Buy This Book: Coming to My Rescue

How often can one say, "My Recognized-by-the-State-of-California-Domestic-Partner's Mother wrote a book and it has just been published!"

After poking around the commercial publishing world, Judith took the matter into her own hands (rescuing herself again, having done so two other times, first, by surviving, second, by writing this book) and self-published. And here it is. You can buy it today. I particularly love the memoir pieces about growing up in the difficult 1930's and 1940's. Judith was half orphaned as a child but might as well have been completely abandoned. She survives to tell the tale. There are incredibly touching chapters about her relationship with her Aunt, the only adult who really cared about her. A particularly heartbreaking section about Judith visiting her before she died will make you want gentle, real love in your life.

I also very much liked the sections about Judith moving to Connecticut and trying to fit in, going to college and trying to fit in, marrying into a "family-with-lineage" and trying to fit in and never really fitting in.

Interwoven throughout the book is a call to a retro-feminine role of women as caretakers. Some hardass babes may wince at these sections. I found the philosophy pretty clear headed and refreshing.

Coming to My Rescue is about growing up. A young woman comes of age with hardly any support, and flails and sputters in the twisted world of Yankee coldness and survives by the warmth in her own heart and by seeing the warmth in others, especially innocent children. Check it out. Buy a copy for yourself or for your mother or for your favorite aunt or for your local library. This is a touching tale by an author who has examined her life. Published in the newfangled style.

Coming to My Rescue by Judith Malin Waring

This novel is about Mildred Cabell, a woman who, in late middle age, realizes she has always felt “too little”. In trying to understand why, she opens “a place in my head where I’ve kept all the sadness.” There she finds childhood memories of the thousand daily cruelties of a hurting family that has been passing its pain along for generations.

Mildred begins to feel a tenderness towards herself, as well as an anger at the culture for its ongoing blind disregard of the emotional needs of not only its children but also its entire citizenry.

And so her rescue begins.