The Shadow of my Inner Child...

Book thoughts on In the Shadow of the Mountain: A Memoir of Courage by Silvia Vasquez-Lazado

Dear Book Franz,

I hope this issue of the newsletter finds you well and thriving in the best way only you are able to… but in the event, it does not find you well or thriving I wish you moments of joy that keep you going. This week we skipped a new Nuevas Pagina’s author interview (but make sure you check out the issue that went out last week!) I figured in lieu of that, I would talk about a book I read a few weeks ago which I haven’t been able to forget. Also, shortly after finishing the book, I was presented with the opportunity to chat with the author and I am freaking out (in a good way). I’ll be sharing more details of when the conversation will happen very soon (stay tuned!).

So I figured I would sit down and write out all the things this book made me feel so I don’t melt during the conversation with the author. Because I very much want to melt into myself thinking about how deeply I was triggered to self-reflect while reading this book. That said, I wanted to give you all a slight heads up before I jump into more details and let you know this issue will be personal. The book deals with heavy trauma (childhood SA to be specific) and I’ll be mentioning that in my review. So if that doesn’t read like something you are able to handle right now, please feel free to skip this issue of the newsletter and I’ll see you for the next one <3 Take care of yourself.

---

I don’t believe in writer’s block. I only believe in fear. And you can be afraid and still write something. No one has to read it, though when you’re done, you might want them to. One of the epigraphs of my second book—though it could be an epigraph for life—is a quote from the British psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott: “It is joy to be hidden and disaster not to be found.” - Melissa Febos from Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative

I often write about the ways in which books have helped me reflect on things I have experienced in my past. I write about the ways I feel they hold me in the present and feel like a guiding guardian angel leading me into the future which I always seem to assume is where dark things lurk. I never intended to write about books in this way or to engage with books in this way. I never thought books could be small pockets of windows through which I could swing my life into. Through which I could whisper to myself “I’ve felt or experienced that too”.

As someone who initially grew up with a strong voice and as my brothers love to remind me — a bit of a bully, I never imagined I’d turn into the mildly shy, emotional, afraid, anxious adult I often feel like I am. I know many of my friends and family might read this and think — yeah, okay but you are actually none of those things; you are outgoing, you are loud, you are sometimes crude. They wouldn’t be wrong because what I often present is a vastly different person than who I am within. The two versions of me that exist are direct opposites of each other and I know one version was built to help me survive and keep pushing forward. And it wasn’t until reading In The Shadow of the Mountain by Silvia Vasquez-Lavado that it occurred to me that the person I actually am within - the person that feels tiny, tender, sad, and constantly hurt is actually my inner child. The little girl within me who once felt she had so much joy and life to give but as her childhood progressed, those things seemed more and more distant. After a certain age, the world began to look and feel different for her.

And so it was easy for me to slide myself into Silvia Vasquez-Lavado’s memoir which begins with her journey to summit Mount Everest, one of the most difficult if not life-threatening treks any human can encounter. As she is unfolding the story of this journey and what got her to the mountain in the first place, she takes us into her childhood and openly describes the ways in which her life is forever altered at the age of nine by a man who cleaned her family's home in Peru. A person who would share meals with her family and told her at the young age of nine that her parents agreed with everything he was doing to her so there was no need to tell them. Though Silvia was able to eventually tell her parents and this man left her life, there were things that remained with her. Things that buried themselves as she continued on to college in Pennsylvania and later to become one of the most influential Latinos in Silicon Valley. Her memoir for me explores and unpacks the things she tried to bury deep within her with so much bravery, care, grace, love, and patience. The level of honesty she allows herself on the page is deeply felt.

I’ve had moments when I felt seen in a book. Many beautiful and great moments. Moments that gave me language. But in this book, I had something beyond that. A few months before reading this book I came across this photo of myself as a child. My access to photos of my childhood isn’t limited, I have tons of photos however in seeing this specific photo I felt two things 1) deep sadness 2) disgust. I felt weepy and angry at the little girl in the image and then I felt terrible for feeling those things so I pretended I felt none of those things. I told myself to laugh at how silly she looked and that perhaps the disgust was in what I was wearing.

But when I read this line in Silvia’s memoir I knew exactly why I had the reaction I did to this specific childhood photo.

“Alone in my empty apartment in San Francisco, surrounded by boxes and half-empty bottles of SKYY, I turned the photo over and saw the date written in my mother's loopy handwriting: October 1891. 

God, I hated that tracksuit. That stupid smirk on my face. That little girl was weak. Afraid of everything. Powerless. Pathetic. I wanted to shred the picture, but I couldn't bring myself to tear her face in two. So I buried her instead. Deep in a box in a dark corner on the top shelf of the hall closet. 

I buried her again and again, and night after night, in a coffin made of SKYY blue bottles."

After reading that line over and over again while looking at that specific image of myself as a child I knew in my heart of heart the sadness, fear, anxiety that constantly exists in me — the person I know myself to be but don’t present to others — is actually that little girl. The little girl that instead of nurturing with love and care — I have, for a very long time hated and blamed for being so powerless in a situation she could never actually control. I wanted her to be all the things a child should never have to be.

I don’t know what I do with knowing what I know now. What I do know and believe in is the power of telling your story which is why I will be forever grateful to Silvia for writing hers. Because without her story I might have spent more years unable to understand the ways in which my inner child has only wanted me to see her, hear her and tell her we are okay now. That we are safe and that she is stronger than she thinks she is but that strength isn’t what I admire about her. What I admire about her are all the things that make her who she is- most specifically all the things she thinks make her weak.

“Despite all our worries about the reception, perhaps no book is completed without a belief in a perfect reader, the person who most needs our story.” - Melissa Febos from Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative.”