No Mud, No Lotus, by Caitlín
Clear-eyed and unsentimental, this memoir shows how a life shaped by neglect and silence can still open into strength, self trust, and hard-earned peace.
Caitlín was raised in a home where cruelty passed for discipline. Labeled “the bad one” by her step mother, she grows up learning how to disappear. Shut out of family memory and denied the truth about her own mother, she’s left with confusion and anger, while always reaching for proof that she belongs anywhere at all.
No Mud, No Lotus tells that story in spare vignettes and poems that move from Brooklyn to Jersey City, from church pews, classrooms and eventually, an ashram in India. Along the way Caitlín uncovers long buried family truths, survives grief and betrayal, then discovers a path that releases her from what nearly destroyed her.
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