Past Tense: Facing Family Secrets and Finding Myself in Therapy

As recounted in this graphic memoir, Mardou (Sky in Stereo), feeling miserable and anxious despite a happy marriage and a wonderful daughter, dips a hesitant toe into therapy and then plunges in deep. With the help of two wonderfully competent therapists, she manages to untangle three generations of family trauma and its toxic outcomes upon herself and her women relatives. Marital violence, rape and child sexual abuse, war-related hyperstoicism, and the pernicious effects of a religious sect all warped her family history and fueled her lingering unease. She finds the Internal Family Systems model of therapy especially helpful in understanding her turbulent past and its effects upon her. Consisting largely of talking heads, her emotionally rich, simple yet realistic art effectively conveys time and place changes through shifts in coloring, and she differentiates a large cast of characters successfully throughout multiple generations of family history. A two-page bibliography at the end recommends help for readers.