Up out of Egypt

Up out of Egypt is the personal story, an autobiography of Helen Marsh: Helen grew up in a family of much older siblings where she didn’t feel like she counted. She felt inferior, unloved and worthless. She hoped when she started school, her peers would give her what she didn’t experience at home. But as she didn’t do well academically, and her insecure nature didn’t attract her to others and there again she felt a misfit. A move from the country to the city caused more insecurity. All she wanted was to be popular, accepted by her peers and have fun. She found a way to popularity with the boys but the fun she was searching for literally left her “holding the baby”. Helen’s story tells of how she searched for love in all the wrong places, and in that search she didn’t find the love she was looking for but found heartbreak, emotional pain and grief. By the time she was 14, she became sick and when hospitalised it was discovered that she not only suffered from glandular fever, but that she was also pregnant. To cover her wrong she lied, telling her parents she had been raped. The police were called in and one lie led to another. Finally the truth of her promiscuous life came out. Up until the 70‘s it was was a disgrace to be pregnant outside of marriage. The popular TV series “Love Child” depicts this scenario well. A girl was considered a ‘bad girl’. She was either forced to marry the father or forced to live out her days of pregnancy in a home for unmarried mother’s where arrangement for the baby’s adoption was mothers. The law then stated there would be no contact for mother and baby ever again. Helen was sent to a home for unmarried mothers and the baby was adopted out. What pain and grief she suffered having to give up her first born. Sadly Helen didn’t learn from her hard lesson. Her story moves on. The deep desire to be loved found her once again in the same circumstances - this time to a man she loved and wanted to be married to. Her parents relented and gave their permission to marry. She was 16 years old. The marriage was turbulent in the early years, but it developed into a lasting loving relationship which has lasted till now, 56 years on. The reader will discover how that came about, and how Helen found emotional and spiritual peace in her life. The story includes information of the changes to the adoption laws in the 1980‘s and the search for a baby’s birth mother, the reconciliation of mother and daughter after 29 years apart and the journey that entailed. It wasn’t a happy ever after story but the two knew without a doubt they were meant to be together and so with patience, forgiveness, understanding, counselling they now live in a loving relationship. The end of the story will declare the strength to endure Helen had gained throughout her life, as she faced one more trial which is every mother’s nightmare.
Up out of Egypt covers many topics of interest in 2015, one of adoption and the effects of it and it seems there are few books available on the book shelves. Up out of Egypt covers teenage rebellion, depression, adoption, painful emotions of the adopted and adoptee also reconciliation of mother and baby, teenage marriage, troubled marriage, suicide and much more. Helens story is one of victory and endurance giving hope top the reader who can relate to her circumstances. Comments by readers are: A story of truth and reality, Gripping; couldn’t put it down; heartbreaking; Your story is so personal and individual yet at the same time so relevant to many women