Customer Reviews

Growing Up Without the Goddess: A Journey through Sexual Abuse to the Sacred Embrace of Mary Magdalene

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Author Sandra Pope was kind enough to thank me in the dedication of her book, but I'm really writing this review as a "Magdalene community" member, one of those who work to raise awareness of Mary Magdalene as the sacred feminine in Christianity.
Growing Up Without the Goddess is the spiritual memoir of a little girl without an image of herself as sacred and divine, which is where we've all been left without Mary Magdalene in our Christian story. This little girl had to learn the hard way, on the hard road of sexual abuse, what it means to be a spiritually motherless child. Reading this story, we can all shutter at the thought of her physical abandonment and revel in the spiritual recovery of her life and love and divinity.
But I'm ahead of myself. Let me tell you about little Sandra, Southern girl of the Pope family in a small town in North Carolina, mothered by . . . no one.
Lots of women suffer through mothering dysfunctions, and we have plenty of those type of books. But Sandra's recovery to "thriving, not surviving" gave her back the sacred feminine "role model" of Mary Magdalene, and that makes this a different kind of book. She makes a clear case for sexual abuse being a normal aspect of religious patriarchal power abuse, meaning it's "built in" to any religion without a Goddess.
This is something we don't think about often, that without the story of a Beloved Goddess who is loved by a Beloved God, women are simply not as important and, therefore, they are very vulnerable to misuse. Raised to please the menfolk becomes a very dangerous idea.
We meet Sandra first as a young women of the 60's committed to the left wing politics of the time, working on voter registration and integration issues. Almost joined the Weather Underground, but came out to California instead. Life goes on the way it will for young women, with wonderful motherhood of twin girls, new career directions, and new marriage. She says she was never interested in the self-reflection "stuff" of the consciousness movement of the 70's, never overly worried about her inner self.
You can guess where this is going. In Los Angeles, in a guided imagery experience that a friend dragged her to, Sandra attempts to talk to her literary role models -- Plato, William Blake, and Wordsworth. They won't talk and instead a photograph of her long lost mother shows up in her inner vision. And so the journey begins. This is the mother who sent her to live with people who touched her and beat her and saw to it that she felt like a sinner. Oh no, not her.
If you ever wondered just exactly what it's like to discover you've been hurt badly and to feel what it's like to think you must be imagining it, Sandra's book will take you there. You learn about her therapeutic work, her dreamwork through which the truths of her soul were told, her efforts to see and feel the sick patterns in herself and try to stop them. Reading and feeling these struggles will make you want to do everything you can to be kind to yourself, knowing that you, too, share in the recovery of the sacred feminine dimension in yourself. Men, too.
This book is so important because, as Sandra explains, one in four young women will be abused by the time they are 18. That's right now! So shocking. In a later chapter of description of her continual recovering, Sandra gives us a very clear, bullet-point list of the ways abuse warped her life. You may see yourself on that list . . . we all share it.
Growing Up Without the Goddess reads like a novel. The writing style draws you in, painting a picture of small town life in the 50's rural South, with the dialog and attitude that fit the times. The difference is that this memoir has an "observing voice" which narrates the "journey of a wounded healer," giving us insight into ourselves as well as the story of a little girl harmed. This may be familiar territory to some readers; the stories of how abuse can cause anorexia and other physical ills, suicidal inclinations, impossible relationships, and searing self doubt. The difference here is recovery into "prophesy and revelation" by Mary Magdalene and her daughter, and the meaning in that for everyone's recovery of their own sacred dimension.
By the way, one of the very interesting stories within the book is that Sandra comes from a family heritage of "fire healers," people who can remove burns. In recovering memories of abuse, she also recovers her own ability to heal, and today she works as a vibrational healer. I think she has recovered her own inner fire as well. ' '
You can hear an excerpt of the book at www.GrowingUpWithoutTheGoddess.podomatic.com, and read excerpts and author information at Sandra's website at www.GrowingUpWithoutTheGoddess.com
Reviewer Joan Norton, M.F.T. is author of The Mary Magdalene Within (iUniverse, 2005)and 14 Steps to Awaken the Sacred Feminine, Women in the Circle of Mary Magdalene (with Margaret Starbird) (Inner Traditions, 2009). You can hear her Magdalene Meditations at www.MaryMagdaleneWithin.podomatic.com and participate in "all things Magdalene" at www.blog.MaryMagdaleneWithin.com.

