The House of My Mother: A Daughter's Quest for Freedom

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of child abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, depression and mental illness, and suicidal ideation.

Shari Franke is the author and narrator of The House of My Mother. She is the Frankes’ eldest child, born in 2003, and the memoir details her childhood and young adulthood, tracing her path from being a victim of her mother’s abuse to becoming a survivor.

Franke grew up in an “emotional desert,” always longing for her mother’s love and affection. By the age of five, she had already developed physical symptoms of anxiety, “as if [her] very cells were crying out in protest against the environment in which they found themselves” (15). She had also already internalized the fawn trauma response (See: Index of Terms), which she would only learn to identify and fully understand later in life. She “instinctively” knew to “[b]e pliable” and “obedient” and would “[s]hape and mold [her]self into whatever form would earn Ruby’s conditional affection” (17).

She learned to silence her own needs to appear agreeable at all times in the hopes of receiving a modicum of love from Ruby, all the while longing for a mother who was “attentive, interested, [and] present” (33).