Picture credit score: Sarah Elizabeth
On a Tuesday night in Might, practically 100 company gathered at a med spa close to downtown Austin to have a good time one thing that hardly ever invitations celebration: the breaking of silence.
There have been aura picture cubicles, tarot card readings, and cupcakes topped with tiny dragonfly confections. Pals, readers, former colleagues, non secular academics, and members of Austin’s artistic group moved by the area holding copies of My Mom Is a Dragonfly, Amy Scott Rooker’s debut memoir about childhood sexual abuse, grief, and the lengthy journey again to herself.
Regardless of the subject material, the night didn’t really feel heavy. It felt celebratory—much less like a proper literary occasion than a gathering centered round honesty, survival, and return.
Throughout a quick studying, Rooker spoke about trauma, survival, and the potential for return.
“This guide is about how we depart items of ourselves behind,” she informed the gang. “The model of ourselves we left behind by no means went anyplace. She’s been right here all alongside, patiently ready for us to return again.”
Picture credit score: Sarah Elizabeth
Rooker described the dragonfly, an emblem tied to her mom after her dying, as a metaphor for transformation. A creature that spends most of its life underwater earlier than rising into the sunshine.
“What if we’re not misplaced in any respect?” Rooker requested. “What if we’re simply transferring by the darkish, surviving the trials of our lives, till someday, one thing sleeping inside us stirs—calling us towards the sunshine?”
The memoir traces Rooker’s path from high-functioning survival and company success by the unraveling that adopted her mom’s dying, together with psychedelic experiences that reworked how she understood her previous, herself, and the silence she’d carried for many years.
Picture credit score: Sarah Elizabeth
Revealed earlier this month, My Mom Is a Dragonfly explores trauma, silence, forgiveness, and awakening. The guide has already obtained nationwide media consideration, with meditation instructor and bestselling creator Sharon Salzberg describing it as “an act of affection,” and Seattle Books Assessment awarding it 5 stars.
For Rooker, the night was by no means merely a few guide launch. It marked a turning level—standing earlier than buddies, readers, former colleagues, and academics to talk overtly concerning the abuse she had carried in silence for many years and selecting, finally, to stay from reality.