The mind does not like terrible things, so it will often repress them. "Growing Up Without the Goddess: A Journey Through Sexual Abuse to the Sacred Embrace of Mary Magdalene" is the psychological coping of author Sandra Pope. When her mind continues to give her visions of a haunting past, she prays to the figure of Mary Magdalene, whom she says gives her the power to finally name the one responsible. A dive into the world of faith and repressed memories, "Growing Up Without the Goddess" is a fine and highly recommended read.

WOW! Sandra Pope has magnificent courage! Her skills as a writer are phenomenal, but the story itself is absolutely gripping. I literally could not put the book down. I HAD to devour it. It demanded to be read.

Growing up Without the Goddess is one of the most powerful books I have ever read on self discovery, personal growth and healing. It is a true testament to the power and resilience of the human spirit and the profound spiritual connection to the sacred feminine. The epic journey that Sandra Pope describes in her book is tragic, poetic and empowering. Her ability to dissect the circumstances of her life provides the reader a true glimpse of their own sacred feminine.

I was so engrossed in Growing Up Without the Goddess that at times I became detached from reality, as though I was in an alternate world -- which, when I forced myself to put down the book, I realized I was -- Sandra Pope's world! Her story is BEYOND riveting; it is soul-bonding.
This author, with her hypnotic, almost mythical writing style, peels back the layers of human nature and expresses it so profoundly that you just can't stop reading. I literally couldn't tear my eyes away from the page waiting for the next thing to happen. And this is a true story! Truth is more exhilarating than fiction. It reads like a combination of The Secret Life of Bees and Rich Man, Poor Man.
It is healing to read this book. The author says it was healing to write it. You will enter her world and hold it in your heart.
If you have your own embracing the Sacred Feminine story, you must read Growing Up Without the Goddess, find your voice, and write YOUR story. It needs to be told, needs to enter human consciousness in these significant times, just like this book...

Knowing rural southern culture personally provided an entree for me, as a man, to identify with Sandra Pope in this wonderful/horrible tale of her childhood. Her ability to bring a male reader deeper into the intimate, interior world of a woman is remarkable. As I was reading, I felt what it was like to be the young Sandra, whose deeply connected yet sexually abusive relationship to her brother provided the only way to survive the hellish complexities of her family life. Sandra opens a door to increased understanding of and intimacy with the complementary sex, which makes up over half of the population, and which, in my opinion, is the foundations of society.

Ultimately, Sandra sets aside the proverbial "fig leaf" that we all wear and reveals herself as she truly is. Can we all remove the "fig leaf" and be who we truly are? For me, this is the question that Sandra's work brings forth.

Being a man who was brought up by the Goddess, not in terms of family and culture, but through vision and dreams beginning at the age of five, I also found empathic understanding of the secrecy that abounds in Sandra's life. I kept my relationship to the Goddess secret while I was growing up, for I knew that to speak of Her would result in humiliation through shaming laughter. This is a pain I still know, for I continue to find it hard to open conversation about my Sophia without expecting responses ranging from raging anger to raging laughter. Either way, in my inner, spiritual world, which is the world of the Divine Feminine, I find empathic understanding with Sandra's world...for in a sense, we have both been raped spiritually. This loving empathy is the gift that Sandra's book brings to me. I thank her for it.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who believes life can be great after a not so perfect childhood.

A must read for anyone who loves a sweet story.

Sandra has told her storey of childhood disappointments and the power as adults to make our present day a happy existence.

She has truly unfolded her trinity and graciously passes it on to you.
You have the opportunity to unfold the perfect you and pass it on to others.

I finished Sandra Pope's remarkable book, Growing Up Without the Goddess, several months ago. I wanted to write her a review before I even finished it, and was enthusiastic about writing one after I completed it, but I found it has taken me several months to integrate and fully appreciate this genuinely insightful recording of a woman's journey to wholeness.

