I agreed to review The Sky Isn’t Visible from Here by Felicia C. Sullivan for PBN mostly because I expected to relate my own story of childhood abuse and neglect with that of Felicia’s. And relate I did.

Felicia shares her childhood memories of her mother’s drug addiction and narcissistic rages while telling her story of how she succumbed and overcame her own drug addiction.

I imagine most read her memoir with shock and disbelief that a mother could be so cruel and neglectful but I nodded my head in understanding. My mother was a cruel and neglectful parent due to her mental illness. She also suffered addictions to food, shopping and pills. Like Felicia I was my mother’s caretaker. How Felicia’s mother envied her successes and how she rewrote history resonated the hardest for me such as Felicia’s dream where her mother is wondering in her room and looking at Felicia’s beautiful and expensive possessions with envy and in another passage that could have been a conversation with my own mother:

“For once, can this not be about you?” my mother said.

“Because it’s never about you,” I said.

“He’s taking me to Disney World.” She was gushing now. “Soon I’ll be on a plane. Like you”.

My mother was leaving my father for mouse ears, cotton candy, and amusement park rides.

“Good for you.” I gathered my things. When I stood to leave, my mother grabbed my wrist tight. She was always stronger. “Let go,” I said.

“Don’t take this from me,” she said, pointing her cigarette at me. “It’s not fair, all that you have. Don’t be so fucking selfish.”

“Selfish? I guess that’s what you would think.”

I know first hand how damaging it can be to have a mother who can’t handle her child having the very things she wants and Felicia writes about its effect on her with such clarity.

In so many ways our stories are similar so I found myself embracing the child Felicia was and feeling angry at the drug addicted woman she became. I know what it’s like to vow to not be like your mother and I was so disappointed that she was repeating the cycle of addiction. I had a hard time sympathizing with Felicia when I read her explanation of how she succumbed to the drugs:

“In the bathroom, curled up in the tightest ball you can imagine, you wonder how it is you got to this point. Because you told yourself in your bathroom that first time in December when you threw the housewarming party, and people came who weren’t invited, people trickling in off the street, and you were alone with Merritt in the bathroom with the cracks in the ceiling, the chips hailing down, with two rolled bills and neatly cut lines that you’d never be an addict like your mother because you survived the war that was her, because you convinced yourself you were stronger than she was. And then, there go the lines.”

I was shocked that Felicia was very much becoming her mother especially since anything that I do that reminds me of my mother in the slightest makes me physically ill. But yet I understand the need to make the pain go away, dull the memories, and anything that gives you a sense of self worth is very addicting.

I had no right to feel smug or superior to Felicia considering I battled my own demons while trying to figure out where I fit in the world except my addiction was sex rather than drugs. It was my power and a way to feel loved and worthy. Besides this is Felicia’s story and not mine.

I triumphed with Felicia as she bravely conquered her addiction and told her story so bravely, beautifully, and honestly. Felicia writes in such a gifted and descriptive way that I found myself feeling like I was there.

Here is the paragraph that resonated with me the most because it could have been out of a chapter in my own life:

“A part of me longed to obey, to be the good daughter who cleans up a house, bears her family’s collective shame, but I was so tired.”

Felicia’s memoir deserves to be read and reread. She has endured and overcome so much and it deserves to be celebrated.

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