Journey Girl
Steps in Secrets and Sanctuary
by
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There is no perfect way to be a family secret-breaker—but I wanted one. Maybe that's why I waited so long—too long—before I became that secret-breaker. I thought surely there must be a perfect way. A way to keep being loved, a way to not appear to be too nosy, a way to demand that information that was rightfully mine would stop being withheld from me. There just must be a perfect way to ask the questions I wanted to ask my father about the death of my mother and who she was. Just let me find the right place, the right time, the right words—then I could uncover the mystery and primal secret that followed me in life, surrounding and suffocating me, and that became this unnamed essential wound in my body and spirit. And when I found the perfect way to be the secret breaker, the family secret would no longer have a life. I would be able to speak the truth and bring that truth and my birth mother into my life and have her live amongst us, with the only parents I knew, as my siblings and I grew into adulthood. Only that didn't happen. Instead, questions went unasked and unanswered throughout my childhood. And at age twenty-six, a little more than four years into my married life with a one-year-old and three-year-old daughter, I found myself sitting across from my husband in our living room trying to describe what I could only say felt like a “deep, dark, black hole” buried solidly in the pit of my stomach. I felt an impinging sense of helpless depression. This was now a crisis of proportion that could not be denied. It needed the expert guidance of spiritual and psychological help, if I were going to save myself from disconnecting from all that was giving me happiness. I didn't know then, but I do know now that the way I was feeling was caused by an essential wound that went back to my birth and my birth mother's death.
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About the Book
Journey Girl is a story about motherhood and a memoir about secrets-- more specifically, it is about breaking them. First-time author Hajec unfolds her journey of becoming a courageous family secret breaker and defeats her fears that she will pay a price to do so. Her quest is to disintegrate the generational silences that surround the death of her mother shortly after her own birth and explore the mysterious childhood memories that still linger as she reaches adulthood. As the author unwinds a tightly-held but harmful family silence, she also introduces to the reader simple, ordinary, and helpful types of silences they can use in their everyday life to bring them peace and balance, not harm and mystery.These are the Islands of Silence that begin each chapter before continuing her own story.
About the Author
Susan Heffron Hajec finds her happy place in everything that has to do with words. With an early start of faithful letter writing to her grandparents, she began to play with themes and stories on paper and loved all English, writing, and theater scripts throughout her school years. After her college graduation, marriage, and motherhood, her personal life followed a natural path to quiet ways of life, contemplative prayer, holistic health, soul writing, and the arts. She then served these interests well in her professional and business life which included: being regional newspaper correspondent, becoming founding editor of a religious newspaper; being an international video spirituality producer; owning A Way with Words consulting and workshop production company. She accomplished extended training and practice with the Masters in SoulCollage®, Labyrinth facilitation, Centering Prayer, Lectio Divina, and Reiki healing arts. With a newfound passion for watercolor art, she states her purpose in life as being faithful to the small things and giving glory to God for the largeness of the gift of life. And most of this is centered in her loving life with family and friends.