If you’ve read a lot of my book reviews, even the most recent, you’ll notice I mention a lot how desirous humans are of being loved and loving others. The reason for that is because the authors I read, and myself, and every other human, is preoccupied with that theme because it is the most fundamental human desire. When it’s neglected, withheld, askew, lorded over us in a power play, or otherwise not healthy and positive, it fundamentally alters us and the course of our lives. In her 2020 book, Good Morning, Monster: A Therapist Shares Five Heroic Stories of Emotional Recovery, Catherine Gildiner, a clinical psychologist who largely practiced in Canada before turning to creative writing, goes through five very different stories of psychological harm and trauma, affecting people both rich and poor and across cultures, but with the same throughline: the desire for, and the withholding of, love.
As indicated by the subtitle, Gildiner intentionally picked what she dubs “psychological heroes” out of the thousands of cases she’s had over her long career precisely because she wants to focus on inspiration over tragedy. Certainly, sadly, there are cases within her career that did not end well, where for whatever reason, talk therapy did not help. But that’s not this book. Again, Gildiner elucidates the throughline between the five stories of Laura, Peter, Danny, Alanna, and Madeline as one where each, in their own way, wanted to feel loved in order to live better lives. Therapy helped them to self-examine the ways in which love was lacking in their lives and contributing to their present mental decline. To which, Gildiner also adds that “all self-examination is brave.” As these cases showed, it wasn’t easy for any of those people to sit opposite of Gildiner and delve deep into their psyche and familial history, but ultimately, they did, and emerged the better for it. That is brave.
I knew I’d like Gildiner’s book when she explained her philosophy of psychology, if you will, at the beginning of the book in the following manner. Like any other human interaction and endeavor, psychology concerns two people trying to reach the truth — a psychological truth, in this case — versus some determination of having “won,” or again, as regards psychology, the psychotherapist providing solutions as if from the mountaintop. In other words, arriving at true is a mutually beneficial exchange (transference might be the psychological term here) between two people to help them better understand that which they are discussing. For Gildiner’s patients, the psychological truth is how bereft they were of love and how it’s continued to elude them until therapy.
One final note, if I recall correctly from Gildiner’s introduction, is that obviously, these names have been changed to protect the identities of these five patients.
Laura
Laura is 26, single (although, Gildiner mentions a boyfriend’s in the picture, so, I was confused that Laura was introduced as single), works at a large security firm, and the reason she’s been referred to Gildiner is she has painful, reoccurring herpes. It turns out, the herpes was transmitted to her by the boyfriend, for which Laura defends him and his explanation (he didn’t realize it was contagious). As Gildiner explains, in order to treat the painful herpes outbreaks Laura is experiencing, she needs to treat the underlying stress triggering it.
Also, notably, Laura was Catherine’s first case, I believe around 1980. I think there is something to be said for how instructive this first case was for Gildiner in how to formulate her interactions with future patients.
Laura’s mother died when she 8 years old, and she became the de facto mother to her younger sister and brother, 7 and 9 years old, respectively. Yes, the father is in the picture, initially, but when Laura is 9, he does the proverbial “going out for cigarettes” and doesn’t return. To reiterate: he left three small children alone in the Canadian wilderness during winter. Somehow, through Laura’s ingenuity borne out of desperation and mimicking the stern, but kind, Colonel Sherman Potter (from M*A*S*H), Laura is able to keep the charade going for outsiders, like school officials, that everything is okay for about six months. Her younger sister and brother are fed, clothed, and attend school on account of Laura’s stealing, which I called ingenuity because she’s 9! That she got away with it for that long is impressive, and understandable, under the circumstances. This experience caused Laura to turn cold and unfeeling. She tells Gildiner that feelings are a luxury, and she didn’t have the luxury to feel, only to survive and take care of her siblings.
In the present day, work is stressful because a boss is taking advantage of her hard work. That’s when Gildiner emphasizes what has happened and what is happening in Laura’s life: she’s continually tasked with making up for the deficits of the men in her life, and excusing it no less, from her dad to the boyfriend to her boss. Worse still, is how much shame has shaped Laura’s outlook on life and this sort of male dumping upon her: she believes she deserves it. She even thinks she deserves the herpes. All because two decades ago, in desperation, she stole to help feed her siblings, and at a baser level, feels like she wasn’t a good enough mom to them. I can’t keep emphasizing enough that she was 9! Which Gildiner tries to do as well. After Laura was caught stealing, the parents, with kids of their own, who lived in a nearby cabin, took the three kids in for four years. That proved rocky for Laura, who was used to being a de facto parent rather than listening to one. Then, the dad returned, with a much younger girlfriend. The 21-year-old girlfriend died after a drunken fight with the dad, where he pushed her down the stairs. Feeling like she needs to step up again, Laura helps disabuse the police of any malicious intent, that it was merely an accident (I don’t know how the police didn’t look deeper into it!). The death of the girlfriend makes Gildiner wonder if the mother’s death, which she previously assumed may have been a suicid, could have been murder as well.
