Amen, Amen, Amen: Memoir of a Girl Who Couldn't Stop Praying (Among Other Things)

This book does an excellent job of letting the reader into the mind of a person with OCD. Abby Sher pulls no punches, as she traces the development of her disorder from a childhood trauma (sudden loss of her favorite aunt) through the onset of an ever-increasing list of rituals to try and "magically" ward off imagined disasters. As the title suggests, she focuses on prayer as a big part of these obsessive rituals. Since Abby happens to be Jewish, she repeats certain Jewish prayers over and over hundreds of times, but let me say here -- as a practicing Jew -- that the obsessive way she does this is not any more typical of Judaism than it would be of most other religions. Had she been a Catholic, she probably would have done the same thing with the rosary. I just found it easier to understand the basis of her obsessions because the rituals come from my own culture (one of the reasons I chose to read the book.) Other OCD rituals play a role as well. A child's travel game that she and her father used to play -- singing a certain song every time they saw a cement mixer truck -- became an obsessive REQUIREMENT whenever seeing such a truck, or else (she believed) it might crash or meet with some other disaster. Her pyschiatrist inadvertently adds to this list of "must do's" when she mentions that some people say a prayer whenever an ambulance goes by. Abby's father telling her how a blowout might happen to a tire leads her to pick up every possible piece of sharp trash (and later harmless paper as well) from the street. In short, ordinary everyday activities become a prison of obsessions. All the while, Abby becomes more and more fearful of offending God if she fails to do these things. And if somebody did get sick, have an accident or -- heaven forbid! -- die, she blamed herself for not saying enough prayers. One thing I did wonder about: Did her family ever talk about God as a loving, life-giving being? It does not seem so. Her family's Jewish identity appears to be more cultural than religious. Abby talks about going to the synagogue to say kaddish (prayer for the dead) for her father, and on Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), both of which are pretty heavy sad energy for a child. Was this ever balanced by the more joyful aspects of Judaism? She does not say. Oddly, she does focus on the idea that one should write "G-d" instead of "God" to avoid having to ever erase a name of God -- a very Orthodox Jewish practice. Yet her family clearly is not Orthodox. Apparently she just picked this up from somewhere and, like so many other things, it became an obsession, to the point that she would never write ANY two words whose beginnings and endings together might spell g-o-d (such as "go drink"), which is way out in left field as far as even very Orthodox Judaism is concerned. Another weird oddity is that she says the prayer "boray pri Diet Coke" which is a non-canonical variation of the prayer "boray pri hagafen" (who creates the fruit of th

Sher, Abby. "Amen, Amen, Amen: Memoir of a Girl Who Couldn't Stop Praying (Among Other Things), 2009. Life, Love and Loss Amos Lassen At the age of ten, Abby Sher's father and favorite aunt died and Abby used her own means of dealing with that. She began washing a lot, counting her steps, constantly kissing her dad's picture and collecting very sharp objects. Her next step was to become involved in prayer and by the time she reached high school, she would lock herself in her closet and prayed. She was afraid that if she didn't someone else she loved would die. Even though when she went to college she was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder, she was sure that her prayers and her relationship with God was not an illness but a cure. This is such a beautiful book that is sad and funny, creative, genuine and heart tugging--so much so that it was impossible for me to stop reading it until I finished and still then it haunted me. We get to see how the mind of a child makes sense of the world in which she lives and this is enlightening. She does heal eventually and she learns to love herself and to find where she fits in the world. Sher is courageous in telling her story and we are so lucky to have it. It is written beautifully and is filled with passion and honesty. While this could have been a totally sad story it is not. Rather it is a very intelligent look at a woman who has had to deal with psychological problems. We are with her when she sinks into pain and we are with her when she finally comes out and I found myself cheering for her. She has endured a lot and she has come through and now loves the world. We should all love her back.

Wow. Such skilled writing! What I found most compelling about this book is the subtle way Sher's voice grows up as the book progresses. She recaptures the confusion of her 10-year-old self trying to fit huge, adult issues into her kid worldview, then shifts just as easily into teen angst, and again into more self-aware adulthood. And throughout it all, even though the various OCD rituals, bad relationships and anorexia crisis, she maintains a stellar sense of humor. AND she avoids painting anyone in her life as cruel or evil. AND it doesn't have a magical completely happy ending. So this is no maudlin "My Struggle with [X]" memoir--it's a smart, thoughtful book about a woman who just happens to deal with some big psychological issues. And it made me look at my own little compulsive habits and how they affect my relationships.

Amen, Amen Amen is a brilliant, creative, genuine, and heart-wrenching account of Abby Sher's experience with life, love, and loss. Rarely do we as readers see so clearly how a child's mind works to make sense of the complex world around her. It is a must read for anyone who has struggled to understand the ways of the world - meaning it is a must read for just about everyone.

"Amen, Amen, Amen" is the memoir of Abby Sher's OCD life. The rituals she created to survive by lasted from the age of ten into her thirties. She tries to hold her world together, but she loses her friends, her dreams, and her family members in the process. She continues to believe she can control the acts of the world and that SHE has caused her father and her aunt to die, added to a list of others she "kills" day by day through her negligence to her rituals. But she cannot obsess her demons away, not even by tripling her rituals, not by anorexia nor by cutting. Her mother is both loving and baffled. They fall into a pattern of a love-hate relationship. Her therapists, her boyfriends, a girlfriend she finally confides in. . . no one can find a key to help her, and she is delighted to keep her secret self hidden away and to distort attempts to help her. How she begins to heal is a miracle of learning to love herself and forgive herself and to find her place in life in a very imperfect world. This is an intimate and unflinching portrait of mental illness. Sher writes with passion and honesty. The hurt is visceral and almost tactile. It hurts to read this book, and yet it is impossible to stop reading.