“There were no lights, no mystical moment with soft music and angels appearing to save me. Nope, it was not at all like that. It was just a strong feeling that lay somewhere between my heart and my solar plexus….”

~ Eclipse Neilson

* Note: I received this book for free, in return for a guarantee that I would review it. Having said that, I say what I want—good and bad, happy and sad.

I will start by saying this book is captivating.

The Motherghost, is a memoir written by Eclipse Neilson. It is an odyssey into her heart to find answers of truth and meaning. Her search is hauntingly poignant as she questions and seeks answers about her family of origin.

Through introspection and observations the author drew me into the book and I felt as if I were a shadow in the room watching the story unfold.

In early childhood, Robin is catapulted into the echelons of foster homes and soon dispensed into an aristocratic adoptive family. Her birth name is disregarded and changed to Marcy.

Each chapter delves into pieces of her life to describe her journey and how she attempts to knit together and hold onto her earliest memories of her biological family. Memories have a way of fading and become dream-like.

Only later she finds not all of her past were lies.

Meanwhile, she keenly describes how she feels about her adoptive family. She dynamically describes pivotal people in her life such as her adoptive mother, a best friend, a teacher and siblings who teach grace as well as hardship. Each one is instrumental in shaping her sense of self, preserving her integrity and uniqueness as well as trying to mold her into what she could never be.

“She looked at me, dumfounded. It was like we were two lost friends who had just found each other. A silence fell between us. Not a bad silence-just a silence. If we had known how to cry with joy, we would have. But we both had emotionally wounded, stunted in subtle ways by our early childhood experiences.”

Motherghost is definitely worth reading.

The book is exquisitely written about perspective and finding individuation—it is introspective, insightful and full of wisdom.

The memoir presents itself in a way that shows how complicated life is yet how uncanny there is a greater universal plan unfolding in the search to find answers.

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Ed: Bryonie Wise