I first read this book in my final year of high school. It was very popular at the time, but I knew little about what it was about. When I opened it, the first words I saw were “For Tyler,” which made me wonder what kind of story I was about to read. As Tara Westover began describing her hometown and her childhood, I found myself drawn in.
Many things that happened in her family were shocking. But what I found hardest to bear was that the hurt came from the people closest to her. These were the people she had lived with for years, the people she kept trying to trust. Even after they had hurt her, she could not easily let them go.
What should she choose? That was the question I kept asking as I read.
So I could understand her hesitation, and why she kept hoping her parents or her sister would stand up for her. Even after discovering that her mother had deceived her, she still tried to convince herself to trust her once more. As readers, we may already have decided what she ought to do. But she still had to face her feelings for her family, and the life that would follow once she acknowledged what had happened.
Between her brother’s violence, the helplessness she felt when family members were injured, and the conflict between her education and her family, she could never make a clean break with the past. After her father was injured, she still went back home. Reading this, I felt sad for her, but I could also understand her choice. In her place, I might not have been any more decisive.
The ending was not entirely happy. But at least she gradually found a life she could accept.
Even after finishing the book, though, I still had no clear answer to one question: how much does it cost a person to leave behind their family and the life they have known?
The time spent with family is part of a person’s life, too. Those memories may contain hurt, but also affection and attachment. How should we understand them after leaving? If so much of what we once believed has to be reconsidered, might even our own past begin to feel unfamiliar?
Of course, we can say that Tara eventually gained more freedom and built a new life. But her abilities and the opportunities she later received may not be available to everyone. What if someone sees the problems in their own life just as clearly, but does not have the means to leave? What are they supposed to do?
This is where my feelings about education become complicated.
Education gave Tara a chance to encounter another way of life, and led her to question the ideas she had grown up accepting. But recognising the problems did not immediately make her life easier. She had to reconsider her family, reassess her experiences, and even repeatedly question her own memories. The clarity that learning brought her came with pain.
If education helps someone see what is wrong, but they cannot yet change their circumstances, how do they live with that awareness? Could they end up feeling worse than before?
Sometimes I even wonder whether, for some people, life might be easier if they did not know. But I hesitate over that thought. Not recognising that you have been hurt does not mean the hurt is not there. Yet when someone finally recognises it and still cannot leave, saying “It is always better to know” hardly answers their predicament.
And being educated does not necessarily mean knowing how to respect or understand other people. How much can knowledge and qualifications really change a person? Do the choices education opens up always make up for the sense of division it can bring? Are people who know more truly happier?
Tara eventually made her own choice. But after finishing the book, I still wonder: what would I choose in her place? If a new life came into conflict with my attachment to the past, could I bear the consequences of that choice?
But at least for now, I believe that, as human beings, we cannot and should not forget our own pain.
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