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Reviewed by Gisela Dixon for Readers' Favorite
Searching for My Heart: Essays about Love by Dawn Downey is a memoir relating to her experiences in life pertaining to a desire to belong. Searching for My Heart is written in a somewhat random style—there are no clear sequential narratives. Instead, the book is almost a collection of various anecdotes and incidents, written in a short chapter form. In this collection of essays per se, Dawn talks about her early life as well as adulthood, her family members, relationships, her longing, desire, and quest to belong somewhere, whether that is a home or a group of people, and her challenges and struggles with this, some reasons and self-reflections on why she feels shame, a desire to hide, self-criticism and the underlying reasons for this, her spiritual quest, and more. In a sense, this may be described as a self-help book as well as a memoir.
I liked reading Searching for My Heart: Essays about Love mainly because of its theme. The desire to belong is a strong one, and can even be described as fundamental in human beings. Not feeling like a part of something or feeling like an outsider usually has reasons that are rooted in childhood neglect or issues. I liked how Dawn explores this aspect of herself, and she provides a lot of good insight into why things are the way they are. I do think that the book could do with a smoother, coherent narrative that ties all of the chapters together. But Dawn’s simple and candid style of writing makes this a good read and I would recommend it.
