Educated

I recently read Tara Westover's memoir, Educated.  I found it very moving, eye-opening and challenging.  It amazes me how we are formed and bonded by family relationships as we are growing up.  We develop in this bond an identity.  If we hold to this identity we will be loved by family.  But what if the identity we are given is not who we really are inside, and as we grow up we begin to sense a split.  Tara's loyalty to family guaranteed love, and a place to call home.  But such loyalty came at the price of not becoming who she was meant to be.  I find that even now, as I sense some kind of shift in my life, the relationships I have, may not be open to the shift.  People tend to want us to remain the same because change affects relationships.  Sometimes I find myself trying to be what others want or expect, but it invariably rubs up against "becoming."  People ask, "When are we going to get back to...?" as if I am going back to whatever, simply because that is where and how they know me.  I found the book very powerful.