By Aly Ferris
Many of us, when we think of love, envision the fairy tale, with close-knit families and happy endings. But sometimes, love is not patient and love is not kind.
Sometimes, love is just hard. Portland author Debra Gwartney found this out when her two eldest daughters ran away from home and joined a counterculture of runaway teenagers who make their life on the streets.
Gwartney's new memoir, "Live Through This: A Mother's Memoir of Runaway Daughters and Reclaimed Love," is exactly that: a story of love that is lost and then found again.
It is the story of how Gwartney met and fell in love with her first husband and how, after four daughters and 12 years, the marriage proceeded to become frayed beyond repair.
It is the story of Gwartney's decision to move herself and her four daughters away from the Arizona home they knew to Eugene and to a new life where they knew no one. It is the story of how Gwartney initially lost her older daughters and her three-year struggle to get them back, a struggle that forced her to try everything and expect anything, including the death of a daughter. It is the story of the strength, the power, and the pain that comes with love and family and the spaces in between. In short, it is a story of love.
Gwartney, who will read from "Live Through This," tonight at 7 p.m. in the St. Mary's Lounge, said that while it was extraordinarily difficult to revisit such a painful time in her life, one of the hardest things that she had to do in writing the memoir was to examine the role that she played in her daughters' choice to run away from home - a home that she had fought to make good for them.
"I had to look at it in a more honest way," Gwartney said Monday by phone. "I had to keep asking myself 'What was my part in this?' That kind of scrutiny of the self does create a lot of pain but it does create growth in the long run."
Gwartney has received feedback on her memoir, both positive and negative.
"The comments have been really gratifying," Gwartney said, adding that many people write to her with stories that are extraordinarily similar.
One in seven teenagers run away from home at some point in their lives. Can we attribute this to someone or something? It's not an uncommon occurrence, and yet it's one that our society tries its best to ignore, to sweep under the rug, to blame parents for. Gwartney said that some Web sites she visited claimed that as high as 95 percent of children living on the streets come from abusive homes and she questions the accuracy of that statistic.
"Most of the parents are back home in anguish about where there child is," she said.
Gwartney's book confronts the paradoxical reality of life on the streets: namely that it's not terribly difficult to scratch out a life as a nomad - between groups of other runaways willing to take in teens and aid organizations handing out food and blankets, it is not as difficult as it might be to live on the streets.
Not all love stories have an ending that goes happily ever after. Miraculously, Gwartney's ending gets pretty close. Today, all of Gwartney's daughters have very close relationships with her and with each other. While they may not have been thrilled about the publication of the memoir, they were supportive, and the oldest girls even helped to proof some of the pages - helping to clear up names and dates.
"They've offered their support but they've all had some moments of fear and doubt and trepidation," Gwartney said. "It hasn't been easy. I think they know that it's a story that might help other families, at least to get a dialogue started."
Although only released last month, "Live Through This" is garnering national attention. The memoir has been written up in People Magazine and is going to be featured on Good Morning America. A short section of the novel will also appear in Portland magazine. It will not be the first time that Gwartney's work has appeared in the UP publication.
According to Portland magazine Editor Brian Doyle, Gwartney's message is especially applicable to the Catholic community.
"I think the genius of Catholicism is that it insists on hope against despair, which is kind of nonsensical and yet we do it," Doyle said Monday. "I think this book says something about hope defeating despair. That's really what Catholicism is about."
Doyle also argued that UP students could learn a lot from Gwartney's book.
"It's a really honest discussion of what love is really like," Doyle said. "It's hugely refreshing and educational for students. Romance is easy but love is hard. That's the lesson."