A common theme throughout these five stories, and Gildiner’s therapy, is Gildiner encouraging action. It’s not just talking through one’s psyche and family history. She encourages her patient to then do something about their newfound psychological truth. In the case of Laura, a few action items were important. First, stand up to her boss, which she did and then eventually, she became the boss. Second, stand up to the herpes boyfriend, which she did, and eventually dropped him, later finding Steve, who was understanding of her herpes (a big moment for Laura was revealing it to him), and he even gave her the grace to better handle her angry outbursts. And then thirdly, have a real conversation with her sister. (Unfortunately, I think the brother was dead by then from living a hard life.) That’s when the sister shockingly reveals, unbeknownst to Laura, that their father raped her. This is shocking not only because of the awfulness of it, but because it cuts across Laura’s psychological assumption for two decades: that while imperfect, she protected her siblings. How could her younger sister have been raped without her knowing? Laura, like when the girlfriend was killed, doesn’t believe the sister.
After five years, thanks to these action items, Gildiner deems Laura done with psychology. That’s the other interesting throughline of these five cases: at some point, if psychological treatment and talk therapy is going well, it should end. Once you’re securely armed with psychological truth and understanding, you’re on the other side of your mental issues, ideally. Or at least, better able to cope with them. What I didn’t understand with Laura’s case is how Gildiner deemed her done with psychology if she was still defending her dad, who not only left her alone in the Canadian wilderness during winter, but likely killed his girlfriend and raped her sister. To Laura’s credit, though, she took in Laura’s three special needs kids after the sister died young (on top of all this trauma, the sister’s husband killed himself). She also have two of her own children with Steve. They even started a brain research foundation. Gildiner found this out because with each case, she circles back to the time of writing this book to reunite with her former patients to see how they are doing now and tell them about the book. Sometimes, like Laura, it’s an in-person reunion, and with others, it’s email or Facebook Messenger correspondence.
To go back to the main throughline theme, Laura never had someone model appropriate, positive love for her and allow her to feel it. Not until Steve, at least. Laura’s survival, forced upon her at an early age, and then growing through bad relationships personally and professionally, is why Gildiner thinks Laura is a psychological hero.
One interjection before I continue, as it comes up through some of these cases. I’m not the expert Gildiner is, but I have to offer one area of skepticism. I’m not so certain of dream interpretation has having any utility in psychology or talk therapy. Talking through dreams, sure, but interpreting them to mean something deeper? I’m not so sure. I’m certainly open to learning more about the topic, though.
Peter
Around 1986, Gildiner is referred a patient that completely baffled the referrer. In the days before Viagra, when stimulating drugs were injected directly into the penis, this patient, Peter, still couldn’t be sexually aroused. He’s impotent and nothing seems to be helping. That’s where psychology comes into play: if Peter does not have physical ailment causing the impotence, then it must be psychological in nature. (I shouldn’t have been surprised, and I suppose it’s a legitimate question, but nonetheless, when Gildiner asked the referrer if Peter was homosexual, I was like, c’mon.)
Peter is 34, Chinese, and plays in a very successful band as a pianist. His sister is 4 years older than him, and his dad died when he was 9. His mother, who has undealt with psychological trauma caused by her own mother, doesn’t know how to show Peter true, unconditional, maternal love. Instead, her expression of love is through providing for the family monetarily. That’s why the mother, who owns a restaurant, doesn’t think anything of locking Peter in an attic alone for 18 hours out of the day while she’s working. This occurred between the ages of 2 and 5, the most vital ages for a human’s development. She also didn’t think anything of being physically abusive. No wonder Peter was stunted in so many social ways, and later, sexually. When he entered kindergarten, he couldn’t speak English or Chinese, and touch and eye contact, and people being too close to him scared him. This word is going to keep coming up, but even as a 34 year old, Peter still harbored deep shame that he failed kindergarten, but Gildiner thinks, of course you did, you were locked in an attic for 18 hours a day during the most vital developmental years!
