Sunlight on My Shadow 5 Star Review of My Memoir on Amazon by Joe McNally

Something Blessed This Way Comes Posted on August 15, 2013

This book will be widely read in the coming years. Judy’s book is a rare combination; fine writing, a heart-wrenching story, and a salve for the soul of the sensitive. Everyone takes different things from life…a book read, a movie watched, a news article, a chance meeting, a dream. We act and interpret according to our characters and experiences. Sixty years ago (as I write this), my mother was moving into the last 48 hours of her pregnancy with the first of her eleven sons, me. She bore 4 daughters too, and she lies buried within shouting distance of where I sit. She was 47 when she died; killed, I thought for many years, by her Catholic faith, and its fierce hunger for more Catholics. We, her children were left with our own demons.

What I took from Judy’s book was this: in matters of the heart, of guilt and of shame, of crushing regret, seek not forgiveness from others, turn first to yourself. It is not so much the story of an unwed mother, a teenage pregnancy, a culture of banishing the black sheep lest the neighbours talk (God help us all…how many tears have been shed for the sake of ‘what people might think’?); it is a lesson in how to value yourself, how to heal yourself.

Judy’s long-seeping wound was inflicted by society. To the millions of other Judys of both genders who will read this book, your wounds will not necessarily be from lost children, but, with luck, Judy’s simple solution will help you find peace. Her story takes a long time to tell…she will take you to her childhood bedroom, her school, the Rocky Mountains, Big Sur, her subtly skilful writing carrying you through the years right alongside her. The story is long, but the message is short…forgive yourself.

Thank you, Judy. And good luck. We have never met. But we have.