Self examination isn’t easy.
Writing about it is even harder.
Nancy Owen Nelson was an army brat whose military father struggled with depression and alcoholism. She says about her family constantly moving from army base to army base, including Alaska, Indiana, Texas and Oklahoma: “I was angry and sad. I don’t think I really blamed anybody. Why should I? It was always like this. I had to go wherever I was told to go, whenever the orders came.”
No wonder she felt a need to exert control over her own destination as an adult.
Once I began her memoir, Divine Aphasia, I couldn’t put it down. Not everyone examines their life with unflinching clarity or reaches a place of forgiveness, in this case for her father and herself.
Nelson’s fourth husband, Ted, was her greatest challenge, an intelligent yet distant man who in many ways mirrored her father. Perhaps it was through Ted that she reached a level of self-realization that she may not have otherwise. The lessons we learn in life are up to us.
Remarkably, through her soul-searching while lurching from one ill-fated marriage to the next (until her fifth), Nelson managed to earn a PhD, carve out a career, raise a little boy, and emerge with wisdom and self-awareness that many people never achieve. Navigating such a life takes courage and honesty.
Divine Aphasia: A Woman’s Search for her Father
The preface to Nelson’s memoir reads:
I have been married five times, the last one twenty years and counting. Two of my former husbands committed suicide. Now I know that these marriages were a pilgrimage to find, to fully understand my father, who died at the age of sixty-two. His problems with depression and addictions led to his early death. When Ted, my fourth husband, committed suicide two years after our divorce, I sought to understand why I married so many times and why I married Ted under challenging circumstances.
Ultimately, I realized I could only save myself.
The little girl who for most of her life ran after her father, crying, Daddy, wait for me! finally realizes: “I can stop looking for Dad. He’s been here all the time.” She gave a part of herself to each person she lost. ~Ann Putnam Ph.D., author of Full Moon at Noontide
Divine Aphasia “provides an avenue to understand how a childhood with a conflicted father can cast patterns of trauma-based decisions into that child’s adult relationships.” ~ Vicky Young, Ph.D., Faculty, Undergraduate and Graduate Programs; Human Development, Psychology, and Counselor Education, Prescott College, Arizona.
Nelson’s memoir is available on Amazon (Kindle and paperback) and signed copies can be purchased through the author’s website. ISBN-13: 978-1640660960; 200 pages
About Nancy Owen Nelson
Nancy has published articles in several academic journals and anthologies and has co-edited and edited academic books. Her poetry is published in What Wildness is This?, South Dakota Review and Graffiti Rag, and her creative nonfiction pieces in Mom’s Writing Literary Journal, Lalitamba Journal, and Roll (Telling Our Stories Press). Her memoir, Searching for Nannie B: Connecting Three Generations of Southern Women, was published by Ardent Writer Press, and her poetry books. Her poetry books are My Heart Wears No Colors, published by FutureCycle Press, and Portals: A Memoir in Verse, by Kelsay Books.
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Linda K. Sienkiewicz is a writer, poet, and artist.
Learn more about her award winning novel, In the Context of Love.
Learn more about her picture book, Gordy and the Ghost Crab.
Learn more about her poetry chapbook, Security
