Adytum: A place within the soul which should be filled with awe and reverence for being alive.

"His sky was growing dark with his own private shadows. It was like watching children playing on a beach and seeing a storm building on the horizon. Onlookers cringed, knowing that the tempest would overtake the happy children in minutes."

In this heartfelt memoir, I finally admit that my adytum is a painful and fractured place.

Adytum is a history of my life lived too near to the realities of post traumatic stress disorder.

I grew up in the shadow of PTSD-in my father's shadow. I absorbed his sense of urgency when he tackled the pitfalls of living an ordinary life-while his mind was not whole.

If there was ever a human issue which needs to be humanized-that issue is PTSD. The differences my father made in my early development were sometimes far from positive. And for years I lived what I thought was my life when in fact, my life was controlled by a desperate puppeteer.

It is my hope that the revelations within this book lead sufferers of PTSD toward wholeness. There are answers here.

Mary Cools