Ditching the Mask: A Memoir

“Few lives have covered more ground—externally and internally—than the one Edith Cook has lived so far. In this book she takes us along on her journey, and we come away inspired and enlightened.” —LYNN G. CARLSON, editor of Watch My Rising: A Recovery Anthology It’s 1963. Escaping a childhood of violent abuse, twenty-two-year-old Edith flees postwar Germany for the United States; yet the wounds left from the skillets and cords wielded by her mother’s fury go more than skin deep: They threaten to destroy her emotionally. Struggling to build a new life in California, she marries and begins to raise a family; still, love remains a foreign language—impossible to speak and harder to express. This all shifts when Miss Edith writes to her hero, Holocaust survivor and psychologist Viktor Frankl—and he writes back! Their correspondence sparks a transformation, building her confidence and planting the idea that she might be worthy of happiness after all. Eventually Miss Edith faces the ghosts of her past by chronicling her journey from depression and guilt to forgiveness and love.