We Learned to Live in the Castle: Stories

We Learned to Live in the Castle: Stories, by longtime Portland writer and author Theresa Griffin Kennedy, is a collection of brutally candid, straightforward essays about the challenges many American women and girls face -- having come of age, as Kennedy did, in the turbulent 1970s and 1980s. This includes the trauma of childhood attachment disorder, and how Kennedy struggled to survive that hurdle as a toddler in 1967, coming from a large, chaotic Irish-American family. Another essay, "Hot Number: The Year I was Jail-bait," which is the heart of the book, details the ways Kennedy survived the notoriously inadequate US Foster Care System when she was a teenager in 1983. Other essays reveal the challenges of parenthood during the early 2000's, and how we learn to let go of our precious adult children, along with how families process the loss of mentally ill siblings who die under tragic and entirely preventable circumstances.

Rich with complex emotion, a sense of universality and even the allure of dark humor, this book shows the reader what it means to be human in a violent and chaotic world. Kennedy shares the experiences that shaped her and informed her character and unique perspective, which is both cynical and hopeful. At the core of this book are stories related to the ability to survive tragedy and heartache, coupled with the stubborn refusal to allow trauma to define how we respond to the delights and shadows the world has to offer. Kennedy is a serial survivor and is first and foremost an eternal optimist. The greatest gift this book has to offer is how it may increase the readers ability to have compassion for those damaged people who are all around us. The traumatic wounds we survive just by being alive are generally unseen, existing within each of us. These wounds are hidden, but still aching, still hungry for the solace and transformative power that the healing light of words can bring.