Thankfully for Peter, music was a silver lining, even during the attic years, because he had a tiny piano he self-taught himself. While he may not have initially known English or Chinese, he knew the language of music and its transformative power. On the other hand, though, it’s a point of resentment with the mother, who not only sees music as a symbol of Western corruption, but a reflection of the failings of her “pathetic” husband she’s transposed upon the son. But like Laura, Peter defends his mother, including her locking him in an attic. She was busy, working hard to provide for us. The work then for Gildiner was to rebuild Peter’s ego, which had been stripped by his mother, if ever developed in the first place. In other words, as a psychological coping mechanism through the attic years, Peter had out-of-body experiences, separating himself from his ego and sense of self, as a way of persisting through the trauma. As an adult, and during sexual experiences, he’s doing the same thing, hence the impotency. Restoring the ego means restoring his capacity for intimacy with others, up to and including sexual intimacy.
Action items flowing from the need to restore Peter’s ego included Peter standing up to his mother and setting boundaries. This had the downstream effect of encouraging his sister, who also went against the mother by marrying someone who wasn’t Chinese, to also set boundaries with the mother in support of Peter and his musical talents. The sister even acknowledges, finally, that Peter was abused as a child. Peter even stands up to the lead band member, Donny, who it turned out was siphoning off the band’s proceeds to fund his rockstar lifestyle. He also wanted Peter to help him hide his philandering ways with his wife Amanda. Peter, who considers Amanda a friend, won’t. Amanda divorces Donny thereafter, and lives in one of the apartments owned by Peter’s mom (she owns an apartment complex at this point). Over time, as Peter teaches Amanda’s two kids the piano and is often over for dinner, Peter and Amanda develop something beyond a platonic relationship. But Peter is not fully ready for sexual intimacy, and it turns out, Amanda needs to take it slow, too. She reveals to Peter that she was sexually assaulted by a close family member when she was younger, and then, in high school, impregnated by her first boyfriend, Donny. She lost the baby at seven months. After the two move slow, and Peter talks through it with Gildiner, he finally has positive sex at 38! What Peter found out he needed — and I imagine, most people need — was to develop emotional intimacy with Amanda before he could have sexual intimacy.
When Gildiner catches up with Peter many years later, the story unfolded somewhat unexpectedly. Amanda went back to Donny after eight years with Peter, but Peter is doing well, still teaching others music, and seems to have a life partner he likes.
The thematic throughline with Peter is that he was never maternally loved by his mother and had to learn what it was to be loved. Peter is a psychological hero because he endured stunted, abusive development, rose above it, quite literally as a defense mechanism, and then reengaged his body in order to experience emotional and physical intimacy again in adulthood. Importantly, Gildiner points out that she doesn’t see the mom, who Peter obviously still had a relationship with, as an “enemy” per se. She says there are no enemies in these cases, but rather, layers of dysfunction to unravel.
Gildiner also remarks that she was surprised both Laura and Peter told her during their respective reunions that they wouldn’t change anything about their lives. I don’t find that surprising! Even the most traumatic of lives, if someone comes out on the other side of it psychologically well, they’re not going to regret it because it made them who they are today. In an alternate universe, for example, where Peter is not left alone in the attic, would he have found his love of music and given such a gift to others? Maybe, but in this universe, he became who he is through what happened and how he responded to what happened, with the help of Gildiner, so, there’s nothing to change, as he sees it. The same is true of Laura.
Danny
Now, two years after Peter’s case in 1988, here was a fascinating case because it was the first one that challenged so many cultural assumptions and psychological knowledge Gildiner possessed because Danny is an indigenous person, who came out of the Cree tradition. His parents were trappers in the far north of Canada. He learned their ways and the ways of the Cree, at least up until he was five years old. In his 40s when he is referred to Gildiner by his trucking company boss, Gildiner doesn’t initially know how to have talk therapy with someone who won’t talk, or is monosyllabic at best. In Cree culture, therapy is inherently a rude undertaking since you’re “invading his psyche by even asking questions.” Gildiner concludes her initial assessment that Western psychotherapy, or white psychotherapy more specifically, was culturally inadequate. As a result, she read books and sought the help of experts to work with Danny.
Through Danny’s truck driving boss, Gildiner knows Danny lost his wife and 4 year old daughter in a car accident. The reason the boss referred him to Gildiner is because he was bewildered by Danny’s outward lack of grieving. But Gildiner will unpack why Danny doesn’t allow sadness, or grief, and its corollary, joy, into his emotional repertoire. Indeed, at the outset, Danny tells Gildiner he has no pain and she can’t make him feel pain.
