What lies beneath your mask?

Kimberley Langford recently rewrote the introduction to her book, The Evolving Woman Series Daily Reflections, What Lies Beneath the Mask, to reflect everything she’s endured since the original book came out in 2003. Photo courtesy of Kimberley Langford

Kimberley Langford uses book to overcome trauma

By Amber McLinden, Features Editor

Healing from personal trauma can be done in many different ways. For Kimberly Langford, she did it by writing a book.

“My marriage had been rough,” Langford explained in her press release. “As my ex-husband was very controlling and emotionally and mentally abusive. I was undergoing some counselling with the Women’s Shelter in Calgary, and had resumed painting.”

“One day, my counsellor came to my home for one of our sessions and she noticed the paintings I had created profiling many different women. She saw the expressions on their faces and commented that those same expressions and emotions resembled what I was going through at the time.”

That’s how she came up with the idea to write a book about the many different masks women wear throughout their life. But it isn’t the only thing she had to deal with. She’s also dealt with recovering as someone addicted to alcohol. In 2007, her life hit a turning point when she was hit by a bus. That’s when she decided to rewrite and re-release her book under a different name: from The Evolving Woman Series Daily Reflections to The Evolving Woman Series Daily Reflections, What Lies Beneath the Mask.

“When I was drinking I often portrayed women who came across as the hopeless woman or the helpless woman or the woman who wasn’t as strong as she could be because of the alcohol abuse,” she tells the Reflector about her connection to the book. “That was a whole other dynamic as well in my life and now that that is gone I can work more on my strengths and bring those out.”

Photo courtesy of Kimberley Langford

Her book details the story of different women connected to different emotions. In it, you can find the hopeless woman, the healthy woman, the controlling woman, the dreaming woman and many more. They all share a part of Langford, who says they were who she was at the time or who she wanted to be.

“I was living with a lot of fear,” Langford says of the time she wrote the book. “There was anger there too, approval seeking, and that’s not healthy, at all, either. But I wanted to be better, be somebody else, and to portray that to the world and to be that for myself and for my son as well.”

She explains writing the book, and the updated version, helped her overcome the experiences she’s had in her life. She hopes people can read her book and have the capacity to help them as well.

“What I really want women to do is to look inside of themselves and see what they are portraying to the world,” she explains. “Often times what we portray to the world is more of what we attract. I’ve found in my own life when I was portraying the helpless, hopeless woman I attracted a lot of people who were very manipulative and would come across as, ‘oh, I can help you’ but they had ulterior motives where as when I’m the stronger woman I don’t attract that. I attract people in my life who yes, can help me move forward but they’ve got my best interests at heart.”

Langford’s book is available on Amazon.ca as a kindle-compatible book and is currently being prepared for print release.