When Helena Kidd came upon her mother's Greek handwritten diary and had it had translated to English, it was initially only for benefit of her family.
But eight years later, she felt her mother's story was too important not to share with a wider audience. This led her to rewrite sections, edit and improve upon the story.
The result is When the Past Awakens: A Mother's Pain, her account of Maria Avraam's real and brutally honest account of her life and thoughts.
And it comes straight from the heart.
For Maria, life was a constant battle of the mind and spirit, enduring mental and physical abuse from an arranged and forced marriage to a stranger.
Arriving in Australia from her village in Cyprus presented even more challenges. She found herself alone, a deserted wife, with three small children to raise, no money, no schooling, no career prospects and no English-language skills
Against the odds, she triumphs and proves to be a survivor. It is a story about not giving up, even when the psychological and physical pain was excruciating.
It is also her daughter's story. Helena shares further insight and creates a bigger picture for the reader of the family's life in 1960s and '70s.
"Today, women are still the silent victims just as Maria was. It still happens, so her story is very relatable in today's society and other cultures," she says.
The book also takes readers back to a time when Australia was just getting a new lease of life with its immigration, and its workforce and economy were just starting to grow.
The book gives readers an insight into someone's else life from another time, to feel happy that a mother ended up with the best life even without a man by her side, but with the best love of all, her children.
- When the Past Awakens: A Mother's Pain (Xlibris AU), by Maria Avraam and Helena Kidd. RRP $16.41 (paperback), $54.99 (hardcover), $5.49 (Kindle) via Amazon and Barnes & Noble
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