"Hope" by Amanda Berry and Gena DeJesus

[Jade63]

This book may be very triggering for some people, but I was able to gain some insight from it.

This is a memoir co-written by two of the three young women who were kidnapped and held captive for 10 years by Ariel Castro in Cincinnati, Ohio. (The third woman wrote her own memoir "Finding Me" which I also bought, but I read this one first.)  Aside from the inevitable Stockholm Syndrome that these women suffered, what I found most validating about their story was the seemingly normal appearance of their captor and the level of his denial.

Castro was the father of 5 children (some lived with their mother, some were adults) who he visited with on occasion. He was a school bus driver. He was a sought after musician who played in local bands. He appeared to the outside world as just a regular guy. YET HE HAD 3 WOMEN CHAINED UP INSIDE OF HIS HOUSE FOR A DECADE!

The co-authors describe how he triangulated the women so that they would not trust each other. How he clearly had a favorite (GC), one he fought with a lot (SG) and one he occasionally ignored (Lost Child).  They described how he was in complete denial of the reality that they were kidnap victims and not simply living with him because they wanted to...like they were just one big happy family...like he hadn't raped them, hit them, made them live in squalor, brow beat them, starved them.  And yet when he ended up having a baby with one of the women, they described how loving he was towards the baby/child.

Although my life was not the horror story that these three women endured, reading this memoir validated my feelings that no one will ever see my NM the way I can see her. To the outside world she has a very well crafted persona, even loving (just like Castro). And she will forever live comfortably in her denial of any wrongdoing (just like Castro). If someone as heinous as Castro can convince himself and others that he is something he is not, then that certainly explains why it is so easy for my NM to do the same. I no longer need to try to convince her or others what I know to be the truth about her and our (lack of) relationship.

The realization of that has made me feel lighter.

~Jade