Secrets at The Big House
by Ana Maria Michelena MD
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Pub Date May 04 2020 | Archive Date May 27 2020
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Description
There were ghosts and there were secrets at the BIG House.
The space between the walls of The BIG House were charged with the anguish of ever-present unhappiness. It was a different kind of haunting.
Time changes many things, but it does not change our memories.
This is a true story of descent from wealth and social standing. By necessity, it is also the story of my mother, a petite socialite of uncommon beauty, who subjected her children to unspeakable emotional and psychological terror.
From the outside, my mother looked perfect. She grew up in wealth, attended an all-girls boarding school in Switzerland and completed her education at Rosslyn House, a finishing school for girls in Surrey, England. She exhibited great intelligence and managed to be the recipient of numerous academic awards. She mastered the French language as if it were her own, developing an exquisite sensibility to delicate, soft and soothing poetry that contrasted with her mercurial temper.
My mother was so very charming and sophisticated in front of her friends and anyone who visited The Big House. Unforgettable. Thoughtful. Kind. Everyone admired her Audrey Hepburnesque physique and accompanying refinement.
But from inside The Big House, my mother’s hysterical, histrionic fits were covered up by her parents, her brother and the loyal servants. She was a master manipulator.
We were never sure where our mother’s terrible wrath and rage came from, at least not as children. We suffered her anger in the ignorance and innocence of childhood. We suffered her lack of patience, her irritability. Her inconsistency. We swallowed her detachment, choking on her never ending criticism, her cruelty and her judgments.
How easily words poison the mind. My mother was a master at poisoning minds. She made sure any budding sprigs of self-esteem and pride in myself were nipped short before they even had a chance to grow.
First, she delivered the initial blow that would open the wound, then she made sure the wound never healed by continuously pouring the stingy poison of more hurtful words on to it.
My self-image was poisoned and she suffocated my natural optimism and joy. It would take many years to undo the damage she inflicted upon my psyche.
Secrets at The Big House is written like a novel, with scenes and dialogue and a narrative arc, and every word is the truth—my truth. It is written in a way that will engage the emotions, the mind, and the love of readers.
Ultimately, it’s a story of hope, and I open the book with my favorite quote:
“Hope is the certainty that every question will be answered, every wrong will be made a right, and every act of faithfulness will be rewarded.”
Join the author on this journey and learn how she turned adversities into gifts
Advance Praise
"Reviewed in the United States on April 13, 2020
A compelling story of horrific betrayal and survival
Tolstoy’s famous line, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” is given a horrific new dimension in “Secrets of the Big House,” Ana Maria Michelena’s heartwrenching and ultimately uplifting autobiography/novel, a format that perhaps allowed the author the distance she needed to tell her story. “The Big House,” an emotional prison in which Ana was raised, did not break her spirit or destroy her hope despite a father so self-absorbed that he thought nothing of abandoning his children to a woman he knew to be dangerously unstable, the Anti-Mother, whose mental illness, terrifying rages, and relentless, searing abuse left little air for children to breathe, even less space for them to grow. There is bitter irony between The Big House’s impressive façade, an edifice many impoverished Venezuelans could only dream of, and the nightmare that went on behind those walls.
No one is more vulnerable than a child, or more trusting; when parents betray that trust, become the source of suffering, not succor, the child has a perilous and lonely path to travel. Sadly, more often than not the adult recreates the only patterns he or she knew as a child, thus perpetuating another cycle of misery.
But Dr. Michelena’s path, though tortuous, leads to ultimate hope, a life hard fought but well lived. She learns different lessons from those taught by her histrionic mother who even used attempted suicide as a moment for center stage to relegate her eleven-year-old daughter to shame and self-loathing, or her father who cannot imagine sacrificing anything, even a little time, for his child. In “Secrets of the Big House,” Ana Maria Michelena has written a heartwrenching but ultimately uplifting book of the resilience , survival, and triumph of the human soul. And that’s the most compelling reason for reading this compelling book—written by a victim who refused to accept that label, which no one could deny she earned, but instead carved a new future for herself, her son, and readers who can find hope in her refusal to relinquish it."
Available Editions
| ISBN | 9781734053852 |
| PRICE | $4.99 (USD) |
