If you haven’t read this book or heard about it, you’re missing out on one of the most talked-about memoirs in recent years. For the last few years, I have had lots of people recommend this book to me. I had put it on my list but just never got to it. I don't think this book would have hit me as hard as it did if I would have read it a few years earlier.
Educated is a powerful memoir of Tara Westover. She chronicles her journey from growing up in a strict survivalist family in rural Idaho to eventually earning her PhD from Cambridge University.
Her family, Mormon fundamentalists, believed the end of the world was near. They homeschooled their children, practiced herbal medicine, and distrusted public institutions like the government, schools, and hospitals.
Westover’s story is rich with themes that resonate deeply, especially for those who’ve experienced trauma or transformation.
Education is a major theme of Westover’s book as she portrays it as the transformative force that allowed her to finally understand the world and gave her the strength to break free from her family’s control. Abuse is another central theme - one her family continues to deny. This has made it difficult for Westover to trust many of her own experiences as she has had to grapple with the knowledge that memory can be unstable and subjective. Westover experienced physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her family, and it was her family dynamics, and her identity as a loyal daughter that kept her trapped in this abusive cycle of silence and denial for a long time. When Westover finally decides to trust her own voice and experiences, even though they contradict with her family, her journey of self-discovery and trust in her own intuition is radical and empowering. The raw honesty with which she wrote this memoir made it one of the best books of the year in 2018 according to The New York Times, Time, and NPR.
I decided to listen to the audiobook, and it was difficult at times to continue as the author kept justifying why her life was the way it was and to blame herself for so much of it. I cringed every time she returned to the toxic life she had escaped, only to be hurt again. When I read this in 2021, it had been almost 2 years since I decided to leave a very toxic relationship where I constantly blamed myself for everything. I justified everything done to me as normal and had accepted this to be my lot in life. As time has gone past, I have learned to slowly stop blaming myself for not seeing what is so apparent now, and to move on. It gets easier with time and distance, but years of being manipulated to think and feel a certain way are very hard "habits" to break. I could see myself in how the author described her mom who kept justifying everything her dad did. I still carry guilt for the times I didn’t stand up for my girls when they needed me most.
This book was exactly what I needed to remind myself that some things are/were beyond my control. I can't change someone or make others see what I saw, all I can do is to be here now to pick up the pieces I let fall. I need to be happy with my progress and not look back, no matter how hard it is.
I need to focus on the future now and not on the 'what ifs' anymore. I can't change the past. I can't wonder what if I would have spoken up sooner or found my courage earlier on... All I have is the here and now and what I do with my life from this moment forward.
Thank you, Tara, for letting me read your story - to understand mine a little better, to make peace with my past, and to see my future a little brighter. If you’ve ever struggled to break free from a painful past, I highly recommend this book. It’s not just Tara’s story – it’s a mirror for so many of us.
Published: February 2018
Read: February 2021
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