The Unbreakable Child by Kim Michele Richardson, Because I Love to Hear Myself Type, May 2, 2009

The Unbreakable Child, by Kim Michele Richardson

Because I Love to Hear Myself Type
May 2, 2009

http://jamiemason.wordpress.com/2009/05/01/the-unbreakable-child-by-kim-michele-richardson/

Kim Michele Richardson is deep into the launch tour of her memoir, THE UNBREAKABLE CHILD, and I wanted to take the opportunity to post my thoughts on the book as it goes out into the world.

The two-strand narrative twines together the story of a ground-breaking lawsuit against the Catholic Church with the recollections of an orphan’s journey through a maze of abuse and abandonment in a place commissioned by vows to be a safehaven.

As I read and reflected on it, the book set a match to the fuse of so many questions. How can this happen? Why were these women (and men) so cruel? How can children, orphaned children, spark wrath and brutality over compassion and simple caring, all within a building full of nuns and priests?

And how do some of these children survive to grow so bold and strong?

Kim Michele Richardson’s book is forgiven for leaving more questions than it answers. That’s the way it should be. There are no easy answers for how and why these things happen, or explanations of what darkness is required to harden conscience after conscience to feats of denial and protectionism. But these are questions that the victims shouldn’t bear alone. Justice starts with questions.

THE UNBREAKABLE CHILD is a hard book to read, softened with some truly beautiful language. Ms. Richardson joined forces with ranks of survivors to unsilence the collective who’d been smothered under shame and flimsy placation for decades.

The least we can do, is look and listen.

Proceeds from the sale of THE UNBREAKABLE CHILD are donated to Family and Children’s Place and SNAP (The Survivors’ Network of those Abused by Priests)