New Release & Excerpt – Home by Amy Smyth Miller
Synopsis
Her past held the answers-if she was brave enough to face it.
After nearly losing her husband, Amy Smyth Miller’s panic spirals out of control. Therapy reveals a diagnosis: Complex PTSD. In search of healing, Amy embarks on a harrowing excavation of her past-childhood neglect, homelessness, parental addiction, and a family history shadowed by suicide. Amid the wreckage, she discovers the people and circumstances that kept her safe and helped to shape her life: her wise great-grandmother’s teachings, the watchful eyes of caring adults, and her own fierce determination. Each memory is a clue, each family story a piece of the puzzle. But the most elusive truth is buried in a forgotten childhood memory-one that holds the key to her deepest fear.
Part investigation, part love letter to survival, Home is a courageous story of trauma and transformation, love and forgiveness, and realizing that sometimes the home you’re searching for is the one you build inside yourself.
Atmosphere Press * Amazon * Bookshop
Praise
“An emotionally intense yet ultimately hopeful account of confronting childhood trauma as an adult.” —Kirkus Reviews, Get It! Verdict
“Readers who appreciate themes of overcoming childhood adversity and finding strength in family dysfunction will find much to admire in Home.” —Carol Thompson for Readers’ Favorite
“It’s a book that serves as a reminder that even in challenging situations, resilience, perspective, and healing are possible.” —Addison Ciutchta for Independent Book Review
Excerpt
Winter 2015 – Bellingham, Washington
My husband is going to die, and I will be left all alone. The words ricocheted in my head, and I could think of nothing else. The devices keeping him alive with their beeps, whooshes, and alarms, were loud—so loud. His nurse said something, but I couldn’t understand what she was saying; I only saw her lips move as she made eye contact. His bed was more of a chair connected to wires and machines, and his room was a spaceship complete with a mission control of one, a highly trained nurse who murmured the readings from monitors as she wrote them on a clipboard: respiration rates, blood pressure, and letters and numbers that didn’t make any sense. Colored tubes were pumping things into him and out of him. Afraid I would accidentally disconnect something if I tried to reach over and kiss him, I brushed my fingers across the top of his closed fist instead.
“He’s fighting the breathing tube.” She said it again and finally penetrated the fog of unreality that surrounded me. “He needs to stop doing that, or it will cause problems. Does he have lung damage? Has he worked around chemicals? His oxygen levels aren’t good.”
“Umm, he’s a mechanic. So yeah, he’s worked around chemicals.” I could feel my face mirroring the worry on hers.
“He will do better if he stops fighting it.”
I leaned down and spoke to him softly, hoping he would respond to the sound of my voice. “Ron, you’ve got to stop fighting the breathing tube. You have to relax and let it do the breathing for you.” No change.
In an instant, my entire body was tightly swaddled in terror. I felt the sick pulsing of it pressing on my arms and legs and had to fight the urge to crawl into a ball right there at his feet, sobbing with the sound of the respirator reverberating in my ears.
* * *
Late afternoon sun glistened off the water in Bellingham Bay, and a solitary seagull uttered a mournful cry as it searched for its flock, heading south across this inlet of Puget Sound. In my psychotherapist Dr. Audrey Burke’s office, the windows were wide open, and I could smell the salty tang of an ocean breeze. Her office was on the corner of the second floor, looking out on endless blue in shades of sapphire and lapis.
My heart was beating fast, a staccato soundtrack to the movie in my mind. I’d been running a race through time, looking for the lost pieces of myself in a past I’d abandoned to the deepest part of my brain. I breathed in with the jagged gulps of a crying child. But I was no longer a child; my tears were for the child I once was. Memories and the feeling of terror and the helplessness they brought dissipated as I gathered a familiar knitted blanket around me and felt comforted by its cocoon of warmth. I told myself I was safe; I was in my therapist’s office.
“Okay, Amy, bring yourself back into the room. Look at the windowsill. Now, feel the carpet underneath you. Take a deep breath and slowly let it out.” I appreciated the strong, rich timbre of Dr. Burke’s voice. Her elegant hands were folded, and her long, slim legs were crossed at the ankles and tucked underneath the white upholstered chair she sat in across from me. With her crown of platinum hair, Dr. Burke’s commanding presence set me at ease from the moment I first met her.
About the Author
Amy Smyth Miller is a nationally recognized educator with a bachelor’s degree in special education and a master’s in counseling. She works as an Intervention Specialist in a rural public school district and lives in northern Washington State with her husband, “Captain Crusty,” her adult son with special needs, and her rescue dachshund, Oscar. Her essays have appeared in The Muleskinner Journal, Women on Writing, Persimmon Tree, Whatcom Writes Anthology: Legacies, and The Healing and CPTSD Chronicles.
