Kerry Dashnaw, a former Santa Clarita Valley resident and teacher at Newhall Elementary School, hosted a book talk and Q&A in collaboration with Raising the Curtain Foundation at Newhall Family Theatre on Tuesday night.
Her memoir, “Yearning to be Free,” discusses her life becoming a nun, her experiences while being a nun, leaving the convent, and eventually becoming a teacher.
At the beginning of the talk, Dashnaw walked through her upbringing – she was the oldest of 10 children, saying she grew up in a very religious household and later spent 14 years as a nun.
“My memoir chronicles the following: my quest for God, my idealism as a teenager, meaning that conservative order of nuns who I truly believed would lead me to an intimacy with God, the gradual disillusionment and abuse that I endured, a battle to regain control of my life, reconstructing my life, finding a whole new purpose, and falling in love,” Dashnaw said.
Dashnaw said she decided to write her story after hearing a quote by Sylvia Plath that said, “I write because a voice within me will not be silent.”
She said she rewrote the book multiple times to make sure it was perfect. Dashnaw said she had her husband read it, her next-door neighbor read it, and she also read it.
The first time she tried writing her book, she recalled the experience of writing to be too difficult to do, beginning to question her decision.
“So, I began writing thoughts, memories. Ideas, reflections, and Peter’s (Dashnaw) a retired English teacher, he says, ‘Write an outline.’ So, I wrote the outline about all these points, and I just started writing. And I wrote about 50% of the book, and it was so painful,” Dashnaw said.
At one point during the writing process, Dashnaw recruited her husband, Peter, to help write the final two chapters of the book to mimic a he-said she-said conversation on how they got together.
“I would read something to him and I’d say, ‘This is what I’m trying to say. I need a word, I need a sentence,’ and we brainstorm it. I can go through now and find all his sentences in the book. So, the book is now finished,” Dashnaw said.
After the talk, Kerry and Peter did a Q&A of frequently asked questions that the audience had before Kerry read another one of her books.