What Gildiner learns — because she needs a familial history as a guidepost to psychotherapy with her patients — is that at five, Danny and his older sister, Rose, were taken by federal authorities in Canada to a residential school. This case study made me realize I need to brush up on that sordid, shameful history in Canada. Gildiner, too, because she wasn’t even aware of that history, but it was 1988 and much of it hadn’t been revealed yet. But the short of it is that in the 20th century, the Canadian government forcefully separated indigenous children from their parents into these residential schools run by priests to essentially kill the “savage” in them. Their hair was cut, which is sacrilegious given the importance of hair in indigenous culture, and they were banned from speaking their native tongue. Worse still for Danny, and many indigenous people who attended such schools, was that he was sexually abused by the priests, one of whom he initially trusted and by another who was far more violent and aggressive with it. Danny had endure this cultural genocide and sexual abuse for 12 years. Unlike Peter, though, if there is a psychological silver lining, it’s that he learned the ways of the Cree during the fundamental years from birth to age 5. That later allowed Danny, once he gained his psychological truth, to fully embrace his heritage. But I’m jumping ahead.
A startling moment that almost ends the psychotherapy for Danny is when he reveals the sexual abuse to Gildiner. Danny wants to know why it happened to him specifically and not others at the residential schools. Gildiner replies, “Because you’re tall and handsome.” What the hell. To be abundantly clear, sexual abuse of anyone, including children, has nothing to do with how someone physically presents, “tall and handsome” or otherwise. It has everything to do with power and control. Danny abruptly leaves Gildiner’s office and didn’t return for two days. I don’t blame his reaction! Gildiner would learn that is one of Danny’s psychological triggers to be called “tall and handsome.” Gildiner did try to say he misconstrued what he meant — that still seems like she’s blaming him for the reaction! To her credit though, once Danny is psychologically better, she has them roleplay this incident where Gildiner repeats the “tall and handsome” response. This time, instead of walking out, Danny sets a boundary and speaks up about how he’s feeling by saying he doesn’t like that.
Unfortunately, like many indigenous parents whose children were ripped from them, their land and way of life disrupted, turned to alcoholism, and then, upon Danny’s return, shaming him for being so close to the white man now. Gildiner admits throughout that she sometimes is rash and quick to importunity, but I again was put off during this case by how she lectured him about the rational reasons Danny would have PTSD (ripped from his home, culturally castrated, sexually abused, and shamed by his parents). I don’t think lecturing your patients in that manner is appropriate, and again, to Gildiner’s credit, she recognized as much. In fact, Gildiner unpacks why she thinks she acted in such a manner with Danny. Prior to psychotherapy, she was attacked by a Cree man who was tall and had long hair like Danny. As a result, she had her own PTSD she was working through. Her psychological transference with Danny abated that PTSD, however, which is to say in simple terms, she empathized with Danny.
For his action items, Danny needed to reconnect with his heritage and spirituality. The latter was particularly important because Danny felt white people psychotherapy was bereft of spirituality. To become whole again required that element.
Danny never knew love, at least after being ripped from his home. To be loved and to love again, Danny needed to allow himself to feel pain and joy again. Doing so after what he went through made him a psychological hero in Gildiner’s eyes.
Sadly, Gildiner could not reunite with Danny like she did the others because he died in his 50s from throat cancer. But over the years, he referred many more indigenous people to Gildiner.
Alanna (or Alana)
This case is the most awful one of the book, and anyone coming out psychologically well on the other side of it is indubitably a hero. This one was also much later in Gildiner’s career in 1996. So, she’s very well-seasoned and had surely seen a lot by the time Alanna was referred to her office, but I’m not sure anything can prepare even someone like her for what Alanna experienced.
Alanna is 35, a lesbian, and works for a big law firm, mostly focused on family law, but not as a lawyer herself. She’s with a transgender woman named Jane, who is 20 years older than her. (It’s through another therapist working with Jane that Alanna is referred to Gildiner.)
