Title: Things Fall Apart
Author: Hilary Neiman
Rating: 5 stars
I found this book to be highly engaging and interesting. I also felt myself empathizing with the author. Everyone makes mistakes. Hilary Neiman's were very big ones. There is no denying that, and she vehemently repeats this over and over throughout her story. She makes no excuses for what she did and makes it very clear that the only thing she wants the reader to know is the truth. As with any controversial topic in our world today, there are people who will believe whatever they read and won't bother to do their own research, to dig a little deeper, and to learn what the real facts are.
This woman is not a monster. She is not a babyseller. She was a lawyer who specialized in adoption and surrogacy, a field that lawyers rarely solely specialize in. She wanted to help people who couldn't have children become parents. A small handful of her cases originated from a certain surrogacy agency that, initially unbeknownst to her, was running an illegal operation by hiring surrogate mothers to become pregnant before parents were involved.
This is the point where it is important to remind the reader that Miss Neiman did not know this at the onset. When she eventually did learn these details - that was when she made her mistake. She should have done more; she allowed herself to be lulled into a false sense of complacency by her state's bar association, who told her not to worry about it. She fully admits that she didn't do enough to investigate and get to the bottom of the situation then. She greatly regrets the decisions she made during that time.
What I find endearing in this book is the effort that she makes to help others and find herself, both during and after her imprisonment at Atwood Federal Prison Camp. While in prison, she begins to write a book to help others like her, who were completely unprepared for what prison was to bring. With little information out there about what the real prison experience is like, she and one of her fellow inmates decided to write something to help others like themselves prepare for what is to come when they find out that they are destined to spend some portion of their lives in prison. She also wrote a children's book to help explain a parent's absence in prison to their children. While in prison and during her home confinement, she did a lot of soul-searching and thought, in order to better herself and figure out where, fundamentally, she went wrong. She made the effort to change her life and make sure her moral compass and outlook on life do not again lead her astray. Everyone makes bad decisions, some worse than others. Inevitably, she will still end up making mistakes, just like we all do. However, she is doing her very best to make sure that she, and others who may need her help, do not make the kind of mistakes that upended her life.
I would recommend this book to anyone. It really opened my eyes to reality and reminded me of the important things in life. Never take your life, your family, friends, work, and passions for granted. Do things and find success for the right reasons, not simply to be successful. Happiness in life is found in the journey, not in reaching the goal of being successful in and of itself. Goals come and go. Once you've reached yours, what is left? Take each day at a time, and make sure you're really living. Help others, not just yourself. In helping others, you might actually find that you are helping yourself. This isn't me going on a rant because I feel like it. These are all things that I learned from Hilary Neiman's story. Read it, and you can learn these things too. Put aside everything you think you know about the author. She tells the truth about what happened, how she dealt with it, and how she plans to deal with the rest of her life. Despite what started it all, it is an amazing book. Keep an open mind, and read it to see for yourself.
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