What *The Color Purple* means to me, and why it’s forever precious

(This is a post about *The Color Purple* so be aware of trigger warnings for rape, CSA and domestic abuse. But also joy – loads of joy!)

Yesterday I reconnected with this old friend and it felt sooo wonderful I wanted to share with others who would get it.

For years Alice Walker’s *The Color Purple* has been an absolute favorite of mine. I’ve read it at least 25 times over the years. People used to ask me what it was that allowed a poor, white girl in 1990’s SoCal to connect so hard with a book about a poor, black, heavily abused woman in the early-mid 1900’s south, and I could never fully express it. I’d try to explain the human connection, but because no one likes to think about girls living as household drudges, raising other people’s children at way too young an age and familial rape as something that happens today, they’d minimize my examples. (Plus, I suppressed the rapes I endured once they were finally over, so even **I** didn’t fully understand my connection). But that book was the first time my pain felt seen by another person. Nor did it hurt that when I first read it I was about the same age as Celie at the start of the book.

Sadly, when I started going through trauma therapy in my 30’s, I lost my connection to it for some reason. I’d try to read it and it’d feel like a complete stranger – someone to whom I had no emotional connection. I’ve tried maybe 8 times in the last 10 years with no success, and I’d end up putting the book aside. But I still MISSED it. Lately, I’d been thinking of giving it another try when I had a realization: I was emotionally closing myself off to the early parts of the book that are the roughest for me because I was afraid to re-emerse myself in the pain of that world. Once I realized that I knew I was going to have to allow myself to feel some of the pain Celie was going through in the first act of the book. Not all of it, but a safe amount. I also realized that listening to it as an audiobook rather than rereading a print copy might help a little to change the emotional dynamic, since it was the print version I’d always read through.

So, with these ideas in mind, I pulled up a copy read by Alice Walker herself. And as I reached a certain point near the end I was suddenly overwhelmed by feelings of joy and fondness and unexpectedly burst into tears. Because it felt like I had found a dear old friend again, and our visit was almost over. But my experiment was a success and I’m so happy for it! I’d missed reading this beautiful book and now I know that I can do it again. I also thought it was somewhat poetic that this latest reading happened when I am now close to Celie’s age at the END of the book. When I first read it I couldn’t have imagined a day when someone like Celie could find a sort of peace and happiness through an acceptance of her life’s traumas – rather than the constant depression and seething rage I always felt when I was young – but here I am, a middle-aged woman who has found her own form of love and happiness and acceptance and safety and it felt **so good** to get to share THAT part of my life with this old friend, as well.

It was a wonderful moment, with a wonderful book, and I just wanted to share it with people who would understand.❤️