What are our responsibilities toward our own self-actualization?

I think we all seek authenticity, to be who we truly think we are “at heart.” These are the journeys of self-discovery we read about in memoirs and novels, the “finding ourselves” that youth are engaged in, the shedding process we go through as we mature and discover we’ve taken on roles and responsibilities that no longer fit, no longer feel like who we “really are”.

This question is at the heart of my novel.

“When Things Go Missing by Deborah J. Brasket is an achingly poignant exploration of femininity, responsibility, and liberation from societal expectations.”

So begins an SPR 5-Star review of my novel When Things Go Missing.

It’s so different from the review by Indies Today that I shared earlier, comparing my novel with the art of Kintsugi, mending broken pottery with gold lacquer. While that review focused on the mending of a broken family abandoned by their mother, this new review shines a light on the woman who left them, breaking free from a conventional life to embrace a more authentic one.

The novel opens with a prologue in which Franny, the mother who disappears, is going through a “shedding” process, searching through her cupboards and closets and getting rid of everything that seems inauthentic—not her anymore, not essential to who she truly is.

All week long, she goes through the same shedding process, opening closets and cupboards, ridding herself of everything she no longer needs, stripping away all that’s not essential. She’s amazed by how much she’s accumulated over the years, how easily she lets go, how freeing it feels. Sometimes she opens cupboard doors just for the pleasure of seeing how spare it all is now, how clean and simple.

This process she’s going through could be compared to the Japanese art of de-cluttering espoused by Marie Kondo, which is a way to restore balance in one’s life by retaining only the things that “spark joy.”

After stripping her home of all that’s “not her” anymore, Franny heads to the grocery store. But instead of entering the parking lot, she passes by and keeps on going until she reaches the tip of South America. What Franny has shed now is another outgrown part of herself—her responsibility to a dependent family in order to express a more authentic part of herself.

And yet she does not completely abandon the family she loves. In her absence, she “gifts” them with more authentic parts of herself: sharing her joy of life in the messages she leaves on her to daughter’s answering machine; sharing her love of art and the strange beauty in ordinary things with the photographs she sends her son.

Franny becomes an absent presence pervading the novel seen through her family’s memories of her and through the gifts she gives them.

In a way, each character in When Things Go Missing goes through that shedding process, putting aside old ways of seeing themselves, laying aside inhibiting fears and distrusts, seeking a deeper sense of purpose and possibility.

And yet it’s a complex and messy and confusing process because we are complex and messy and conflicted individuals:

Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)—Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

Balancing the loves of our lives within the limits of time and capacity is an ever-evolving process.

Here’s that review in full:

When Things Go Missing by Deborah J. Brasket

A powerful novel about losing yourself in order to find a way home, When Things Go Missing by Deborah J. Brasket is an achingly poignant exploration of femininity, responsibility, and liberation from societal expectations.

When Franny boldly heads south of the Baja border, she leaves her husband and grown children behind to fend for themselves and decipher the meaning of her spontaneous vanishing act. With their maternal glue of the family missing, this dysfunctional trio must finally face their failings – pride, apathy, addiction, alienation, and a woeful lack of direction.

Featuring sharp, emotional storytelling and painfully flawed characters traversing profound developmental arcs, this subtle but profound novel is a testament to choosing your own path, no matter how strange the road. —SPR 5-Star Review

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You can read more reviews as well as an excerpt from the novel here.

When Things Go Missing is now available for pre-order at Amazon, Bookshop, and Barnes & Noble.

Your purchase will support one woman’s journey toward self-actualization, as well as spark much joy and gratitude.