Unshattered: Surviving My Mother's 123 Personalities and Transforming a Legacy of Abuse

What happens when your mother isn't one person, but 123? In this extraordinary memoir, Emma Churchman recounts growing up as the eldest child of a woman diagnosed in the 1980s with one of the most extreme cases of multiple personality disorder, now known as dissociative identity disorder. Emma never knew which version of her mother would appear: the playful child, the raging demon, or the suicidal depressive. While her mother cycled through alters too young or too unstable to parent, Emma became the family's anchor, raising her three younger brothers in a home shaped by trauma, addiction, mental illness, and generational violence. Her childhood was a landscape of chaos: a mother locked in a padded room, a homeless father, a child asking for a bodyguard, and a daughter left to pick up the pieces. Yet this is not only a story of survival. Emma's journey eventually led her to become a trauma chaplain and successful entrepreneur. With raw honesty and hard-won insight, she shows how even the deepest wounds can become a source of wisdom. For readers of *Educated* and *The Glass Castle*, *Unshattered* asks a fundamental question: Are we defined by genetics and environment, or can we Read more