smile when I really needed to. She told of school antics in the all-girls school she attended before WWII. The story which I chose to include in the memoir is quite mundane; but, also very true of girls at that young age in any given time period. The aftermath of that story is so exaggerated that I knew, even as she spoke the words, that all the girls were like the ones I myself grew up with.  

The splicing of time between my mother and I was a balm to my sometimes-troubled childhood. I realize now, that her voice could be so comforting to me that I never thought, early on, that she had also suffered trauma. She hid her symptoms well. She was camouflaged better than my father whom she comforted through his triggers. She even managed to shield me from my father’s ever-present gloom. 

So, gloom and comfort were interspersed throughout my childhood. Many times, the darkness of PTSD won out. But readers will still be able to witness the comfort this memoir strives to give to other survivors. My battle was fought to win back my own self. I did not always feel that I was living my own life. My father was a brilliant puppeteer and I, a willing puppet. Still, there comes a time in everyone’s life when they must claim themselves from the outside influences in their life. Adytum represents that time for me. I survived my father’s world; Thank you, Mom.