Publication Date: October 8, 2024
Sleep like Starfish chronicles how a couch-surfing, disassociated teenage high school dropout with debilitating chronic illness, a constant loop of intrusive thoughts, and a haunting abandonment wound goes on to marry an underage musician with a fake ID and become a loving, responsible mother of two who graduates from college with high honors.
Rachelle Atkins not only examines the way childhood traumas manifest in the physical body, but also how a child who feels like “a body with no skin” can become a woman who lives with a middle-finger faith, believing that she is seen and held by something bigger than her tiny human self, even when her anxiety rumbles and her body acts like a traitor. Holding the tension between the bad that was and the good that is and can be, this memoir is a turnabout tale of discovering self-worth and learning to heal a dysregulated nervous system by coming to terms with a traumatic past, imparting levity whenever possible, and cultivating a deep sense of belief.
Rachelle Atkins gives us a raw retelling of what seems like every detail of surviving a life filled with disappointment and chronic illness. Sleep Like Starfish is the memoir in which she lays it all bare.
Atkins stated within her work that the decision to write this was to be therapeutic and that it led her to wonder how much grief and trauma affected her immune system. She makes it clear through her details that she has suffered greatly. She chronicles her life from childhood to adulthood, describing many, many events that left her feeling abandoned and unworthy.
As the reader, I felt respect for Atkins’ sense of survival and her vulnerability to record so many painful moments. Unfortunately, the writing was chaotic; events and timelines often changed mid-sentence. Flashbacks are frequently used in memoirs, but the tangents seemed more like a need to tell every detail or connection without a reflection of the necessity of the detail and how it would affect the flow to the reader.
Sleep Like Starfish chronicles details of a young woman’s tumultuous personal history and her need for belonging.Â
Rachelle Atkins received a BA in creative writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC, and is a member of Charlotte Lit, NC Writers’ Network, and Charlotte Writers Club. She lives in Charlotte with her musician hubby, Jason, and hound dogs Pearl and Bernice. When not working her day job in residential construction or tagging along with her husband to gigs, you can find this empty nester stalking her daughter, Avis, in Asheville, or her son, Brady, in Wilmington.
