Green Heart Guidance
  • Home
  • About Elizabeth
  • Specialties
    • Healing Trauma, Abuse and Loss
    • Health Challenges and Chronic Illness
    • Pregnancy and Infant Loss
    • Healing Messages
    • Pet Services
    • Remote Home Viewings
    • Green Living
    • Organic Eating and Food Sensitivities
  • Guidance
    • Consultation Fees
    • Classes
    • CEU Seminars
    • Client Forms >
      • Liability Form
      • Policies and Procedures Agreement
      • New Client Information
      • New Pet Client Information
      • Bereavement Questionnaire
    • Payment Options
  • Blog
  • Contact Me

Review of Driven

7/13/2018

0 Comments

 
Review of Driven by Melissa Stephenson on GreenHeartGuidance.com
I received a free advance reader copy of Driven via Netgalley in return for an honest review.

When we think of heartbreak, most of us think of losing a romantic love. Yet the pain of losing a loved one to death is every bit as devastating – if not moreso—than the heartbreak of a lost romantic love. Both losses can launch us into a deep spiraling grief that consumes us, body, mind and soul. Melissa Stephenson vividly brings that raw emotional pain to her writing. The death of her brother Matthew is one of the primary storylines running through Driven: A White-Knuckled Ride to Heartbreak and Back. She describes the horrid experience all of us go through in the early days of a loss, waking from a sleep to remember that a loved one has died and our world is no longer what it was: “It’s a vicious cycle: the forgetting, the waking, and the fresh wave of grief and nausea that crash over me as I remember.” As her deep grief continues Stephenson describes the ensuing depression: “My life feels like roadkill, a mess beyond fixing, only my brain won’t stop thinking any more than I could talk my heart out of beating. I live because my body does, a black hole incarnate.”

These emotions are the brutal reality of what we experience when someone we love dies. Stephenson also isn’t afraid of exploring the thoughts that most of us don’t want to admit we have around death. She talks explicitly about wondering what Matthew’s life-ending wound looked like, a deeply personal thought that most would hide in fear that they would be judged “too morbid” or even worse. Yet all of us have these questions and thoughts about death even if we won’t admit that we’ve thought about them. As Stephenson reflects on her brother’s cremation, her vivid imagery shows clearly how the details surrounding his death invaded her mind:

I think about how just yesterday, mere miles from here, strangers loaded my brother’s body into an incinerator, stripped down to tattoos. Flames enveloped him, burning away flesh, the face, the organs—reducing him irrevocably to a twenty-pound pile of ash. I think about how my father took that urn in his arms and looked up at us this morning, astonished. He’s the weight of a baby again, he said.
These are the excruciating details we all face when a loved one dies, but few of us are willing to explore them with this kind of total honesty.

After the immediate task of dealing with her brother's limited estate, Stephenson continues on her journey of grief. At this point, her book begins to be filled with asides which are short paragraphs, always beginning with the phrase “consider this.” In these, we see Stephenson’s internal negotiations with the universe. She creates alternate stories as she wishfully tries to change what happened. All of us have episodes of the “the what-ifs” when something goes wrong. We play out hypothetical situations, wondering if there's anything different that could have changed this outcome we don't want to be true. As most of us know, the five stages of grief aren’t linear, and through these questioning "consider this" asides, Stephenson shares her process of coming to terms with the reality of her brother’s death as well as many other difficult situations in her life.

As a unique way of framing the events of Driven, Stephenson discusses the cars in her life as she grows up and launches into adulthood. Her use of the automotive details throughout her life works incredibly well as she ties together the ways her cars take her through the journey of life. Her memories of cars start in her childhood where Stephenson had the unconditional love of a devoted mother who was nonetheless addicted to nicotine and eventually alcohol. Her father was a frequently absent workaholic. Her beloved brother Matthew often pushed her away as she desperately sought his attention and love when they were children. Stephenson sometimes blamed herself for this as a child because her family taught her “I had big feelings, and they drove away those I loved.” Yet the reality was that Stephenson’s personal strength was more than those around her knew how to accommodate as they faced their own demons and desires.

It’s also from her family that Stephenson gains her connection to the metaphysical. Her father has precognitive dreams about broken bones that Stephenson and her brother experience as children. Stephenson herself has a precognitive dream about her brother’s death. After her brother’s death, Matthew’s spirit comes to Stephenson in her dreams. As renowned medium James Van Praagh has tweeted, “One of the easiest ways to hear from a loved one is thru our dreams because our minds are not conscious and the subconscious is in control.” Stephenson describes these “postmortem dreams” as “visitations. Communication lines that stretch beyond the edges of the known universe. My brother, or what’s left of him, finds me here.” Eventually, these dream visitations come to an end: “Matthew simply disappears from the edges of my world, having moved on, at last, to whatever comes next.” So, too, does Stephenson’s own life move on to her next adventures, including her most recent vehicle in her current home in Montana.

Overall, Driven is a powerful memoir that probes themes of growing up in the Midwest, dysfunctional family dynamics, substance addiction, love, marriage, death, relationships, personal growth, and as the title implies, road trips and cars. From the moment I picked it up, I was addicted because of Stephenson’s fluid and descriptive writing. When I finished, I felt empty and lost because there were no more pages to turn. I wanted more. Hopefully Stephenson’s next work will be published sooner rather than later.
​

©2018 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., GreenHeartGuidance.com
0 Comments
    Join our newsletter list

    Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D.

    Holistic Life Coach and
    Intuitive Energy Healer

    Categories

    All
    Abuse
    Announcements
    Body
    Body Mind Spirit
    Chronic Illness
    Crystals
    Death
    Disabilities
    Family
    Gender
    General Guidance
    Green Living
    Helping Others
    Holidays
    Infant Loss
    Inspirational Mantras
    Lyme
    Marriage And Divorce
    Meditation
    Metaphysical Gifts
    Mind
    Multiple Chemical Sensitivities
    Narcissism
    Natural Healing
    Nutrition
    Parenting
    Past Lives
    Personal Growth
    Pets
    Popular Culture
    Pregnancy And Childbirth
    Product Recommendations
    Reviews
    Sexuality
    Spirit
    Spirituality And Religion
    Stress Release
    Subsequent Pregnancy After A Loss
    The Other Side
    The Single Life
    Trauma
    World Events

    Archives

    January 2023
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    May 2021
    April 2021
    January 2021
    November 2019
    November 2018
    October 2018
    July 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    January 2018
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013

    RSS Feed

Services

Green Living
Healing Messages and Intuitive Energy Work
Health Challenges and Chronic Illness
Organic Eating and Food Sensitivities
Pet Psychic Services
Pregnancy and Infant Loss
Remote Home Viewing

About Green Heart Guidance

About Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D.
Contact Elizabeth
Consultation Fees
Client Forms

Social Media

​Facebook
Flickr
Goodreads
Instagram

LinkedIn
Pinterest
Spotify
Twitter
Youtube
Subscribe to GHG's Newsletter