Eileen Porzuczek "Memento Mori: A Poetic Memoir in Three Parts"
"memento mori,
there’s no looking back
take those scars and don’t look back.”
This is going to be my first review of an indie author - Eileen Porzuczek and her "Memento Mori: A Poetic Memoir in Three Parts". The author is a creative writer, artist, and professional storyteller in Greater Indianapolis. You can learn more about her by checking the links in the credentials section at the end of this review.
Let’s start with the obvious: once you begin reading, it’s impossible to stop. It feels like flipping through someone’s private journal, diary with intimate, painful thoughts, so bare, a bit blurry, chaotic, but so real.
It’s hard enough to review poetry, but when it’s also somebody’s deeply personal story of life and trauma? Not to be mentioned, that my heart literally hurt along with the narrator's.
The story is about a real, physical trauma that becomes psychological: it begins with the doctors’ negligence, followed by gaslighting from those close to her - friends saying they see no changes when clearly nothing is the same. Surviving the initial catastrophe is just one part of the story. The harder part is living with what follows.
Where is it judgmental gazes and where it’s only in the victim’s head? How to be good to yourself and still value your own feelings while also being able to differentiate reality from your own spiralling?
Those were the questions circling in my mind as I read.
Part I is solely devoted to the tragedy itself and how a person gets through the experience of healing physically while bearing so much mental pain. When that ceiling trapped her i think it trapped me too - it felt so vividly real and surreal at the same time.
Part II is her new reality: lawsuits, end of the relationships, therapy - an endless, vicious circle of the things she is forced to deal with.
The flow and tone of these two parts make the story sound so cold and ominous most of the time as if you are ready that a main lead is not gonna make it through. But this is a memoir, so we know she does, and that knowledge adds something very emotional to the read. Both Parts I and II felt as if i was falling into the pit of the despair I couldn’t climb out of.
The third part is different - it's all about healing and learning how to live again. You can finally feel the empowerment and a gaze towards the future, some light in the end of the tunnel, so to say. You feel the shift - hope and power are coming, and the narrator chooses life.
The quote with which i want to finish my review:
"true beauty is kindness, humility, self-love,
compassion, empathy, and care—this beauty
lies within you. so, embrace yourself, scar and
all. embrace and shine your light—live life full."
Linktree with all the links to purchase the book:
Purchase Eileen's Memento Mori | Linktree