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Abuse is damaging. It comes from cycles of abusive behaviors learned and repeated through generations. Because of shame and embarrassment, many people do not speak about the cruelty they endured. In my case, most of the abuse I suffered resulted from my mother’s mental illness. For my entire life, people told me to excuse my mom’s abuse because she was mentally ill. However, mental illness does not give anyone the right to abuse you (in particular, your child).
Ginny had childhood paranoid schizophrenia with multiple personality disorder. She lived in the Buffalo State Hospital through her adolescent years. When released from the hospital, she had me. She was twenty-six, and my dad was thirty years older. My mother was white, and my father was black.
As a child, I struggled with my mixed heritage. My mom would tell me that white people did not like me because I was black. Even from a religious standpoint, I was raised as a Catholic and Baptist. On Sundays, my mom and I attended mass without my father and Baptist service with him.
I always felt like I had to choose. Was I black? Was I white? Was I Catholic? Was I Baptist? My mom told me that her side of the family disliked my dad because he was black and my dad’s side of the family disliked my mom because she was white. Here I was stuck in the middle.
I share my life story with the world through God’s glory. My story is about how faith enabled me to overcome extraordinary struggles, pain, and loss. Faith, hope, and forgiving the unforgivable through prayer and trusting in God are the keys to healing.
Reviewed by Lucinda Weeks for Readers' Favorite
Ginny and Me: Reflections of What God Can Do by Christine Walters is an emotional account of a woman’s life. The story begins by introducing readers to her mother Ginny who was hospitalized for many years for severe mental illness, including schizophrenia and multiple personality disorder. Ginny is finally released from the mental hospital and marries a black man and ex-convict who is thirty years older than she is. Together they have Christine who is half white and half black and raised both Catholic like her mother and Baptist like her father.
Christine describes a childhood filled with violence both towards her and violence that she witnesses between her parents. Despite the chaos and pain, she comes to a saving faith in Jesus Christ at the age of 17. Christine learns that with forgiving others, as Christ forgives us, comes healing. She learns of God’s love, mercy and grace that brings her comfort over the next twenty years, mending her relationship with her mother and guiding her through her marriage, parenthood and difficult financial struggles that result in homelessness.
Truly inspirational, Ginny and Me is a beautiful and emotional story filled with heartache and hope. This story is a well-written memoir chronicling one woman’s courageous struggle in the midst of adversity. Christine survives a tumultuous childhood and difficult adulthood. Through it all she discovers the friend that she has in Jesus, who carries her through the storms of life. I found Ginny and Me to be a story of incredible courage and hope. It is a reminder that we can put our trust in Jesus who has promised never to leave us nor forsake us. I highly recommend Ginny and Me: Reflections of What God Can Do to readers everywhere.
