"You Imagine"
"In one of the difficult conversations with my mother, she shouted at me: 'But you're mine'... I said: 'I'm not yours, and I'm not anyone's — I belong to myself.'"
In her book You Imagine, the author sets out on a journey of discovery and insight after reaching a low point in her personal life. When she discovers that there's a name for what she's feeling – "daughter of a narcissistic mother" – she reads everything she can find on the subject and documents her own personal journey. Her journey is gripping, turbulent, and full of insights that will take you to places where, contrary to the fairy tales, mothers aren't always nurturing and protective. Wounded mothers sometimes raise wounded daughters – so how do we break that chain?
Revital Shiri-Horowitz – author, blogger, and poet who calls herself a "serial writer" – wrote Bat Iraq, a historical novel that won a merit award from the Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center (2008); her second book, See You Soon, deals with immigrants torn between two worlds (2014). You Imagine is her third book. Shiri-Horowitz is married with four sons, lives in Seattle, and dreams in Hebrew. Her books have been translated into English and sold around the world.
Buy directly: 80 NIS.
Reviews
"I just finished reading the book for the first time. I feel like I'm on a ship in a stormy sea, shaken by the intensity of the emotions I was thrown into. Suddenly I'm not alone. Thank you for writing so bravely, thank you for helping me understand I'm not alone." – O.
"Can we really believe that not every mother loves her daughters? Anyone who didn't grow up with a narcissistic mother will say no, that's not possible... What does love even mean, and parental love in particular?" – Ofra Ofer Oren, author
"I bought your book today after seeing a post about it on Facebook. I wanted to say thank you for writing such an important book! For the first time in my life, I feel like I recognize myself in what I'm reading."
I read a paragraph and let the insights spread through my mind, like pink litmus paper suddenly revealing an absolute, scientific truth, cracking open a repressed puzzle in my life. I can barely bear the force of how precisely the writer's theory matches my own reality, and I set the book aside, colored now in diagnostic hues, and I know. It has a name. I have a truth. And there is none but it.