Swallow the Ocean Audiobook By Laura M. Flynn cover art

Swallow the Ocean

A Memoir

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Swallow the Ocean

By: Laura M. Flynn
Narrated by: Julie McKay
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Charismatic, beautiful Sally Flynn was the center of her daughters' imaginations, particularly Laura's. Without warning, life as they knew it changed as paranoid schizophrenia overtook Sally. Whether it was accusing Laura’s father of trying to win her over to the side of Satan, or buying only certain products that were evil-free, glimmers of her mother’s future paranoia grew brighter as Laura’s early years passed. Once her husband left the family and filed for divorce, Sally’s symptoms bloomed in earnest, and the three girls united in flights of fancy of the sort their mother had taught them in order to deflect danger.

Set in 1970s San Francisco, Swallow the Ocean is a searing, beautifully written memoir of a childhood under siege and three young girls determined to survive. In luminous prose, this memoir paints a most intimate portrait of what might have been a catastrophic childhood.

©2008 Laura M. Flynn (P)2013 Audible, Inc. Parenting & Families Siblings Memoir Mental Illness Memoirs
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I enjoyed the author's re-telling of the stories she created with dolls as a child paralleling her confusing and chaotic world as a child. As a psychotherapist, I search out stories that better help me understand diagnoses from a humanistic perspective: a way for me to understand better what my clients or family of clients might be feeling regarding mental illness. It also helps me give insight to clients who may be going through simile situations which has proven to be very therapeutic. Thank you for sharing this heart-felt story about your love for your mother.

Wonderfully descriptive and emotional memoir

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In Swallow the Ocean, Laura M. Flynn describes what it was like when, as a child, her world fell apart. Her confident, beautiful mother was overcome by paranoid schizophrenia.

“I lived in her world, and even if none of this was real to other people, the consequences were real to me.”

While there are a lot of mental illness memoirs out there, Flynn’s stands out for her seamless writing, her evocative remembrance of Seventies San Francisco, and her ability to make clear the childhood logistics of having an unstable caregiver.

Narrated by Julie McKay who has a really nice emotive range, and sympathy for the nuances of the narrators emotions.

Living in the Logic of a Parent's Delusion

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