Educated: Book Review
I didn’t want to read this book. I thought it would remind me too much of my own family. I was right. Even as I wanted to scream at Tara Westover, “Get out! Get out! They are never going to change,” I remember the journey. I remember the denial. The emotional breakdowns. I remember the affection you feel for family members—even if they are horrible to you. I remember the inability to ask for help, but the dozens and dozens of people who helped anyway. I remember the second guessing, the doubting of self and story. I remember the self-hatred, the belief that it was my fault. I remember the protecting, the justifying.
A cried my eyes out at the part when one family member finally believes Tara—And loses his standing in the family because he defends her.
I remember the sweet relief of having someone believe ME.
I wrote the previous after finishing Educated by Tara Westover. Never had a book been written that captured my experience—the aftermath of growing up in a Spiritually Abusive home—more than this. To witness another story articulated in such a captivating way, helped me navigate my own story. There was so much of my experience I could not articulate, because there weren’t any words for it.
Tara was raised in a Mormon home, “homeschooled” though her education was thoroughly neglected. She worked in her father’s scrap metal business as a teenager—a job that was arduous and dangerous. Though she didn’t name this abuse, when someone in power forces you to use your body in a way that’s physically taxing in the extreme, which happened in this case, it is considered physical abuse.
She was sexually and physically abused by her older brother—though she doesn’t name it—it’s likely he had some sort of personality disorder (possibly more than one).
When she escapes to college, she navigates the disorientation of knowing she is not “normal.” Her experience has shaped her into something she didn’t want to be—and she strives with all her might to shape herself into something else.
The twist in Tara’s story—how she eventually ends up in Cambridge to peruse her PHD—is that she had no formal education before college. There’s a section of the book where she’s sitting in class and doesn’t know what the word “Holocaust” means. She does extra reading and works herself to catch up.
“My life was narrated for me by others. Their voices were forceful, emphatic, absolute. It had never occurred to me that my voice might be as strong as theirs”
Her parents framed her world, re-narrating even history and giving her little exposure to other points of view. The Spiritual Abuse aspect was in her father’s claim to enlightenment. His claim to understand God and what God wanted on behalf of his children.
“I could tolerate any form of cruelty better than kindness. Praise was a poison to me; I choked on it.”
There’s a mystery behind why someone who experiences abuse intrinsically feels they did something to draw that abuse. Did they say the wrong thing? Look the wrong way? Are they the wrong gender? The wrong race? Should they have left sooner? Should they have stayed longer? Somehow, victims of abuse always find a way to blame themselves and embrace their unworthiness.
“The thing about having a mental breakdown is that no matter how obvious it is that you’re having one, it is somehow not obvious to you. I’m fine, you think. So what if I watched TV for twenty-four straight hours yesterday. I’m not falling apart. I’m just lazy. Why it’s better to think yourself lazy than think yourself in distress, I’m not sure. But it was better. More than better: it was vital.”
Tara experiences many emotional and mental breakdowns, sometimes with someone to witness who has no idea why she’s so upset. They cannot understand her triggers, especially when Tara herself doesn’t understand them. Most of the time, Tara choses the less complicated road of withholding explanation.
“We are all of us more complicated than the roles we are assigned in the stories other people tell.”
Tara does her best to capture the complexity of her parents, two people who neglected her, repeatedly reframed her narrative, and denied her memories were real. Yet she acknowledges the limitation to capture all the complexities of a person in a single story.
“All I had to do was swap my memories for theirs, and I could have my family.”
It’s difficult to understand the draw to curtail your own history just to keep your family. But when your family is all you’ve known, and you face for the first time what you do not know, you face the unknown alone. Tara captures the very real consternation experienced when denying the truth seems easier than acknowledging the lie.
From the outside, a person might have the courage to say “walk away.” When you’re in it, you can’t always think this clearly. You’re surrounded by smoke and haze and loud, adamant voices of authority telling you you’re crazy.
Educated captures the emotional and psychological turmoil following a childhood full of religious abuse. The story depicts the cover Spiritual Abuse provides for other types of abuse. It reveals the very long journey of recovery. Yet though that road is dark and full of fear, people who misunderstand you, and many nights alone in your suffering, it’s a journey worth taking to become a whole person who isn’t afraid to look in the mirror.
Photo by 🇸🇮 Janko Ferlič on Unsplash