Bookeroo

The Sky Isn’t Visible From Here

By Joy ⋅ January 29, 2008 ⋅  Email This Post ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

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I finished reading Felicia ’s memoir this weekend and as I had mentioned to her earlier, I needed to collect my thoughts before I wrote something.

I closed the book at about 4:30 in the morning, Saturday. And I kept thinking to myself how hard it must have been to write about and share the things that you would rather forget.

Secrets. They can be a source of comfort. They can also haunt you night and day pulling you back to that time and place. It’s a cocoon that cradles and destroys you at the same time. The image of the organic art installation we saw a couple of weeks ago at the Desert Botanical Garden came to mind. It fits in a way.

The Sky Isn’t Visible from Here made me think about a lot of things, about myself and my own interesting relationship with my mother, about Felicia. I can’t remember how exactly I “met” Fel online, but I’m pretty sure it was before this book was even conceptualized. Has it been 4, 5, or 6 years ago? While reading her memoir, I got flashbacks of her posts, our online comment exchanges between our websites. Was it…? I asked myself. It was a surreal experience to read the story of someone you sort of know. From an emotional point of view, this was a whole different experience and something I wasn’t expecting. I had to put the book down the book several times because I kept reconciling in my mind that this is Felicia, the same woman I’ve known from my early days of blogging. This is her memoir. Her published hardbound book!

Here is a woman who has been through so much and came out a warrior, not a mere survivor. Through abuses, addictions, and all sorts of hardships, it wasn’t a smooth road from the past to the present, to sanity, to peace, to love, to happiness, to finding herself. I keep being at a loss for words to describe her powerful and moving memoir. Raw…honest…fearless…this is Felicia’s work like I’ve never encountered before. I knew she was capable of great things, but Sky blew me away.

I enjoyed reading the details. I twiddled them between my fingers and were mesmerized by them. I was there in every room and every closing door, every heartbreak, each tear, and through watchful eyes.

A book is a lot of different things to different people. To me, books are always about what positive thing I can get out of them. And that’s how I am with my life, too. In the end, I see Fel, so strong, so different, but still the inspiring Fel.

I have always admired this rockstar, Felicia Sullivan, for her smarts, chutzpah, and energy without knowing much about her personal life. I’ve read a lot of her work before, and in some, they left me feeling like there was something deeper there that she wasn’t letting go just yet. In her memoir, she did let go, and she has grown so much in her writing.

Felicia, dear, I’m SO proud of you! This is brilliant! Brilliant, you hear?! I’m very happy for your successes, and there will be more, I’m so sure of it. :-)