Author, Amelia Zachry, joins the Spotlight to discuss her memoir, Enough
Author Name: Amelia Zachry
Book Title: Enough – A Memoir of Mistakes, Mania, and Motherhood
Book Genre: Memoir
Release Date: October 18, 2022
Publisher: She Writes Press
Welcome, Amelia! Please tell us a bit about your book.
Enough is a story of hope and faith in the unknown despite life’s hurdles.
What drew you to write a memoir about this experience? What made you want to tell this particular story?
I was inspired by my daughters, I wanted to give them a record of the pain of sexual assault and mental illness and hope through the courage and resilience it took for me to overcome. My wish was that they understood that same courage and resilience it took me ran in their blood. In doing so, I unleashed my voice as so many women before me have done after years of being silenced by stigma. I was determined to follow through with my dream of a world that will be better for my children and other children like them – a world free of stigma that would be kinder to the wounded. I am optimistic that it is an achievable dream, something that I could be a contributory participant by sharing my story. I believe the more truths are exposed, the closer we move towards normalizing mental health. I was in a place of peace with myself, distanced from the hurt and the shame that I was finally able to tell my story, my time had arrived.
What was your research process like for Enough?
Enough was drawn from a lot of memories from different parts of my life. I jogged my memories with old photographs, contacting the various people from different phases of my life and I also read through emails for recollection of events. In remembering the difficult aspects of the story, I committed to consistent therapy to carry me through the wounds and scars from the past.
From your perspective, what’s the hardest thing about writing and researching? And what do you love most about it?
The hardest part about writing was reliving the memories, the trauma and the hurt from the past. I found myself triggered and retraumatized with each revision of the work.
The part that I loved most had to be my growth through the pages. With each passage I was transforming my understanding. I was learning more and more about myself and my perspective on life. It was enlightening and refreshing. “I don’t write books because I have answers. I write books because I have questions. What we are is the questions that we ask, not the answers that we provide. It’s all about the process of self-examination. I think that’s what the best writing always contains.”, a quote by John Edgar Wideman. Learning while writing was what I loved most about it.
What’s capturing your imagination these days outside of reading and writing?
From time to time, I build furniture from scratch. I have built coffee tables, desks and book cases, amongst the projects I had undertaken. I find the practice of measuring and fitting and sanding and staining rather therapeutic. The best part of it is to see my ideas in my head transformed into physical pieces I can use. Of course, I have to refrain myself from overindulging as I am running out of space for the furniture in my house!
Any new writing projects in the works?
I’m always trying out new projects to see what fits. I’m currently working on three possibilities simultaneously. Stay tuned to see which one sticks.
Where can readers find you?
Website & Blog : AmeliaZachry.com
FB & IG : @browngirlcrazyworld
Thank you, Amelia! Enough is out TODAY.
Enough
A bicultural child of a Malaysian mother and an Indian father, Amelia Zachry was different from the get-go, never quite fitting in. In this raw, inspiring memoir, she chronicles the long, winding journey that brought her from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Kentucky, USA—the place she and her family now call home.
Amelia was nineteen years old, her future wide open, when a fellow student from her Kuala Lumpur university spiked her drink and sexually assaulted her. After that night, she felt sullied—and convinced that what had happened was her fault. In the months and years that followed, she spiraled, first into isolation and then into promiscuity, as she attempted to try to take back some of the power that had been stripped from her that night. Eventually, she met the man who would become her husband and greatest advocate, Daniel, and began to emerge from that dark place—but even he couldn’t fight her demons for her. In her late twenties, Amelia was diagnosed with PTSD and bipolar II disorder, both of which would go on to shape her adult life as an individual, a wife, and a mother.
A memoir of trauma and healing, mental illness and resilience, culture shock and new beginnings, devastation and triumph, Enough is one woman’s story of learning to make peace with the fact that things are as they should be, even if she sometimes wishes they were different—and of discovering that however far away it may seem, there is always a light at the end of the tunnel.