As requested, a description of Adytum

A description of Adytum 

By Mary Cools: 

Recently, I was asked to write a 500-word description of my memoir, Adytum. You cannot imagine how difficult this task is for me since every time I visit the book, I cry. But I recover through the writing so I go on. Anyway, here it is, 500 words about Adytum. 

My memoir, Adytum, is about my life as I struggled to assert my own self amid the horrific stories of experiences my parents had during WWII. The stories always left me feeling raw and vulnerable, just as my parents had felt when the events happened to them. I was too young to hear the stories and to simply listen to them. I was overly empathetic and I absorbed the experiences until it felt like I myself had lived them. My father wrote some of his experiences down on paper for me which I enfolded into my memoir. That hurt. 

In the memoir, I included what I term ‘leaven’ since I could not just write about the horrific memories without something to cheer myself in between.  The leaven I include in the book includes stories from my own and my mother’s life; stories that helped me survive my father’s darkness. I also included a couple of episodes from my father’s life which were his attempts at conquering his PTSD. He was not always successful but he did try, as I tried to conquer my generational PTSD by writing the memoir itself. Anyone dealing with PTSD can only try to be whole. It is a blessing that in this day and age, therapy and medications are available to accomplish victory to some extent. My parents and I struggled without the benefit of diagnosis or treatment, back in the day. 

Adytum is dark. It can trigger some readers who have survived trauma; it triggered me as I wrote. However, in the end, having struggled through, I found it therapeutic. In the writing, I remembered my father’s life mottos which he taught me. At the time he taught me, I disregarded his philosophies. I was too young. But thinking deeply about them during my writing and prior, during my own trials in life, I realized that his survival techniques work! So, I shared what he did for me by teaching me to survive. I realize that we all merely survive life to some extent, but for someone with PTSD, triumphs can be difficult to achieve. My father achieved his triumph late in life. I achieved mine even later in my life. I was a slow-learner, I guess. I included his survival guide in my memoir so that readers could triumph. 

In a way, the stories found in Adytum are old-fashioned and nostalgic. But young readers must understand that I am writing of a different time in history. Two different times, in fact. Both times being histories which young readers will not remember. Therefore, I wrote Adytum for the young readers out there who wish to know why some people are so very different in their aged years. We have been through much; some of us through hell and back. So, if you are young and believe that Adytum is not for you, you are wrong. It was written for you. It was written to broaden your perceptions of life and what some people have to endure to survive. PTSD is caused by trauma. Young people today may not have lived through a war, but the streets are a warzone these days. PTSD can be sparked by growing up the child of drug addicted parents, on the streets, alone. There are many kinds of war in our world and I wrote Adytum to attempt to lighted the burden of PTSD in my readers.