Song of the Plains: A Memoir of Family, Secrets, and Silence

by Linda Joy Myers PhD

Overview

Ever since she was a child, Linda Joy Myers felt the power of the past. As the third daughter in her family to be abandoned or estranged by a mother, she observed the consequences of that heritage on the women she loved as well as herself. But thanks to the stories told to her by her great-grandmother, Myers received a gift that proved crucial in her life: the idea that everyone is a walking storybook, and that we all have within us the key to a deeper understanding of life—the secret stories that make themselves known even without words.
Song of the Plains is a weaving of family history that starts in the Oklahoma plains and spans over forty years as Myers combs through dusty archives, family stories, and genealogy online. She discovers the secrets that help to explain the fractures in her family, and the ways in which her mother and grandmother found a way not only to survive the great challenges of their eras, but to thrive despite mental illness and abuse. She discovers how decisions made long ago broke her family apart—and she makes it her life's work to change her family story from one of abuse and loss to one of finding and creating a new story of hope, forgiveness, healing, and love.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781631522178
Publisher:	She Writes Press
Publication date:	06/20/2017
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	330
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Linda Joy Myers is president and founder of the National Association of Memoir Writers. Her memoir Don't Call Me Mother—A Daughter's Journey from Abandonment to Forgiveness was a finalist in the ForeWord Book of the Year Award, a finalist in the IndieExcellence Awards, the winner of the BAIPA Gold Medal award. She’s the author of three books on memoir writing: The Power of Memoir—How to Write Your Healing Story, Journey of Memoir, and Becoming Whole. She’s a coauthor with Brooke Warner of two books: Breaking Ground on Your Memoir and Magic of Memoir. Myers writes for the Huffington Post and co-teaches the program Write Your Memoir in Six Months with Brooke Warner. A therapist for thirty-six years, Myers also speaks about memoir, healing, and the power of writing the truth.

Table of Contents

Introduction xiii

Part 1

Chapter 1 Beauty 3

Chapter 2 Etched 8

Chapter 3 Walking Storybook 25

Chapter 4 God Love 'Ya Darlin' 38

Chapter 5 Secrets and Ghosts 44

Chapter 6 The Mystery of Men 58

Chapter 7 Silences 72

Chapter 8 The Gifts She Gave Me 79

Chapter 9 Stars and Light 86

Chapter 10 Fly Away, Butterfly 95

Chapter 11 In the End is the Beginning 110

Chapter 12 Happenings 127

Chapter 13 The Past in the Present 140

Interlude The Way It Was 153

Part 2

Chapter 14 From Lulu to Frances 177

Chapter 15 Jo-tine, Her Brown-Eyed Baby 197

Chapter 16 Not a Hallmark Mother 215

Chapter 17 Full Circle 221

Chapter 18 Writing to Heal 234

Chapter 19 A New Kind of Grandmother 244

Chapter 20 Looking for Em 247

Chapter 21 Aunt Helen on Ancestry.com 255

Chapter 22 The Lady Who Traveled on Ships 259

Chapter 23 The Last Song 273

Epilogue 279

Editorial Reviews

2017-08-04
Myers' (Don't Call Me Mother, 2013, etc.) second memoir traces a difficult family history, set against the sweeping landscape of the Great Plains. As a child, the author learned that she could find temporary solace through music by playing the cello; later, as an adult, she expressed her innermost feelings through her paintings; and finally, in midlife, she became a therapist and discovered the cathartic healing of memoir writing. She has spent decades researching her maternal family history, trying to understand what caused her mother, Jo'tine, to hand her over to her grandmother, Frances (nicknamed "Lulu"), to raise—and what caused Lulu to give Jo'tine to her own grandmother, Josephine, for many critical years. Myers was 4 years old when she began living with Lulu, who, with one interruption, would raise her until she left for college. When she was 5, however, she lived with her cousin's family, where she remained for a year. It was there, she says, that she was first sexually abused. Jo'tine and Frances, she writes, had a troubled relationship that was never resolved, and although Lulu was a nurturing, loving caregiver during Myers' early years, she became increasingly strict and demanding as the years progressed—even resorting to beatings, according to the author. The deeply emotional narrative has a tendency toward repetition, and readers are likely to grow impatient as they wait for the author to state what they'll have already surmised—that her mother and grandmother both suffered from mental illness. But the volume does intricately layer the detailed narrative with philosophical and mystical musings as well as poetic passages regarding Myers' relationship with her Great Plains surroundings: "There was always the wind. It whirled and swirled, kicking up dust and revealing, if we cared to look for it, secrets just under the surface, particles of bone and earth that shimmered from the great inland sea that covered mid-America thousands of years ago." An often evocative and lyrical reflection on family mysteries.

Kirkus Reviews