Psychiatrist and award-winning author Andrew Solomon spent years interviewing families with children who are deaf, children conceived in rape, children who are transgender, children who are prodigies, children who became criminals, children with mental and developmental disorders. Each chapter in Far from the Tree explores a different group of families and the challenges they face. Any of these families can be terribly isolated because of their situations, but they show us all what it means to be a family. Some families come to embrace what they once feared, others become advocates, some families grow closer. Each family is so different but the one thing they have in common is compassion. Besides sharing these stories, Solomon takes a gracious step forward into his own exploration of being a son and of his hope to one day be a father.
You will also think, as Solomon does, of your own journey as a child, your journey into parenthood–or not. You will remember that child in your life who is different. You will consider the degree of acceptance and prejudice our society has for those that “fall far from the tree”, for those who gain their identity not just from their vertical parents but from a broader, or horizontal, culture and genetics. In exploring family after family, Solomon does a great deal to show the love despite the difficulties:
“For some parents of children with horizontal identities, acceptance reaches its apogee when parents conclude that while they supposed that they were pinioned by a great and catastrophic lost of hope, they were in fact falling in love with someone they didn’t yet know enough to want. As such parents look back, they see how every stage of loving their child enriched them in ways they never would have conceived, ways that are incalculably precious. Rumi said that the light enters you at the bandaged place. This book’s conundrum is that most of the families described here have ended up grateful for experiences they would have done anything to avoid.”
I tried to ignore this book, but every where I turned someone was talking about it. I tried to think that it was too long for me to read, but it’s not. Even it takes you a year, take it slow and read this book one chapter at a time.
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