Jackie Strong Self

Everyone in our family thought my grandmother was crazy. One minute she would be sweet; the next minute, she'd fly screaming into a rage. She also had old-fashioned religious beliefs. She believed sex was for procreation, not pleasure.
My parents lived with my grandparents. They wanted my mother, their only child, to marry a successful college-educated man. So, my grandparents agreed to support my parents and my sister until my father finished his engineering degree. They decided they would have no more children until my father completed college.

I came into this world one night after my father insisted on making love. That broke the agreement. My mother said, "it was all your father's fault. My grandmother said I was "bad, conceived in sin." She further said, "if you have the child, I'll have nothing to do with it, and I'll never give it anything." After I was born, my grandparents punished my parents by withdrawing their financial support, and my father had to drop out of college without getting a degree.

Because of this, my mother resented me. In her mind, "my birth ruined everything ." Although my sister was doted upon, I became neglected and abused. I almost died four times as a youth. I was raised Catholic but found it difficult to believe in God. At sixteen, I had a spiritual experience that led me to think that there is a loving God, and he is watching over me.

The following year, I experienced the first of five brutal attacks. Miraculously the attacks were thwarted, and the would-be rapists were left dead or arrested. Although I survived the attacks, I developed a violent temper because of a head injury.

Thirty years pass. Despite everything, I became a good wife, mother, and daughter. My mother decided she was happy I was born after all. She started to love me just as much as her other children. But then, a family secret slips out.

The attacks that happened thirty years ago were not random. My cousin, my former best friend, and my mother sent men to rape me. I'd done a good job controlling my violent temper all these years. But my mother's betrayal is too much for me to bear. Now I want revenge!

Reedsy Discovery Review:
5 Stars, Must Read
By Sacha Fortune

I read this in one night, and I am still in shock days later - and absolutely horrified that it was a true story.

Told in a matter-of-fact tone that highlights events rather than emotions, we nevertheless feel every emotion that Jackie goes through. She was always treated as an outcast within her family because she was an "unplanned mistake," although her parents were married and already had a daughter.

The abuse began as a very young child. It ranged from neglect - her father choosing to save her sister's life rather than try to save her - to outright disregard: her brother's attack that hit her between the eyes and almost killed her. Still, no one even noticed she was in a coma, and even later, they did not seem concerned for her health or her education which was adversely impacted.

There were also profoundly engrained layers of emotional abuse, with her mother even openly admitting to favoritism:

"I just love her more than I love you. I can't help it."

Alongside her experiences, sociopolitical changes in women's reproductive rights and workplace discrimination policies shape Jackie's life, and we clearly see how these can drastically affect someone. From the employer who tried to fire her because she was trying to get pregnant to the horrific actions of her family members to conspire to get her pregnant via a rapist - these shocking real-life accounts leave an indelible impression on the reader.

Jackie's faith kept her going and striving to succeed after having an enlightening experience as a teenager. Thankfully she survived to tell the tale and use her experiences to uplift others.