The author has painstakingly chronicled the patchwork pieces of her childhood, weaving together a tapestry or quilt in order to make sense of her life. Her journey from sexual, physical, emotional and other abuse is a brave tale of refusing to lose oneself in the face of what might kill a less hardy soul. She chose to live, then to heal, and finally to share her story so that the rest of us could benefit. We owe her a debt of gratitude for her gift.

Well written and a true page-turner, Growing Up Without the Goddess is an excellent support to those women in particular who are finding that the outer world does not always have the answers that they seek; perhaps at the hands of wounded authority figures, these women feel a wounding that creates a deeper, more profound pulling on them to regain their sense of the Sacred Feminine. In this book, the author globalizes her search for meaning and self love as a realization of her embodiment of the Divine Feminine.

My personal experience after reading Growing Up Without the Goddess was to recognize myself in the author's writing, to share her struggles and awarenesses, and to know the Sacred Feminine in myself at a more profound level. In fact, I had a dream the early morning after finishing the book that I was overly pregnant with a baby girl. In the dream, I was HUGE, and felt and saw the baby feminine moving inside of me. I knew I was giving birth any day, and I was so deeply happy when I awoke because I knew the Sacred Feminine was moving inside of me.

I recommend Growing Up Without the Goddess for all women (and men-my husband was truly moved by the book) who love the world and wish to see the balance of the Divine Feminine restored.

Journey to a Safe and Surprising Place, June 22, 2009
By Ellie Norton (Santa Barbara, Ca.) - See all my reviews

Several lengthy, valuable and scholarly reviews have been written of this book, rich in the estoterica and belief systems of the Sacred Feminine/ Sacred Union movement surrounding the marriage and child of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Undeniably, the divinity of these figures is referentially Christian. But the expanded sense that, within each of us, is a long-latent and religio-secularly suppressed and devalued Goddess, has profound appeal to many women of many religions or of no formal religion at all. This is the innate divinity, the sacredness, the Goddess within each of us which, if called forth and acknowledged, can form a healing and uniting bridge between our material and spiritual self. It rejects the Cartesian dualism of mind and body; body and spirit. And it certainly rejects the notion that the spirit is sacred and the body profane.

I presume to comment on this personal and stunning autobiography, because the recovery process of a severely abused, abandoned, psychologically fragile and isolated woman, who was always and only in "Survival Mode", caused me for the first time to grasp that divinity needn't be "out there" and, thus, beyond both my conceptual template and my reach. And that, Christian iconography aside, perhaps we each embrace a divinity as unique as our fingerprints.

This book belongs to everyone. To the wounded parent who wounds her children. To the abandoned child of a mother so consumed by her harsh and barren personal environment that she has lost the instinct or sheer capacity to nurture. To the abusing male who would cease the harm and defilement were he to truly grasp that the victims of his abuse are sacred and magical beings.

Last among the surprises, this was a funny, rascally and utterly wonderful child who will make you laugh out loud and fall in love with her. I guarantee it!

Thank you, Sandra, for sharing.

GROWING UP WITHOUT THE GODDESS gives story and form to the abuse all women suffer in one form or another in our patriarchal culture. Sandra Pope offer the painful details of her personal experience with eloquence and courage. She shows how the denial of the Goddess has blighted both men and women from generation to generation in her family and the human family. She reveals how rape and incest team up with denial, neglect, and the perversion of victims to maim us. She shows how both the egregious and the subtle forms of sexual abuse pervade our families, our sexuality, our relationships, our self-esteem, our spirituality, our status, and every conceivable aspect of our being on earth. Her message that we heal ourselves by resurrecting the Goddess and resurrect the Goddess by healing ourselves is much needed in today's world. Sandra Pope's experience mirrored my own back to me and validated my personal learnings. That is an invaluable gift from a book.

Merry Stetson Hall
Author of BRINGING FOOD HOME: The Maine Example. Her book profiles local farmers, gardeners, homesteaders, processors, distributors, merchants, restauranteurs, consumers, and advocates. Through these profiles, it explores how a healthier community, economy, ecology, and ethic are growing up around local food in Maine.