Educated

A book review

One of the things I want to do in this space is occasionally share what I’m reading when I think someone will appreciate the recommendation, and this is for sure one of those times.

Lying on a sunny beach in Florida, far from the cold and wind and rain and mud that is Virginia in February, I finished reading Educated, a memoir written by Tara Westover. I’ve already started reading it again.

Educated is a gripping, chilling account of every kind of abuse imaginable (except sexual) at the hands of Tara’s own family and how she develops coping mechanisms to survive it all. The story follows Tara from birth to adulthood where she earns a PhD and begins to heal from the many years of trauma.

This makes it sound like her family was awful, hateful, terrible. Not so. Her parents loved her just as any parents do, but being the flawed humans they are, they saw life in their one narrow way and shunned every other way of seeing it. So Tara grew up thinking this one way was the only right way, and never argued against it.

I hated reading this book but could not stop. It was at once both painful and fascinating, much like our inability to look away from horrific accident. The abuse Tara lived with was so unbelievable and yet so real. We, the readers, would like to imagine how we would react to what she lived with every day, but the truth is that we have no idea.

Our brains were designed by God to protect us at all costs, and those costs cannot be known until the trauma presents itself. Then the brain takes over and does what it must to keep us safe, or at least to give us the perception of safety.

Tara’s brain did just that, and she is simultaneously victim and hero.

It is so hard for us to fathom how someone can willingly remain a victim for so many years. Tara’s abuse stretched from infancy relentingly into almost-adulthood when she began to listen to that little inner voice and pry herself away from what her experience told her was the truth.

When abuse is all you have ever known, from your earliest memories on, it is your reality. It is your truth. When all of the authority figures in your life agree on the teachings and the actions you live with day after day, you assume they are right and everyone outside that circle of authority is a liar, a deceiver. If you don’t fully agree with what’s being taught and done to you, you wonder what is wrong with you. You question, “Am I some kind of heretic? A heathen? What is wrong with me?” (Because there must be something wrong with ME, not them.) You believe you are at fault, that if you had done or said something different, your circumstances would have changed. Self-gaslighting is your normal thought process.

Though Tara received no formal education of any kind during her childhood, at 16 she taught herself enough math to pass a college entrance exam. She went on to earn bachelor’s and master’s degrees as well as a PhD; she is obviously not without great intelligence.

What struck me about Tara’s education is that it was not given to her, even though she grew up in a country of free education for all. She did not merely absorb the academics that were offered. She sought them, grappled for them, devoured them of her own will. She went after the education she desperately wanted, not knowing how it would happen but willing herself through every last scrap of it.

Tara not only educated herself, but she was also the impetus of her own emotional and mental healing. No one told her what resources were available to her or who she should look to for help. She figured it out on her own. Tara was extraordinarily brave.

There is a reason this book was on the bestseller lists of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, and more. I rank it as in my top-5 favorites.

USA Today called it: “A heartbreaking, heartwarming, best-in-years memoir about striding beyond the limitations of birth and environment into a better life” and that perfectly summarizes it. If Tara can overcome her circumstances so dramatically, anyone can.

Educated is a must-read.