Bt Stark, honest and real. And that’s why reading THE TRUTHS I NEVER TOLD YOU is at times disturbing. Kelly Rimmer makes you feel the pain and angst of her characters. You at times want to shake them and other times want those around them to see what you see. THE TRUTHS I NEVER TOLD YOU is a gritty look at post-partum depression told through the eyes of two different women a generation apart. The first, Grace Walsh, does not have the sophistication to understand what she is experiencing. Her daughter Beth is a therapist and has the knowledge but still unable to recognize the signs or scrutinize them. Grace and Beth are living through the painful experience of having a baby, feeling distant and having difficulty getting to that point of falling in love. After all, there must be something wrong with them since all mothers gush over their babies, nurturing them with care, love, and emotion.
Kelly Rimmer writes this story in two separate timelines. One in the 1950s and the second some forty years later. The tales are at times mirror images. The times may have changed but this problem transcends generations. What is a person's tipping point? How do you recognize it? And how can you prevent something awful without one hundred percent attention? THE TRUTHS I NEVER TOLD YOU is an important story to tell and I personally can’t think of anyone better than Kelly Rimmer to ferret out the truth behind something so important and relevant.
Grace Walsh loves her husband Patrick and basically gives up her family to marry him. Grace never thought how isolated that would make her. Now with the birth of her son Tim, she doesn’t know how to deal with feelings of being unable to cope with what she thinks should be rather basic. Tim cries and so does Grace. Her usual chores become too demanding for her to face. For many months, Grace faces each day alone with her fears and an innate sense that she is not normal. She isolates herself from other mothers so that they don’t pity her. Patrick is busy trying to earn a living. Life is hard and now with a baby, it is out of control.
Beth and her husband tried for many years and then had Noah. For some reason that Beth just can’t explain, she realizes that this was a mistake. Having a baby was a mistake. Her family is totally supportive and very close. She is one of four siblings and she knows they would help her if she was honest with them. But that is not going to happen. To everyone, Beth says she is just fine. Everyone knows that is not the case. They just can’t figure out why she is so stressed out. But Beth is worried about doing something wrong and hurting Noah and perhaps about disappointing her family.
For both Grace and Beth, their lives get very complicated and they use that as an explanation for why they are having difficulty coping. Different times, similar issues, and both women need help. Kelly Rimmer writes that society prioritizes the welfare of children over the ambitions of self-focused young mothers when one of the characters wants an explanation of why she is overlooked for a position. Grace sees her existence as a danger to those she loves the most. The only remedy is to avoid having more babies. She somewhat clearly sees that it is those months after the birth as an immediate danger even though she doesn’t understand what they mean or how they happen. Beth sees herself as a psychologist, wife, mother, and crazy person. While working as a bookkeeper for a small company in NY an opportunity for a full-time teaching position opened. I told them about the position and that it was just what I had been hoping for. Their immediate response was that I should stay since I was sure to have children soon so why change jobs. I never really saw anything wrong about this remark and truly have told it with humor many times. I had never heard of a marriage bar. I learned about this phrase in THE TRUTHS I NEVER TOLD YOU. Quite an eye-opening experience for me. Actually THE TRUTHS I NEVER TOLD YOU was too. Grace and Beth are certainly main characters but they are surrounded by an equally important cast. Kelly Rimmer has outdone herself. Kelly Rimmer’s work is always impeccably done and compelling. THE TRUTHS I NEVER TOLD YOU is in a class of its own.
With her father recently moved to a care facility, Beth Walsh volunteers to clear out the family home and is surprised to discover the door to her childhood playroom padlocked. She’s even more shocked at what’s behind it—a hoarder’s mess of her father’s paintings, mounds of discarded papers and miscellaneous junk in the otherwise fastidiously tidy house.
As she picks through the clutter, she finds a loose journal entry in what appears to be her late mother’s handwriting. Beth and her siblings grew up believing their mother died in a car accident when they were little more than toddlers, but this note suggests something much darker.
Beth soon pieces together a disturbing portrait of a woman suffering from postpartum depression and a husband who bears little resemblance to the loving father Beth and her siblings know. With a newborn of her own and struggling with motherhood, Beth finds there may be more tying her and her mother together than she ever suspected.
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