Review

The Center That We Seek

by

Lillie Mae Chipman

and

Melissa Farmer

The Center That We Seek, is the product of mother and daughter. Lillie the mom is an abused child, and Melissa is the daughter of an abused child. Lillie opens her wounded heart in an attempt to heal the scars cut deep into her soul. Lillie and Melissa hope that in revealing their dark family secrets, the healing will begin for their tortured family. The both pray their story will save other children in this world from the horrors Lillie and her siblings faced every day of their young lives—and to help others find the safe haven that Lillie and her siblings were denied. Lillie Mae hopes her story will bring about a change—opening the eyes of world to the pain in a child’s eye who is in the same tragic situation.

Melissa’s story is just one of so many children who grow up with mothers who are survivors of child abuse. Melissa realizes as her mother’s past is revealed that many others weren’t as lucky as she. She understands her mother’s mood swings and the desperate need to overcome her past, and become the parent she wished her own parents had been—a slow understanding of her mother’s past, and the pain that filled her mother’s nightmares.

I myself felt so many emotions while reading The Center That We Seek. These emotions left me at time feeling the hopelessness that Lillie must have felt all through her childhood—a childhood that should have been filled with sunny days and childhood play—and hatred for her father, as his evil personality was revealed throughout her book. Then she discovered the depth of her mother’s illness and how blocked memories about the true nature of her mother tore through her adult life like a tornado touching down causing destruction with each memory held to the light.

I recommend The Center That We Seek, and give it a five star rating. It is a book that will bring you to tears, and one you will not be able to put down.

Nancy Lee Shrader

"IS IT NOW? The End of Days!"