Now serialized on Substack! https://farrellk.substack.com/
Once Upon… A Storyteller’s Memoir by Kate Farrell will reach women of all ages as it explores my first forty-two years in a narrative shaped by the Jungian concept of the heroine’s quest archetype, while interweaving elements of feminine myth and fairy tales. It follows the extraordinary journey of a woman crippled by infant trauma to become an independent, accomplished single mother of a thriving toddler boy. It describes the effects of both negative and positive mothering—the abuse of my own mother and the nurturing of “other mothers” outside the home—the intersectionality of marginalized people, as secrets are revealed within my own family, and the healing lessons of intimate relationships: Part One – Girlhood; Part Two – Adult & Motherhood.
Once Upon… is a survival story of my abusive childhood with constant, chaotic moves, my dad on the run, afraid of being outed when a gay man was criminal, who found refuge in backwater towns of the Deep South and Southern Texas during Jim Crow. Living in poverty and confusion, I found security and meaning in stories and folktales, and learned the courage to overcome obstacles as the heroines and maids did in the old tales— to eventually find my own voice as a career storyteller and the strength to tell my own story.
Praise for ONCE UPON…
ONCE UPON… is a woman’s saga of teeth gritting determination to not only survive but heal early primal wounds on a mind, body, and soul level. As she fights the dragons of neglect, abuse, and poverty, Kate’s brilliant mind and indomitable spirit lead her to embrace the power of stories and the wisdom of archetypal themes that burn through the darkness and lead her to the light. Weaving fairy tales through the book invites readers to think of the universality of these stories in their own lives. Kate’s emotional and inspiring memoir is written with the verve and intelligence of someone who has experienced all the world has to offer in her heroine’s journey and embraces the power of creativity and love.
~Linda Joy Myers, President of The National Association of Memoir Writers and author of Don’t Call Me Mother and Song of the Plains. Linda Joy co-teaches programs with Brooke Warner in their Magic of Memoir series of workshops.
*
Kate Farrell’s ONCE UPON… seamlessly threads together two stories: one is the story of a sensitive young girl struggling through abuse and neglect, a child who longs for good health, love, and stability. The other story saves her: myths, fairy tales, and wise women who lead her to find her inner strength and journey out of darkness into light.
~Louise Nayer, author of Poised for Retirement: Moving from Anxiety to Zen and Burned: A Memoir, an Oprah Great Read. Louise is an editor of memoir and teaches memoir classes with the Writers Grotto.
*
Memoir Magazine 2022 Prize for an Unpublished Manuscript – Longlisted
“Out of an impressive pool of work ONCE made it to the longlist. Our readers thought your submission was a powerful depiction of the transformational power of memoir. The narrator’s compelling voice carried us through the piece.”
https://memoirmag.com/nonfiction/2022-memoir-prize-for-books-winners/
*
ONCE UPON… Prologue
They were restless in the rocking chairs out on the veranda, the sea breezes fluttering the brightly striped awnings. Whispering, their voices were a softer breeze questioning me. It was an hour of truth, a reckoning.
Godmother in her long shawl rocked slowly forward. “Have you been sad, my darling girl?”
“I wept. I cried, and no one heard.”
She sighed like a soft caress.
Grandfather coughed and held up his golden pocket watch, glistening in a patch of sunlight. “It was your time, Grandchild. No matter that you cried. You had to live.”
I felt his love ripple through me as his body faded in and out.
“Did you try with all your might?” My grandmother’s harsh voice broke through the mist.
“I did.”
*
I was born unwanted, left in a hospital nursery in Baltimore for weeks while my mother languished in the maternity ward. My father quit his job the day of my birth, his rebellion against fatherhood. Barely a month before the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, it was a desperate time of shortages and war. Who needed a baby girl when there was no money and no future? Though my parents finally claimed me from the hospital like lost luggage they’d left behind in their constant travels, I remained a burden. I struggled to exist.
Until the day my father slammed on the car brakes to avoid an accident. I flew from my bassinette in the backseat; my head struck the rough upholstery of the front seat and shattered my neck. My one-year-old body shook from the trauma, the pain, my wails. They took me home and let me shriek. My infant head wobbled on loose vertebrae and torn tendons; I absorbed the pain and sorrow and bolstered my head with the crook of my left arm. The neck injury and its denial were the secrets of my birth and near death, never told. But somehow, my body knew.
Almost forty years later, pregnant with my son, I was hypnotized to cleanse myself and prepare for his birth. In a trance, I returned to my own infancy and saw a howling baby in tears, fighting to live. As I watched her comfort herself, a red glow came all about her and a bright red rat snuggled next to her tiny body. It was her life force, her grit, a fierce will to survive. I heard her spirit mantra, “I will live. I must live.”
Did the ancestors come to me then? Did they murmur unseen, soothe me as I trembled in shock? No doctors treated me. No parent mentioned my severe injury as I grew older—there were no anxious visits to the doctors for x-rays just to make sure. My anguish was buried in silence. And slipped into my subconscious.
The story that my body told was that I was cursed. I felt a heavy hand on my life, a pall—like the infant in Sleeping Beauty, cursed by the thirteenth fairy who’d not been invited to the christening of the princess. That evil spell dominated the princess’s sweet youth, kept her isolated in the castle, half alive, asleep. The castle walls were soon covered with rose vines, thick with thorns. I grew as a young woman with briar-like defenses that tore at all who came near. I only welcomed those who knew the same sorrow: the curse of infant abuse and neglect.
So, as I slumbered through my youth, I drew to me those with grievous wounds from the cradle. Yet I did not see a pattern. I slept on, bringing to my bed lovers, husbands, who became increasingly disturbed, violent, angry. Through the decades of dim awareness, my partners became more dangerous. I needed to wake up.
It was not a kiss, but a surgeon’s scalpel that woke me. Skillfully probing, he found disease in my neck, a thyroid half calcified, the rest cancerous tumors. X-rays revealed the wreck of displaced bones and a crooked skull. The secret of my infancy, the root of my deep trauma, was captured on film negatives and in lab reports. I was horrified, relieved, terrified for my future. A single mother, my five-year-old son’s shining brown eyes gave me every reason to live again.
Questioning my mother as we walked along a river bank, she sputtered. “You don’t know … you don’t know. I never even picked you up to comfort you. I knew you were badly hurt, but we had no money. Well, there was no blood!”
I emerged from the iron-bound castle door, my hands searching for the hidden gate in the walls, tearing through rose vines, scraping my fingers. Looking back at the portrait gallery of my lovers, the princes who came to my bower, I now saw their open wounds. Each one suffered—their images reflected the searing pain of early, incomprehensible abuse. Framed portraits, enshrined in a palace hall of exquisite memories, displayed a lingering malaise. Yet I had not recognized myself in those images during the many years of cursed sleep.
In the end I left them, the princes who could not rescue me. Gasping the fresh air of the enchanted forest outside the walls, I woke to my own anger. Primal. Screaming. Raging. I shouted my way to the sea, alive and awake.
*
They all saw me coming along the seashell path to the ancient stucco house, its arched veranda open to the sea, its clay floor painted red. I sat in a wooden rocking chair bleached white with age and weather. Salt air refreshed me and healed my bloodied hands.
My godmother, her long, gray hair loose in wind, wafted by. “Are you at peace, my darling girl?’
I gathered my silken robes and leaned back into the chair. “I am.”
