Category: memoir

Tara is a child that has defied all sorts of odds to get to where she is today. She has survived a bi-polar father, a subservient wife, a violent brother, and all kinds of wounds both physical and psychological.

While I understand that there are groups of people that resist the government at all costs, it is always amazing to me that they do so by keeping those around them ignorant. No TV, no books, no contact with outsiders. This keeps those around the charismatic leader dependent upon them for any information. This is the typical manner that the male establishment has maintained control over women. This establishment includes religious establishment.

It is not surprising that when Tara earns a scholarship to Cambridge, she begins to read the foundational Mormon texts differently. As with many other religious texts, the undercurrent of a woman’s place in the home is strong. The weapon of ignorance continues today to be wielded against women from here to the Middle East and back. When women have no other information or source, the history they know is only the one told by the man. And we all know, history is shaped by the winner.  By creating the history, there is only one future for women in the world.
Throughout the story of her childhood and growing awareness of the world, we hear how her father decided her mother should be a mid-wife, even though she was terrified. How her father decided they were leaving Utah in the middle of the night in a snow storm, ending in a car wreck that almost killed the entire family. How her father put her brother on a beam that he dropped approximately 12 feet from, sat him up and went back to work. All his many children were scared of him and the end of the world he kept predicting.  The family had weapons, fuel and food to last many years when the world was to end at Y2K, and were sure the Feds were going to kill them like they did the Weavers. All history and facts came through her father.

As Tara begins to experience the outside world, she learns facts and history she never knew. The Holocaust, Civil Rights Movement, and the story of Ruby Ridge, where the Weavers were killed. All were either new to her or new details were revealed that showed the original information to be false.

She is conflicted with wanting something else while still wanting the familiar. The fact that the root of the word is family is not coincidental. As she begins to read, to work, and to learn she begins living separate lives, keeping them away from each other. She cannot reconcile the two. At one point she wonders if she had become too educated to be part of her family. Ultimately the cost of learning and becoming a Phd was her family. With the majority of the family economically dependent upon the parents, they are able to keep them doing as the father wants. Other siblings that have been able to leave and educate themselves, also Phds, are on the outside.

The thing that causes the great rift is that she speaks out about her brother’s physical abuse to her and her sister. She did so in support of her sister, Audrey. The cost to Audrey was too high – to be cut off from her economic support (both she and her husband worked for her father) and to be cast out of the family while living minutes from them was too dear to pay.

Throughout the story of her life there are moments where she is told to stay in the kitchen where she belongs, that she should not tempt men, and that she deserved to be beaten, that she was not dating as commanded by the Mormon Church. These conflicts will remain with her always. The ultimate price to pay for being your own person in this family is to be cast out. Tara was lucky that so many were cast out she was able to go to her aunt and state she would ignore what her father claimed of the aunt if the favor was returned. That family – previously lost to her – is what sustains her now.

In the face of so many obstacles, her ability to survive on her own terms is the legacy the family gave her. A brave woman, stronger than even she knows.