Title: The Passionate Long Walk to the Awakening of a New Life
Authors: Katherine Steele
Publisher: Balboa Press
ISBN: 978-1-4525-3004-8
Genre: Non-Fiction
Pages: 82
Review by: Allison Walker
Hollywood Book Reviews
The Passionate Long Walk to the Awakening of a New Life is the story of a mother raising a disabled child, and a memoir like no other. Katherine Steele chooses to write about it feels to raise a disabled child. Steele pulls back the curtain on her life and shares with readers an honest and inspiring story. Steele doesn’t deceive readers with wishful thinking; sometimes every triumph seems to be followed by more tribulation. Yet throughout every trial, Steele plunges forward and her resilience is incredible. Although at times she suffers, her daughter suffers and her family suffers, Steele never tells readers to give up. There’s always something new to try, someone new to talk to, someone willing to give you a hand when you need help.
Steele’s book is powerful because of her honesty. When her second child, a daughter named Lourdes, is born, Steele writes about how challenging it is to care for an infant with a disability. Lourdes is born with a cleft palate which prevents her suckling. After her birth, Steele is unexpectedly locked in an arduous, hourly cycle of helping her daughter feed. She writes about a lack of support by medical professionals and neighbors, and how discouraging and frightening each disappointment was. There is an incredible amount of pressure on parents, and especially mothers, to sing only praises and accomplishments of their disabled child. Talking about the fear and tiredness, and how she struggled with postpartum depression, is not only brave, it’s encouragement to all mothers by eschewing the trope and sympathizing with the realities of caring for children. Steele’s honesty in the face of adversity is what sets her book apart from other memoirs.
Steele’s energy seems inexhaustible. Even in the most trying times, times where she remembers feeling fed up and hopeless, she seems to do her best to stay busy. Her dedication to her children as well as her self-health is a balancing act and a talent. Not only does she ferry Lourdes to various therapists and her other children to their extracurricular activities, Steele attends support groups for herself. She knows she needs help and she isn’t afraid to ask for it.
It’s not until after high school when Lourdes’ trying behavior finally receives an accurate diagnosis. As a reader, you want to cheer! After years of patience, assistance, kindness and therapy, Lourdes is recognized and can receive treatment designed for her. Yet, as her mother, Steele is terrified. Although they’ve lived with Asperger’s autism, Steele remembers the frightening feeling of putting a name to Lourdes’ behavior.
The Passionate Long Walk to the Awakening of a New Life is an honest accounting of one mother’s struggles and successes raising a daughter with Asperger’s autism. Steele’s book doesn’t glorify the realities of raising a disabled daughter and it doesn’t paint a white picket fence perfect portrait of their family. Steele writes about the numerous doctors and therapists they visited, the people who were willing to help them and the people who didn’t want to be bothered. Even though she reports her own frustration, Steele’s dedication as a mother to her family never wavers and she remains determined to care for her children to the best of her ability. Her book is both heartwarming and refreshingly honest.