The Monster in Me

Description

What happens when a twelve-year-old girl learns to live with extraordinary pain before she even has the words to explain it?

More than thirty years later, Tya finally gives that little girl a voice.

The Monster in Me is a raw, intimate and unexpectedly funny memoir of a life lived alongside endometriosis, from the first unexplained pain at twelve to finally receiving a diagnosis at forty-four.

But this is about more than diagnosis.

It is about decades of coping. Adapting. Playing Superwoman. Surviving episodes that could leave her feeling almost like the walking dead, then somehow reappearing in the world with a smile, like a flower springing back after a storm, while barely acknowledging the torment her body had just endured.

Through growing up, relationships, teaching, motherhood, love and the ordinary absurdities of everyday life, the Monster remained. Sometimes roaring, sometimes quiet, sometimes almost convincing her that this strange version of normal really was normal.

Writing The Monster in Me became something else entirely: a chance to stop carrying decades of experience so quietly. To let go of how it might look from the outside. To release some of the pressure accumulated through years of enduring, adjusting and carrying on.

For generations, women learned to endure pain quietly, to adjust, to carry on and to reappear as though nothing had happened. Perhaps society is finally ready to hear us. Whether it is ready to understand us is another question.

So, more than thirty years after that twelve-year-old girl first met the Monster, she finally gets a voice. And the Monster finally gets his pages.

Not because he gets the final word. Because Tya gets to tell the story… at last!