Natasha Marks: I’m living, I’m loving, I’m laughing again

Natasha Marks promises that her next book will be hilarious.

The yet to be titled publication,{{more}} in which she intends to document her experiences as a teacher, is halfway done, but her focus right now is the promotion of her first piece of work: ‘When Silence Speaks’, which is nowhere near funny.

“This one is sad,” Marks admitted last Friday, July 29, as she spoke to SEARCHLIGHT while signing copies of the book during a book launch and signing at Jujube Bookstore on Grenville Street.

The book details her spiral into depression and gradual recovery, following the tragic death of her 37-year-old husband Ricky Marks.

On the afternoon of January 21, 2009, Marks and Alliston Maloney lost their lives when the truck in which they were travelling crashed over an embankment while driving in the direction of Georgetown.

According to Marks, the publication was not intended to be a book, but when she started putting her thoughts to paper, she just could not stop.

“I wrote poems, but then what I went through, a poem would not have been long enough, so I started writing and that’s it.”

“I started just a few months after my husband died. I wrote and stopped. It took me about a year to get to this stage. It was emotionally draining.”

The end result of her efforts is a book that has been described as ‘brutally honest’, ‘a page turner’ and ‘one of the best locally authored books in a long time’.

In the 39 page, 36 chapter book, the mother of a ten-year-old daughter and an eight-year-old son writes openly about receiving the news that her husband had got into an accident, his death, burial and the pain.

She also highlights other personal issues that she faced, which made the loss of her husband even more unbearable, including situations with family members, ‘friends,’ and the businesses that her husband had been involved in before his passing.

In her book she wrote: “My husband’s previous world challenged me. I was as a shrub on the forest floor, trying to reach the emergent layer…. My phones rang and the bills screamed…. I was a financially crippled, emotionally drained, grieving wreck on the verge of losing my sanity…. Each day gave birth to colorful challenges. Some force, it seemed, emailed a daily list of things-to-go-wrong. I feared each day and its accompanying issues.”

A geography teacher the Girls’ High School, Marks admitted in her book that some inner peace returned to her when she turned her attention to God.

“From the first time I was driven to my knees, my life began to change…. It’s not that the huge waves miraculously stopped approaching… But I sailed through the crashing storm waves knowing that with God, all things are possible, and I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me and who is able to do exceedingly, abundantly above all that I can ask for or imagine…. I found a friend in Jesus. A friend who will never let me down, never disappoint me, never reveal my secrets, never leave my side, and will never give up on me,” she wrote.

That, accompanied by the love of her children Shari and Joshua, along with support from other persons in her lives, helped the widow (she does not like that word) to realize that she had to ‘let go of the past and embrace the future’.

At the book signing, Marks said that she wanted her readers to understand that what happened to her can happen to any woman, and although she had at one point lost faith in humanity, she and her children are moving on.

“I just feel that I was brave.

“God had mercy on me (and) I’m moving on with my life.

“I’m living, I’m loving, I’m laughing again. Life goes on. I believe that all things work together for good for those that trust in God.”