Diana Page Jordan | Book Reviews and Inspiration

Promises To Myself

By Maryanne Radmacher

Published February 1, 2010 (Hardcover) Conari Press

For this book to arrive today. Unrequested.  Is a miracle.  I read Promises To Myself twice.  Which is not difficult.  But it is profound.

You know Maryanne Radmacher’s work.  Her distinctive writing.  Phrases.  Images.  Pictures. Pregnant with color dancing perfectly on each page.

You ever have a really crappy day?  The kind that, you say to yourself, okay, I’ll begin the day anew, and you start again, but then it’s crappy again?  I’ve had precisely a month of challenging moments, and today, I had had enough.  I said that out loud.  And, I spotted a shiny dime, heads up.  I said, great, thanks a lot.  That’s not enough to make up for the promises that were broken to me this month and the PC that died. And, then this book arrived, and I said thank you.

I can always find the silver lining. And I always look forward.  But then sometimes the little girl in me just cries and says, I thought this wouldn’t happen anymore, and see, nobody loves me, and it’s never going to get better. But, it does, a dear friend tells me, the things that pain us most return in varied guises, and we grow, and make new promises to ourselves.  It does get better, and you are loved.

This is a promise I tell myself – to that little girl in me who lived nearly paralyzed by fear, of the stepfather that raped her, and of his anger that pounded holes into walls.  That little girl who prayed her real dad would return and rescue her – but not after being beat up by the stepfather, that wouldn’t happen. That little girl who obeyed her alcoholic mother and did all the laundry, hanging it on the line, folding it, putting it away, all of it, from age six.  That little girl who had a little light inside, which kept her alive.

That’s what gets triggered when there are tough moments, and I fall back into that deep hole.  Until a book. A kind word. Love. Pulls me out.

Radmacher’s script says Dance is the way the body spells.  I danced this morning.  Escaped the bedlam that created mental hell.  And I caught sight of myself in the mirror, and was astonished at the bright smile on my face, the radiance.  Radmacher writes What is a voice if it does not sing for change or speak for the silent? And I remember what I am all about.  I did not have a voice when I was a kid.  Those evil secrets pulverized my voice.  I lisped.  I whispered.  I couldn’t talk in public.  Now, I speak.  I write.  I tell it so that if you have been hurt by violence in those formative years, you will know there is a way out.  There is light.  And some moments are dark.  But, then a book like Promises to Myself shows up on your doorstep, or a friend who hates to talk on the phone calls you back anyway and talks to you until you know she knows how you hurt.  And,  you are suddenly back in the light.

Maryanne Radmacher writes It is the tremble of risk that shakes the spirit, confirms courage, and reinstates promise.

And she writes, The most important promises are the ones we make to ourselves.

You know what my promise is.