Part I of an Interview with Cynthia Ruchti, author of "All My Belongings"

Part I of An interview with Cynthia Ruchti, Author of All My Belongings

Some people are raised by doting parents in a loving home where they have a safe place to grow, to belong. Others come from homes broken by an absentee parent, hurtful words, regrets, promises not kept or a myriad of other sins. In All My Belongings , author Cynthia Ruchti tells the story of a young woman who feels out of place within her own family and must learn to live in the shadow of guilt and shame that haunts her as a result of her father’s crimes. A new life and a new identity can’t free her from a past that refuses to go away.

Q: Your books — both fiction and non-fiction — tend to have a strong personal tie to them. What from your own personal experiences do you bring to All My Belongings?

The heart of the author comes out in everything he or she writes. My books are a blend of emotions or experiences I’ve known and a heightened empathy for friends and family who’ve walked these paths. From those very real challenges, I draw on imagination to create stories that aren’t afraid to tackle tough subjects, but with what I hope is an embracing and bracing tenderness and compassion. That’s definitely true with All My Belongings. While I didn’t have the main character’s embarrassment about her parents and where/who she came from, I’ve known others whose families make their lives miserable.

Where I do connect deeply with the story is caregiving for someone in her final days of life. My mother was what we call “actively dying” for four years and entered a residence hospice for what we all assumed were the final two or three days of her life. She endured another nine months of the dying process before she went Home. All she craved was my time. Her need seemed so familiar. When I was a child, she worked nights and slept days. It took a toll on her, on all of us. Her devotion to nursing was strong, and she was good at it. I didn’t always understand or appreciate her exhaustion or why she couldn’t attend a school function or have the kind of time for me I hoped for. I knew she loved me, but I craved her presence. Then, in the end, that’s all she wanted from me. I know I’m not alone in having had to work through and set aside my past longings in order to give her what her heart needed. Celebrating the tender moments and loving through the ugliness of the natural processes of dying made an indelible impression on me. Dying is an inescapable part of living. Figuring out how to do it well, whether the person leaving the earth or the one left behind, is an intricate dance that is beautiful when mastered, but clumsy when the lessons are ignored.

Q: The lead character, Becca, struggles with feeling like she’s never really belonged anywhere. Isn’t that something we all deal with at some time or another? Is there anything that makes Becca’s situation different than most?

Women make up the majority of my readership. I have a theory that we women never completely leave junior high. We weave in and out of experiences that challenge our sense of belonging. Sometimes we feel disenfranchised, even in a marriage or with our nuclear family. Work situations can throw us into another cauldron of confusion about where we fit. As readers take Becca’s journey with her, they’ll find that our place to belong doesn’t always look like we thought it would. Our assumptions get trumped by the surprises into which we feel our soul settling. “Ahhh. This is it. This is where I belong.”

Sometimes as we gain from what we survive, we discover what we were seeking was ours all along, like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. Our life strips away the distractions so we see the One who created a belonging place for us that can’t be taken away by how we feel or what happens to us or where we came from.

We’re all misfits, in some way — at church, at home, in our neighborhood, among our friends, in our extended family. There’s something about us that creates a sense of restlessness on some level, even when life is perking along. We find ways to adjust around our “misfitness.” The word “achieve” is interesting applied to belonging. I think in many ways it isn’t a pursuit as much as it is a discovery. Discovering where we fit in God’s scheme makes the other puzzle pieces fit for all of us.

Q: Have you ever had to separate yourself from a family member or friend because of something that happened in the past?

I’ve known people who have had to, but I haven’t personally been in that position. I come from an exceptional family history. Throughout the years I’ve listened to the heartbreaking stories of others who were abandoned, ignored or neglected, and whose parents acted as if they had no children even though they did.

Q: There are a number of ways you could have written about a young woman trying to escape the sins of her father. What made you choose the crime of euthanasia?

The numbers of novels dealing with physical or sexual abuse are many. But sometimes what makes us ashamed of our past isn’t related to that kind of abuse or takes abuse to yet another despicable level. I wanted the story to explore what it‘s like to have a parent’s reputation taint not just a daughter’s life, but the community’s. I needed the character to wrestle with something different from other books on the market, and yet the emotions are in many ways the same as any kind of barrier between the heart of a child and the heart of a parent.

In this case, her father’s acts had a more far-reaching effect on others, not only in what he did, but the attention on the trial and the press, all of which made it more difficult to escape the spotlight. Her father’s choices went against her own convictions, but how would she respond when those convictions were put to the ultimate test?

Learn more about Cynthia Ruchti and her books at www.cynthiaruchti.com . Readers can also become a fan on Facebook (cynthiaruchtireaderpage) or follow her on Twitter (@cynthiaruchti).