When Alanna was 3, her mother was taken out of the home, considered “unfit” by a judge, likely because the father, Art, painted the picture of her as an alcoholic and drug-user. With the mom gone, that left Alanna, and her younger sister, Gretchen, to be “raised” by Art, who it becomes clear to Gildiner is a sociopath. I mean, the guy was in a Ted Bundy fan club, where he met other pedophiles. Yes, “other,” because Art was routinely raping Alanna from when she was 3 until she was 14. Similar in a way to Laura, Alanna felt she had to endure Art’s abuse as a way of protecting Gretchen. And it’s not some figment of Alanna’s imagination because Art threatened to do the same to Gretchen if Alanna didn’t “enjoy” what was happening to her. Because of this abuse, Alanna has an aversion to fish (I’m not going to elaborate), light touch, the sound of chewing (again, not elaborating), and bathrooms. Gildiner said she never did learn what the last one was about. Worse still, Art invited his pedophile friends over to also rape Alanna. He also routinely plied her with alcohol and drugs, like LSD.
A point of order (frustration) before I continue. Whether it’s Gildiner in this book or more saliently right now with Jeffrey Epstein in the news, it irritates me when rape is called “sex.” Art was not having “sex” with Alanna. He was raping her. I want to be as clear as possible about that. Back to the horror.
Many people who enter talk therapy, like myself and Alanna here, worry that by revealing what’s in our head, we’ll be institutionalized. That’s one of the first barriers a psychotherapist like Gildiner needs to patiently (heh) dismantle. I’m sure Alanna had all manner of violent, perhaps illegal thoughts about what she would to Art, if she could have. And not just, Art, but Art’s parents, particularly his mother, Alanna’s grandmother. Gildiner assumed there would be a reprieve from Art’s depravity when Art left Alanna and Gretchen with his parents for two years. Unfortunately, tragically, no. A devout Jehovah’s Witness, Gildiner thinks Art’s mother was also a sociopath, who predictably thought Art walked on water and could do no wrong, whereas Art’s sister was institutionalized and never heard from, or talked about, again. Alanna and Gretchen were given enemas by the grandmother every day for two years. That resulted in all sorts of tissue scarring. Not only did that later require reconstructive surgery, but also, it meant Alanna couldn’t have children. Another more insidious throughline to consider with all of these cases, which Gildiner regularly returns to, is how many people, such as school officials and doctors, didn’t notice the signs of abuse in these children, or if they did, didn’t act upon it.
At one point, I believe when Art comes back, Alanna does consider killing herself. But she obviously didn’t, and Gildiner reasons it’s similar to what Viktor Fankl said in, Man’s Search for Meaning, that even though one is experiencing unimaginable suffering, they must find meaning in order to endure it. In Alanna’s case, she stayed alive, and endured it, as it were, for Gretchen’s sake.
Shockingly, Gildiner’s session with Alanna took an unexpected turn when Alanna tries to kill herself with an Advil overdose. Alanna would reason it’s because she wanted to exit her relationship with Jane and didn’t see any other way out. Gildiner has to gently explain to Alanna that it’s okay that in the course of psychologically growing, we grow out of present-day relationships. (I also think there is something to unpack, as Gildiner sort of does, about Alanna being with someone 20 years older, where there was no sexual interplay between them, and indeed, who acted more like a mother figure to Alanna.)
After the suicide attempt, Alanna returns to Gildiner’s office very differently. So differently that Gildiner begins to wonder if Alanna has the very rare, difficult to diagnosis dissociative identity disorder (formerly and more colloquially known as multiple personality disorder). Alanna does reveal different personalities she has in her head, which she assumed everybody has to cope with living: Chloé, the assertive one (and the one that returned to Gildiner’s office, for which Alanna has no memory of); Roger, a sulky teenager; and Amos, a “redneck hick.” I think Gildiner backs off a potential DID diagnosis because of how difficult it is to pinpoint, and one occurrence in that many years of psychotherapy doesn’t make a diagnosis concrete.
As for what occurred with Art. I mentioned before the shamefulness of school officials and doctors not stepping up. Well, a neighbor in Alanna and Gretchen’s life eventually did. She called the police, Art was arrested, and they never saw him again.
When Gildiner learns what became of Alanna, she learns that while they did divorce, Alanna and Jane remain friendly, Alanna gets along well enough with her mom who returned to the picture, and Alanna seems overall rather happy. Surprisingly, she did talk to Art on the phone before his death, but said she would never have entertained the possibility of seeing him in-person. That said, her one regret was not killing Art. (Gretchen had a husband and two kids, and largely seemed to want to avoid talking about all things Art.)
Alanna never had love modeled for her; instead, she was saturated with sadism, which she was brainwashed into thinking was sane and normal. Through Gildiner’s help, she was able to grow psychologically, rough patches with Jane and a suicide attempt included, to realize she was worthy of love. That makes her a psychological hero.
