I'd like to think the title of my book, Stories from the Sisterwives: How I Survived Dating a Sociopath, says it all, but it's not totally accurate. Now, initially, revenge and public humiliation were tempting enticements to tell the story of my masterful philandering manipulator. When we are hurt by the one we love, getting even feels natural – justified. And while the Dark Prince certainly provided the impetus for my writing, he wasn't my inspiration.
I was inspired by much more selfish reasons that revenge. I was inspired by me.
My book tells the story of how I discovered the man I loved was spreading his love to all kinds of women all over the country, how I told the women, how we became friends (“Sisterwives” as we like to call each other), and how I found my true self at the end of all of this.
I had burrowed myself so deep in blankets of shame, grief, and fear, I had become a stranger to myself. I was using all of those feelings to stay hidden away. I did my best to keep up appearances because I was expected to be someone who had things under control. I allowed those expectations to deny me of what I really wanted. I allowed perception to keep me quiet. Somehow in all of the upheaval caused by the discovery of the Dark Prince's methods, I had failed to get angry. I had nailed unhappy and weepy, but I had yet to tackle fist-flying anger. It happened on a snowy day in February 2013.
My rage wasn't toward the Dark Prince. He had left clues my instincts had detected. I chose to ignore every single one of them. I chose to be blind to incongruities. I chose to be compliant. I chose to be overly available. My rage was centered on me, and it forced me to listen. At last, I was allowing myself to make the right choices for me and not the perceived right choices. I started by deciding I had a story to tell.
When my mother said to me, “Emily, you know you don't have to tell them everything,” I knew I was on the right track. I wanted to tell everything – more so, I needed to tell everything. It was the only way to get out from under the layers of shame, grief, and fear. These were layers I had been accumulating for decades. There was shame around eating and body image. There was fear around being alone. There was grief over my life choices. There was all this gunk wrapped around my ability to write. I had been self-sabotaging that area since journalism school. It's a funny thing fear. I got so afraid to fail that I scared away success.
Once I started working on the book, it's all I wanted to do. It was as if I was a toddler rediscovering a favorite toy shoved under the bed. This joy prompted me to start blogging, and as my audience grew, so did my confidence. In sharing my story, I was helping other people, and I'm not sure there can be any greater inspiration.
Emily Brown was a single woman in her mid-30s living in the Midwest when a Dark Prince found her online dating profile. Fearing it was now or never, she relented to his persistent persuasion and immediately began ignoring the instinctual pulls telling her something wasn't right. Their tawdry relationship centered around guilt, shame and withholding served up by the Dark Prince until Emily put her foot down. Well, actually, she put her foot in his backpack. And that showed her all she needed to know.
Emily shares the painful discovery of how the man she loved was sharing his life with other women, how she went on to befriend her "Sisterwife," and how she found herself again. “Stories from the Sisterwives” is the remarkable true story of heartbreak, friendship, love and triumph over the darkness.
Buy Now @ Amazon
Genre - Memoir
Rating – R
More details about the author
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment