Perfect
A Path to Love, Forgiveness & Transformation
Perfect is a spiritual memoir concerned with healing from generational traumas.
Judi Miller’s moving memoir Perfect covers how her generational trauma and inexplicable fears were healed.
Born in Trinidad to parents of Chinese and Caribbean descent and raised from early childhood in the United States, Miller’s lineage includes ancestors who were known for their “heightened abilities.” She, too, was able to see spirits and sense energies from the time she was a small child. She grew up fearing the dark, and was tormented by visions of sexual assault. Coupled with the fact that Miller was born with eleven fingers, and as part of an ethnic minority, these circumstances led to her being mocked and victimized at school.
Miller told herself stifling stories about her differences, deciding that she could not speak her truth, and that she was, and always would be, incomplete. Her book covers the tumultuous years that led to her personal and ancestral healing. She was guided by intuition, but also helped by unexpected people and situations. Eventually, she was able to trace her fears (and a health condition) to a shocking family secret, the effects of which had been passed down to her at birth. Still, she came away with the conviction that human beings should be “unconditionally loved and accepted for who we are … never condemned.”
Sparing details are used to flesh Miller’s story out; however, the descriptions of treatments that Miller received from a healer, Diana, are too long and repetitive. A serious surgery generates some fresh interest later in the book; it involves the solution to a generational mystery, clarifying previous points. And throughout, the book makes note of the lasting, destructive power of the stories people tell themselves, revealing how lies and secrets keep such tales festering. Indeed, it says, creating and living out an inauthentic story has dire consequences.
The book arrives at a perspective in which the universe is “a complicated, interconnected web of events and energies, all of it perfectly designed.” Its references support its arguments via invocations of multiple spiritual traditions and luminaries, and it is filled with keen suggestions (such as to wait ninety minutes for reactive emotions to dissipate). Useful reflections, questions, and exercises come at the end of each of its three parts.
Miller proves receptive to multiple new viewpoints and possibilities in Perfect, a spiritual memoir about the effects of generational trauma—and about ways forward from it.
Reviewed by
Kristine Morris
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
