Photo credit: Sarah Elizabeth
On a Tuesday evening in May, nearly a hundred guests gathered at a med spa near downtown Austin to celebrate something that rarely invites celebration: the breaking of silence.
There were aura photo booths, tarot card readings, and cupcakes topped with tiny dragonfly confections. Friends, readers, former colleagues, spiritual teachers, and members of Austin’s creative community moved through the space holding copies of My Mother Is a Dragonfly, Amy Scott Rooker’s debut memoir about childhood sexual abuse, grief, and the long journey back to herself.
Despite the subject matter, the evening did not feel heavy. It felt celebratory—less like a formal literary event than a gathering centered around honesty, survival, and return.
During a brief reading, Rooker spoke about trauma, survival, and the possibility of return.
“This book is about how we leave pieces of ourselves behind,” she told the crowd. “The version of ourselves we left behind never went anywhere. She’s been here all along, patiently waiting for us to come back.”
Photo credit: Sarah Elizabeth
Rooker described the dragonfly, a symbol tied to her mother after her death, as a metaphor for transformation. A creature that spends most of its life underwater before emerging into the light.
“What if we’re not lost at all?” Rooker asked. “What if we’re just moving through the dark, surviving the trials of our lives, until one day, something sleeping inside us stirs—calling us toward the light?”
The memoir traces Rooker’s path from high-functioning survival and corporate success through the unraveling that followed her mother’s death, including psychedelic experiences that transformed how she understood her past, herself, and the silence she’d carried for decades.
Photo credit: Sarah Elizabeth
Published earlier this month, My Mother Is a Dragonfly explores trauma, silence, forgiveness, and awakening. The book has already received national media attention, with meditation teacher and bestselling author Sharon Salzberg describing it as “an act of love,” and Seattle Books Review awarding it five stars.
For Rooker, the evening was never simply about a book launch. It marked a turning point—standing before friends, readers, former colleagues, and teachers to speak openly about the abuse she had carried in silence for decades and choosing, at last, to live from truth.
