December 7, 2022
From Sorrow to Sparkle:
A Guide to Take Back Your Power With Love and Light
Norma Eckert
Aviva Publishing (2022)
ISBN: 978-1-63618-188-2
New Book Reveals How We Can Move from Pain to Reclaiming Our Power
Norma Eckert’s new book From Sorrow to Sparkle: A Guide to Take Back Your Power With Love and Light is a dynamic mix of memoir and personal development written for any woman who is trying to rise above experiencing feelings of unworthiness and anxiety. Norma Eckert shares her personal story of growing up in a dysfunctional and sometimes abusive home, how she sought love, and finally, how she learned to love herself.
Norma knows not everyone finds support and love early in life, and that absence can lead to problems when they grow older and try to live normally and have healthy relationships. A healthy adult foundation is a must, but a difficult childhood can cause that foundation to be faulty. Norma has been there, and she hopes by telling her story, she can help others in similar situations to find what she has found.
At the center of the book is overcoming the feeling that one is unworthy. Norma eventually found a process that helped her to cope with her past rather than trying to repress it and to learn to love and respect herself. Through the process she developed, she also learned gratitude for what she had, reverence for life, and respect for others’ journeys.
At the heart of Norma’s story is her relationship with her father. Most of her feelings of unworthiness resulted from how he continually told her she was stupid or not good enough. She states: “My father’s words would cut like a knife, just as the broken shards of the window cut easily through my skin. His language grew worse and harsher the older we got, and the invisible scars that still lay on my heart were much more painful when they happened.” In addition, Norma watched her dad mistreat her mother and sisters. At an early age, she even intervened to stop her father from abusing her mother. She tried to report the abuse to the authorities, but it was the 1970s, and she was told they could only intervene if she got the signatures of both parents. How could she possibly get her abuser to agree to have someone else stop him from abusing her? Instead, she had to learn how to live with the abuse.
But in time, Norma grew up and began to see her father in a new way. She states, “Today, I understand that my father was deeply in pain.” While she gave up expecting her father to change, she learned to accept him for who he was.
Norma also had other experiences that made her feel unworthy. Growing up Catholic, she went to a school where she feared being disciplined by the nuns. She also had to fear students tattling on each other. She got no help from her parents in learning to maneuver life’s obstacles. They simply told her to “Suck it up.” No one even educated her about sex, leading to some real surprises when she had her first period. The result was that Norma learned to compartmentalize her pain and distract herself from it. She states, “In the years to come, I protected myself by turning inward, keeping my voice wrapped up in a pretty container.”
Eventually, Norma came to wonder when and how humans were taught to be abusive. She grew to realize the roles that gender, religion, and tradition play in family and social dynamics and a culture’s ideology. Whatever the causes, she decided to adopt a mantra: We are equipped to go against the grain and develop new behaviors in our world. Witnessing the hypocrisy of people who go to church but do not carry out Jesus’ teachings in their personal lives helped her to separate what is religious from what is spiritual. She also questioned why some people’s reactions were out of proportion with the problem itself. Did they need to have tantrums like a toddler denied a cookie when they didn’t get their way? She learned to adopt a better way.
Turning inward allowed Norma to become more in tune with who she was beyond her environment. She learned to find peace in nature, which helped lead her to inner peace. She learned to pray—for healing, for forgiveness—and she learned to forgive and develop gratitude. She also came to believe that her parents suffered from a fear of change or what was different. They weren’t interested in traveling, but Norma discovered that she loved to travel. It connected her to other people who were different from her, and it gave her new perspectives.
Every page of From Sorrow to Sparkle is filled with lessons we can learn from Norma’s story. From overcoming dysfunction and fear to learning what makes us sparkle, the process of growing and changing is a journey. Norma offers many tools for the journey from advice on eating healthy foods to exercise and meditation, and from learning how to set boundaries to applying the power of forgiveness.
The journey is usually not easy. Norma reminds us that the old adage that sometimes we will take two steps forward, then one back, is true. She states: “You will have times when you are soaring through life, which will give you a feeling of calmness, relief, and contentment. But there will be other times when mistakes break way into past behaviors, and self-loathing patterns will creep back up into your heart and mind before you even recognize it. However, the longer you use tools, the easier it becomes to catch yourself when you start to fall.”
From Sorrow to Sparkle offers plenty of tools for the journey and hope that the sun will sparkle again, no matter how much sorrow you may have experienced. I applaud Norma for sharing her story so others can benefit from her guidance and inspiration.
For more information about Norma Eckert and From Sorrow to Sparkle, visit www.FromSorrowtoSparkle.com.
— Tyler R. Tichelaar, PhD and award-winning author of Narrow Lives and The Best Place
