Boiling a Frog Slowly

​Author: Cathy Park Kelly
Publisher: Karavan Press
Reviewer: Nancy Richards
Someone once explained to me the frog in increasingly hot water concept - that he won’t notice till he literally boils to death. I remember being horrified that such an idea could have been put to the test – poor frog, for heaven’s sake.
More shocking though is the thought that such a concept could apply to a human being – but seems it can.  Despite an increasingly hot water relationship, Cathy Park Kelly, hung on in for eight tortuous years with a man she 

calls here Karl. Her book, a vivid recall of the undermining, violent and over-heated treatment she tolerated, just made me want to weep for her. And lash out at the perp.
The slow rising temperature analogy is an apt one. Things started sweet, romantic, fun even – play pillow fights. But with the wisdom of hindsight, she describes the warning signs, like watermarks. The cruel teasing, the disproportionately angry outbursts, the accusations, the manipulative, psychological language designed to lay blame – ‘You are pulling on me’ a recurring chant. As things heat up, there’s hair pulling, a first glancing blow, harder blows to the skull where bruises don’t show, and trying to cover up where they do. It’s dark and devious stuff. One can only assume that the man has serious psychological problems. Though the damage he inflicted makes one disinclined to feel much sympathy.
But the learning lies in how Cathy responded – forgiving, excusing, accommodating, self-blaming, trying, lying – to herself and to others. Eventually out of desperation, retreating to sleep in the car, driving around the streets at night, agonizing. All this while holding down a job helping juvenile offenders, trying to write a book about the experience and putting on a brave, if weary, sometimes battle scarred, face.
Mercifully she does finally climb out of the ‘hot pot’ relationship. So what helped with the healing?  Journaling, which in part gave her the insight to share this story. That and what she took from the writing groups she’s been part of. Expressive, I found, is her line, ‘Memory is like a basket filled with beads…some are shiny from being picked up often…unchanging, fixed in our life story…others have fallen to the dusty bottom of the basket…but they can be retrieved…polished up once more to a glossy shine.’
Cathy crystalizes all the lessons in the last section of the book, called What I Know Now. She cites ‘Learning a new vocabulary’, ‘How red flags can look like green flags’, ironically how unhelpful self-help books can be and ‘Lying because I couldn’t face the truth.’ Her happy ending (thank the lord there is one), includes Biodanza dancing, a healthy new relationship and a small boy – plus the opportunity to finally be the sunny, giving person she clearly always was. ​