Laurel C. Fox’s Braveing the Way is one of those rare books where you don’t know exactly what to expect, but as soon as you turn the first page you feel instantly sucked in. Not because Ms. Fox is necessarily the most powerful storyteller from a technical perspective, but because her ability to emote, to make the deeply personal to her intimate for you – the reader – is unparalleled.
The universality of the story at play in Braveing the Way is affecting enough. But the way Fox transports you right there, the way the story genuinely moves you and allows you to live inside her head during one of the darkest things to happen in her life, is something I was touched by deeply and could not get out of my head. The fact she never gives up, the fact she fights, while still retaining and being unapologetic in communicating the unglamorized, incredibly difficult periods of that time that are painful in the utmost way, is incredibly commendable. She doesn’t hide anything. She pulls no punches.
She just tells it, like it is. No more, no less. This authenticity draws you in closer. It highlights the grail that is Fox’s ethic, that no matter what happens one stands strong, and simply put – once again – one fights. “My book is about a trauma that happened to my daughter, Taylor, when she was fourteen years old. My story ‘braveing the way’ takes you deep into my own journey while being beside my daughter in her separate journey of survival,” Fox says in a written statement.
AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/braveing-way-Laurel-C-Fox/dp/B0D7FTCMJH
She also states, “We spent sixty six days in the hospital as a family never knowing the outcome. I kept a journal for many of those days and many excerpts are in the book. I write about traumatic brain injury and what that looks like, what it does to a family, and to a survivor. Spending months in the hospital, and going through Taylor’s recovery process — as an author I take you through my personal deep dive into myself –which was not always an easy process. It’s a book about moving through a trauma and self reflection while being ‘mama bear,’ and protecting my daughter. It’s a beautiful story about maternal sacrifice but also about building tenacity, strength and courage through intense struggle.”
See what I mean? She fights. She protects. She’s a mama bear. There’s no two ways about it. In making everything so intimate and painfully personal, sometimes Braveing the Way almost threatens to overwhelm. That’s a good thing. As reflected in the aforementioned statement, Fox’s willingness to cover everything under the sun from A to Z is something of a roadmap for anyone struggling, let alone God forbid in the way her family did years ago. It’s a comfort but it’s also a solution, something that serves as a personalized guide for tackling adversity that in many ways can seem insurmountable.
Something that comes from a place that’s painfully real is better than a so-called ‘expert’ writing flinty statements. Fox knows her stuff, but it’s her willingness to express everything real that makes Braveing the Way mandatory reading for one in crisis.
Cyrus Rhodes
