Truth Has a Different Shape

Named a Category Finalist in the Eric Hoffer Awards (2021)!

A family built, a family lost. This is the story of the power of love and compassion. Growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, Kari O’Driscoll was taught that strength = stoicism and that a girl’s job was to take care of everyone else. For decades, she believed that and did what she could to try and keep the remaining parts of her family together, systematically anticipating disaster and fixing catastrophes one by one. Until she broke. Despite trying to escape it, Kari found herself right back in the lap of loss as an adult and had to discover how to truly, profoundly care for those she loves without putting herself at risk.

Kari L. O’Driscoll is a writer and mother of two living in the Pacific Northwest. Her work has appeared in print anthologies on mothering, reproductive rights, and cancer, as well as online in outlets such as Ms. Magazine, ParentMap, The ManifestStation, and Healthline. She is the founder of The SELF Project, an organization whose goals are to help teenagers, teachers, and caregivers of teens recognize the unique challenges and amazing attributes of adolescents and to use mindfulness and nonviolent communication to build better relationships. Her memoir, Truth Has a Different Shape, was published in Spring 2020. You can find her at  www.kariodriscollwriter.com.

But when I get mad, I get brave and my hands shake until I say what I have to say even if it means I get sent to my room or spanked. Sometimes it’s enough to say what I think and hope they remember it later in case they want to. But Chris and Katy never ask questions and I think they must know that I’ll do it for everyone or they just don’t get as mad as me. Maybe I’m crazy and I see things different than other people. Maybe all those times I thought something was a big deal, it really wasn’t. Maybe all those times I thought someone was trying to hurt me, even though they said they didn’t mean it, I was being oversensitive. The more I watch people to try and understand where I am going wrong, the more I feel like I’m not going wrong, I just am wrong.

*****

I begin to realize that motherhood is an exercise in opposites; the crashing together of the two most profound human emotions – love and fear. As much as I had felt those things with Katy, I was not prepared for the intensity of emotion I experienced with Erin. The pure, golden light of mother-love is quickly tainted by the crushing responsibility I feel. The sudden dawning that I am not prepared to bear the weight of each and every decision made on behalf of this human being is accompanied by the solid weight of warmth wrapped in a flannel blanket in my arms and the joy I feel at calling her daughter. I want to spend every second gazing down at her, consumed by the sight and smell and heft of her. But that adoration is tinged with pangs of absolute terror every time I hold her, touch her, look at her ruddy cheeks or her tiny toes. That explosive burst of love exists side-by-side with the metallic ache of fear; the joy of having this thing that I love so much and the possibility that I will one day fail her.

“Kari O’Driscoll’s Truth Has a Different Shape eloquently describes the struggle of trying to take care of an older parent while raising children. And like so many of us, her relationship with her mother is fractured and difficult. She allows us to see her in the struggle, which will encourage other women to start being honest about their lives too. This is a generous book.”
—Shauna James Ahern, author of Enough: Notes From a Woman Who Has Finally Found It

“O’Driscoll rearranges the traumas of her childhood to skillfully examine her own roles as mother, thinker, partner, and artist. This book has grit, integrity, and a heroine with the drive to stop being the woman who fixes it all, fixes others, fixes the past and to start living in her body and her words with resolve and dignity. In Truth Has a Different Shape, O’Driscoll emerges with an extra layer of skin and a narrative that honors all survivors, whether codependent or alienated from family and society.”
—Sophia Shalmiyev, author of Mother Winter: A Memoir

Kari L. O’Driscoll
Pub date – February 4, 2020
Trade paper – 6 X 9″
$21
ISBN 978-1-933880-76-1
Memoir