Madeline
Admittedly, I found this fifth and final case the least compelling, especially in comparison to what came before, but it is where the namesake of the book comes from, which is a great title for a psychological book. I digress.
Madeline, 36, a rich antique dealer in Manhattan, is Gildiner’s last case as a psychotherapist. In fact, Gildiner had retired in the early 2000s to pursue creative writing, but was cajoled (and that’s certainly the word) back into taking Madeline’s case by her dad, Duncan, who she previously treated in couples therapy. Gildiner had to fly to Manhattan once a week to see and treat Madeline. She expected six appointments. It turned into more than four years of treatment. Later, when discussing the case with her mentor, Gildiner would realize she saw in her dad what she missed with her own dad, and that’s why she was so easily cajoled. (The cynic would say it was the money and the trips to Manhattan, but I’m not a cynic!)
Like Peter and Alanna’s grandmother, Madeline experienced a childhood (and adulthood prior to Gildiner) marked by a disturbed mother, Charlotte. She was more like Peter’s mom in terms of a certain level of negligence and aloofness, with a heaping of emotional abuse and control. It should also be noted that Duncan was an inconsistent father, to put it mildly. Basically, he left Madeline alone to deal with Charlotte’s psychological abuse. I also think, despite my preamble above, that Madeline’s case is illustrative of the fact that well-to-do people sometimes need talk therapy, too. That all the riches in the world do not gird against being psychologically unwell. If your human, psychological issues can come for you, too.
As you can predict, it’s Charlotte who greeted Madeline each morning with, “Good morning, monster.” Oof. Her own daughter. Over the years, Madeline developed anxiety issues, including an abject fear of flying, anyone she knew flying. That hurt her own business, as she didn’t want anyone flying for that purpose, either. She also had three different kinds of cancer that added to her anxiety. She likely suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder, too. Gildiner doesn’t treat OCD, so she referred Madeline to a different psychotherapist for that aspect and to address the flying issue, although there would be overlap.
Because of her mother’s ways, Madeline also developed anorexia as a child. I wasn’t clear if this was a childhood or adulthood or both problem, but Madeline also suffered from trichotillomania, which is a hair pulling out disorder. When she was only 11, Madeline’s parents left her alone while they went to Russia for six weeks. Six weeks! The police did come at one point, but brushed it off, continuing Gildiner’s frustration with authorities not stepping in.
Madeline’s first boyfriend she loved, Barry, age 16, was “seduced” by Charlotte, age 40 at the time. Again, let’s be clear. She didn’t have “sex” with Barry. She raped a 16 year old. Duncan didn’t do anything about it, and Madeline, of course, was devastated. Worse still, when Madeline confronted her mother about it, she killed the family dog, Fred. Damn. What a wicked woman Charlotte was. In fact, Gildiner thinks Charlotte was a sociopath, too, it just expressed itself somewhat differently.
As an adult, Madeline is a workaholic at her job, as the boss, feeling like she has to do everything (nobody loves her enough to contribute their own weight, is how the subconscious thinking went, I believe). Workaholism is most certainly a disorder of a kind. Charlotte also has shame (there that feeling is again) for sleeping with a man in her delivery department while she was still married to some loser who only seems to be with her for the money. He doesn’t care about giving her emotional or sexual intimacy or fulfillment. Gildiner helps her work through that shame, which eventually leads to leaving the husband, and finding a new man to love fully. The ability to love him fully meant finally addressing and unpacking the flying issue. It was not actually a fear of flying, but a representation of Madeline’s fear of being abandoned and/or not loved. Once she understood that psychological truth, she could move forward with the new man in her life and set appropriate boundaries with her parents. Interestingly, Gildiner says Charlotte, like all sociopaths, burn out with old age. I didn’t know that was a thing.
Through messages, Gildiner learns Madeline is still doing well 14-some years later and is still with the new man. Again, she just needed to realize she could be loved, despite the way Charlotte “showed it.” Emerging through Charlotte’s deprivations makes Madeline a psychological hero.
All in all, I thought Good Morning, Monster was as inspiring as Gildiner intended. People who passionately read books often say they do it to feel less alone — that other people have experienced similar pain and emotions that we have. Gildiner’s book certainly demonstrates that sensibility, although obviously with far more trauma and tragedy involved. But perhaps it is precisely the depth of such trauma that these five people emerging from it as psychological heroes makes it so rewarding, both for Gildiner and for the reader.
Milam's Musings 