Reviewed by Leonard Smuts for Readers' Favorite

The devastating consequences of unresolved family trauma are far-reaching. Diana Morgan Dean endured a horrific childhood, with an abusive father and an emotionally distant mother distracted by her issues, priorities, and coping mechanisms. When she was just 13 years old, she was forced into the role of caring for her siblings after her mother died. This resulted in an escalating conflict with her father and his new girlfriends and she was banished to an equally uncaring home. She fled to New York to escape as soon as she could, becoming an aspiring actress and meeting Jay, her future husband. Her childhood abuse haunted her and compromised her relationships. What followed was a series of moves, changes in career, affairs, the subsequent guilt, divorces, and unfulfilled life. She drifted from corporate work to being a faculty wife and photojournalist, with some success, but happiness eluded her. Her search for love and acknowledgment led her into the ministry and same-sex unions. Continued attempts to reconcile with her father and remaining siblings were met with rejection, adding to her sense of loss. Her triumph over her past was remarkable, detailed in Compost Happens: Growing a Flourishing Life After Childhood Abuse.

Faced with extreme dysfunction within her family, Diana Morgan Dean was compelled to adopt survival strategies at a young age. This came at the cost of separation from her siblings, who turned against her. Her journey was beset with doubts, fears, and questions. In time, she came to understand and accept her neediness, repetitive patterns, control issues, and destructive tendencies, which were a throwback to her childhood. She realized that she had to take responsibility for her actions, whatever the wounds she had encountered, some of which were self-inflicted. She could no longer look to others to fill the void in her life. Counseling helped her to grow by releasing buried memories. She graduated with a doctorate in psychology at age 55, which helped her to understand relationships from a new perspective. Compost Happens is a deeply intimate memoir that does not hold back on the extent of her physical and mental abuse and the distress that it caused. At times it is a harrowing account. From trauma comes growth. This is a tale of tenacity, resilience, and a search for self, which resulted in profound healing that can now be shared with others and serve as an inspiration.