ABOUT YOU WILL NEVER BE NORMAL

A lucidly written memoir that documents the devastating psychological impact of childhood abuse while offering hope to fellow survivors.
– Kirkus Reviews

One afternoon, during a routine meditation, a strange tingling grips Catherine Klatzker, followed by an explosion of voices crowding out her thoughts. Soon these voices, or “parts,” begin to emerge more distinctly in her mind, accompanied by persistent insomnia and bouts of mortifying incontinence.

Fearing for her sanity, Klatzker turns to a meditation teacher and psychotherapist. What follows is one woman's unflinching excavation of years of repressed sexual and emotional abuse, manifested many decades later as Traumatic Dissociative Identity Disorder. A daring and unafraid debut memoir, You Will Never Be Normal delivers an arresting examination of the emotional toil-and toll-required to be made whole again.

PRAISE FOR YOU WILL NEVER BE NORMAL

“Distressing yet powerfully illuminating writing.” 
—Kirkus

“A brave, compelling memoir…”
—Jack Kornfield, PhD, author of A Path with Heart

“All who read it will be enriched by the truth she tells.”
—Patricia Bell-Scott, author of The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice

“You Will Never Be Normal is a beautifully rendered account of personal integration and survival. Klatzker's personal detective work, vulnerability, and intelligence create a compelling story, skillfully told, that invites the reader into a struggle to map the after-effects of trauma and of complex resilience.”
—Sonya Huber, author of Pain Woman Takes Your Keys

“Klatzker has written a brave, honest, lyrical and painstaking account of her journey to acknowledge the betrayal of her child-self and to reassemble fragments piece by piece…”
—Terry Wolverton, author of Embers

“This is a powerful and important memoir. With vulnerability and grace, Klatzker has offered readers numerous insights and gifts about what it's like to live with Dissociative Identity Disorder—including a brave path towards wholeness.”
—David Treleaven, PhD, author of Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness: Practices for Safe and Transformative Healing

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Catherine Klatzker is a memoirist, poet, wife, mother, grandmother, friend, meditator, a retired pediatric ICU RN of 22 years, and a member of the Authors Guild. Her work has appeared in Atticus Review, Lime Hawk Journal, The Examined Life Journal, Tiferet Journal, and in mental health anthologies. Originally from the quad cities of Illinois, she now lives in southern California with her husband, delightedly nearby their children and grandchildren.

As a resident at the Ragdale Foundation, Catherine was able to take the time and space to work in peace on her first full-length memoir, You Will Never Be Normal, awakening her to the circumstances of so many other silent survivors. “My memoir plunges into essential questions of how our brains and minds work to keep us safe, the nature of sanity, and how far are we willing to dive into family history and forgotten memories to find our way back to health, to wholeness.” says Klatzker of her deeply personal and courageous first book. “Dissociative identity disorder (DID) is often written about from the outside, by therapists, clinicians, and other witnesses. When approached from outside in that way, DID becomes a spectacle, and the person in pain at the center of it disappears. The strength, appeal, and focus of my memoir is that it is communicated from inside the DID experience.”

Selected short excerpts of You Will Never Be Normal have appeared in slightly different form in Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, Emrys Journal, and in mental health anthologies from In Fact Books, Same Time Next Week, and from Lime Hawk Literary Arts Collective, Parts Unbound. Her excerpt, “Al Chet,” won Tiferet Journal’s 2014 prize for Nonfiction.

Find her online at:
www.catherine.klatzker.com
https://www.facebook.com/klatzkerwriter
@TooManyParts