By Taylor Smith

“I wait for my mother to haunt me as she promised she would; long to wake in the night with the familiar sight of her sitting at the end of my bed, to talk to her one more time, to feel that all the pieces have been put into place, the puzzle is solved, and I can rest.” – Sally Field

The public is invited to “An Afternoon with Sally Field” at Rider University in Lawrenceville on Sunday, October 27 at 1 p.m. The talk is presented by Penn Medicine Princeton Health as part of its Community Wellness programming. Early registration is $40 per person and includes a copy of Field’s memoir, In Pieces. Purchase tickets, here: https://bit.ly/35itbFA

In Pieces was released in September 2019 to rave reviews. The memoir details Field’s complicated relationship with her mother, sexual abuse suffered at the hands of her stepfather, and the cycle of insecurity, disempowerment, and anxiety that plagued her subsequent romantic relationships and early experiences with acting.

It took Field seven years to write In Pieces. The rawness of her prose stems from dealing with anger (at 71 years of age) that has spanned much of her teenage and adult life. Following the death of her mother, Field began to read journals she had kept since she was a young girl, for the first time since she composed the original entries. By her own admission, reading her own words and observing her repeated tendencies to discredit herself, her authority, and her own innate value, was eye-opening.

For those who feel they “know” Field from her acting roles and “girl-next-door” image, readers will be shocked to learn about the numerous traumas that Field has withstood. From sexual abuse and rape to an eating disorder, abortion at age 17, and a controlling relationship with Burt Reynolds, Field has some stories to tell.

In spite of such a platform, Field told The New York Times that she was unsure whether she actually wanted to publish In Pieces just days before the book’s release. “I didn’t know I had a voice,” she told interviewers.

Field said that after learning that she had gotten the role of Mary Todd Lincoln in Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, she made dinner for her mother and finally told her about the sexual abuse she had experienced by her stepfather. Following her mother’s death, Field recounts that she felt an intense urgency to communicate the pain that she had silently lived with. “Something was growing in me, this urgency that felt gangrenous and I couldn’t locate it. I could hardly breathe, I couldn’t settle down.”

“An Afternoon with Sally Field” promises to be a revealing and insightful event.

Rider University’s Student Recreation Center is located at 2083 Lawrenceville Road in Lawrenceville.

For more information, visit https://www.princetonhcs.org.