In Ungrieving, a memoir about family dysfunction and estrangement, religious doubt, and complex relationships, Jennifer Stolpa Flatt provides others with the book she needed but couldn't find. The insights will resonate with those who have experienced family divisions or who support those who do, and those who struggle to let go of the relationships they wanted but never had.
After a lifetime of emotional abuse, verbal attacks, and controlling behaviors, including a four-year estrangement from a man she called "Daddy" despite not feeling the warmth the nickname implies, her father's death left her struggling to make sense of their fractured relationship.
She felt both a sense of relief and a profound sadness:
I don't miss him and I feel guilty admitting that.
Sometimes I do miss him. And that confuses me.
Through relatable and compelling stories and essays, Flatt places readers in key moments throughout her family's journey, demonstrating how she, her sister, and her mom suffered as collateral damage due to her dad's untreated depression. The memoir artfully weaves in passages from her dad's journals, allowing her to explore his pain, his dreams, and his parenting choices.
Flatt also explores how Catholicism, changing her religious faith, music, mental illness, counseling, and feminism both united and separated her from her father.
Ungrieving challenges readers to think carefully about what we say to ourselves and what we say to others in moments of grief. Flatt's journey also helps ease the guilt readers might feel around strained relationships, questioning religion, or mental health concerns as readers learn to see themselves and others as individuals, and not only in relationship to others.