End of the Hour by Meghan Riordan Jarvis
Trauma therapist Meghan Riordan Jarvis honestly relays her personal journey with C-PTSD following the unexpected deaths of her parents in “End of the Hour: a Therapist’s Memoir”.
Written by Jade Adgate
The first thing I noticed about Meghan Riordan Jarvis’ book is that it is beautiful, both the cover and the marketing of the advance reader copy that I received in the mail. Nestled within the crinkly navy packing paper was this lovely text, a pair of fuzzy fleece socks, a journal, and a sticker of the cursive word, “enough”. Before I even cracked the cover, this book was an invitation to care for myself, as I am, right now.
This is also the point of the book, it turns out. In a candid and conversational tone, Meghan Riordan Jarvis tells her own story - a childhood marked with sudden and tragic death, a family atmosphere of quieting grief, how her personal healing journey led into her work as a therapist focusing on trauma treatment, and then ultimately, how the death of each of her parents triggered buried trauma and necessitated the support of in-patient recovery.
There are a few things that make this book incredibly unique and worth the read among the dozens of grief memoirs being published right now. Jarvis’ perspective as a therapist lends an insightful self-awareness that the reader is rarely offered a glimpse into. She also normalizes often shame-filled experiences that are ultimately more normal than not, from childhood trauma to witnessing the hardest parts of the end-of-life process. There is also a paradoxical bravery in reading the personal story of a therapist who openly falls apart in grief and asks for help to stitch herself back together.
So much of our experiences with these topics (trauma, death, grief, family relationships) are laced with pathology. Let yourself slip into Jarvis’ vivid storytelling, visit an Irish-Catholic family summering in their beach cottage and drop in on a hustling modern couple trying to stay afloat as their world is rocked by loss. In her personal story, you’ll find glimpses of your own, and be gently led to the essential truth that Jarvis fought hard to uncover: you are enough, just as you, to seek restoration. Put on your comfiest socks, pull out a fresh box of tissues, journal everything that comes up and let Jarvis’ walk you along the path to feeling “enough”, one story at a time.
