Linda Carroll (2)

In her latest book, Remember Who You Are, Linda Carroll offers an astonishingly diverse array of thoughts from great women thinkers. From Coretta Scott King to Sappho the pages of Remember are enriched with a wealth of meditations that are sprinkled between the poetry and prose of the author. Remember serves as a guide to reconnecting with a spiritual dimension within oneself, an essence that Carroll argues is shared among women. A gifted poet, Carroll acknowledges the power behind words. She uses the writings of Virginia Woolf and Alice Walker to reaffirm this shared essence and to reaffirm the power of womanhood. Although I would not go as far as to argue that Remember is a feminist manifesto, Carroll truly believes in reinforcing the beauty of the feminine and there is poetry in that.
Carroll traces the journey of remembering through seven stages, stages that she argues are interchangeable and overlapping. Forgetting is one of the pivotal stages, something that Carroll argues happens at birth when we first enter the physical world. Now if this sounds vaguely reminiscent of a religious doctrine, Carroll is more than aware of it. She argues that “Remembering is the key to most world religions and to spiritual experience… In whatever way we are awakened, we are reminded for a moment of a different realm of existence with its own truth.” Clearly, Remember is a spiritual guide; however it shies away from the rigid boundaries of many religious doctrines. Instead of listing rules and regulations, Carroll offers a more celebratory take on rediscovering spirituality, the results of which are much more empowering for the reader.
Ultimately, what separates Carroll’s tale of spiritual awakening from so many other self-help/spirituality books out there is her emphasis on what we already have, not what we are lacking. Although she names moments when we may feel a spiritual void, Carroll is careful to focus her stories on celebrating and rediscovering an essence that she argues is already inside of us, waiting to be rediscovered. Her narrative accounts for the feelings of alienation that women may feel in our society, and connects that to a larger spiritual amputation that occurs at an early stage in life. Carroll’s philosophy goes farther than simply saying that the problems do not exist within us, but instead the answers do, an affirmation that celebrates the beauty of womanhood in a society that often punishes it.

by Elizabeth A. Shramko

copyright ForeWord Magazine, vol. 12, no. 1… (lisätietoja)