Psych Central today mentioned a Men's Health article written by Adam Duritz, of Counting Crows fame. It caught my eye because, in it, Adam talks about his struggles with dissociation, something that I have had problems with in the past, and something I don't tend to see written about very often, outside of the more obvious cases of multiple personality disorder. (Which is a form of dissociative disorder, but one on the far end of the spectrum that starts with simple things like highway hypnosis)
I was glad to see someone writing about something that was very similar to what I experienced, shutting down during difficult or stressful times:
This was not depression. This was not workaholism. I have a fairly severe mental illness that makes it hard to do my job -- in fact, makes me totally ill suited for my job. I have a form of dissociative disorder that makes the world seem like it's not real, as if things aren't taking place. It's hard to explain, but you feel untethered.
I agree, it is hard to explain. If you've never felt like this, I've always described it as the difference between something happening to you, and watching it happen on TV to someone else. When you have this disorder, you don't see any difference between those two things.
Thank you Adam, for having the courage to talk about it publicly!
(ed. Another review from our English friend, who adds: you can still read the intro on Amazon's British site, don't know if the American side has the same;
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Altar-Story-Homosexual-Catholic-church/dp/1844880397/ref=pd_ys_iyr3)
Though we’ve read and watched a lot of newspaper and documentary reports on the subject, I find it hard to relate to religiously organised, systematic child abuse as happened in the Catholic Church in either Ireland or elsewhere in the world, if that wasn't the specific circumstance of your abuse then it takes books like these to even give you an idea.
However that does not limit the book’s potential audience at all, giving a firsthand victim’s-eye view of what such abuse can do to a previously solid and unquestioning faith. What Altar Boy does show is that the indecent assault end of the abuse spectrum can become just as damaging as the more extreme kind as depicted in Cry Silent Tears by Jo Peters.
However, Madden didn’t let himself remain a victim, the book depicts his taking on the Church with the help of the media including The British Sunday Times newspaper but, once the legal action was done, we also read of the process by which he got back on with life afterwards, mistakes included.
He’s also upfront about the effects of abuse with regard to his own use of alcohol and trying his best to hold together his relationship(s). He explains his feelings as a child at the time with no self-pity and how his relationship(s) turn out is a grace of god issue, in that we couldn’t really judge what we would do under the same circumstances.
There is no fairytale ending, just pragmatism about getting on with life. The book is short and sweet (212 paperback pages) from this respect. Altar Boy is another abuse memoir where the kid on the cover is the author as a child, rather than a model and even though it’s five years old, it remains as relevant in the face of the change of Pope and the Church’s own efforts to be just a little more open on the issue (whatever you think of their efforts so far).
So it keeps selling, despite newer memoirs on the market, because it’s still relevant. Certainly give it a look in your library at the very least, because Penguin gave it the worldwide promotional treatment from launch
(ed. Our intrepid Brit book reviewer has been busy, sending me a couple of book reviews for the site this week. This is the first, I'll post the second within the next few days. As always, if you're interested in submitting a similar review, drop me a line.)
Andrew Crofts has helped another Brit male abuse survivor, Joe Peters, complete his first memoir, Cry Silent Tears. It’s taking nothing away from the power of Peters’ story that Crofts has turned Peters’ words into another book which can be speed-read in three hours, or taken section by section – I read its 300 hardback pages overnight and it’s as page-turning a read as Tears Before Bedtime.
Peters’ history starts with the background to his family which he believes points to much of his childhood thereafter. We read of the loss of his father as witnessed at five years old which would be a heavy trauma for any child, in fact he was struck dumb and eventually needed speech therapy to begin talking again. However, the bereavement marked the resumption of physical violence from his mother throughout his childhood and also the start of a catalogue of sexual abuse from his de facto stepfather, two siblings and a succession of other pedophiles, some known to the family and others, at the height of his abuse, in an organized child porn ring.
When told about a child condemned to living in a cellar for being perceived as different (or the runt), modern people of all ages will have only read about that as the start of a Harry Potter book or classic fairytale. For Joe Peters it was the very bleak, unrelenting, nightmarish, real thing. His only elder sibling at the time who wasn’t abusive, still let Joe down in other ways when he needed him most. Further losses and abandonment of early relationships happen through the transfer of schools and the 1980s UK social care system. Childline helped him though only in a roundabout way, the care did not continue consistently or with any insight into the needs of a teenage male abuse victim.
What you read about Peters’ mother and her treatment of the abuse as a business stays in the mind for a long time, even despite the fact that Joe Peters survived and thrived to forge a happy adult life. The book ends abruptly in adolescence, pointing the way to the second book which he is currently writing. Since it’s important to know the steps taken to recover, I’ll definitely purchase the follow-up when it arrives.
The website for the book outlines the work by and for survivors which he is currently in the process of setting up and that can be found at http://www.crysilenttears.co.uk
( OR http://www.freewebs.com/crysilenttears/ as a direct link if it doesn’t auto forward. The site links to a free sample of the introduction to the book on the publisher’s website.)
This book review was sent in from our anonymous correspondent over in England. He also passed along this note:
Just for reference Childline, a free telephone number for abused and bullied kids to call for help and a listening ear, began in 1986, but within the past year, it was brought within the umbrella of the 100+ year old National Society For The Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC). I think that's the only reference that non-Brit survivors might not understand immediately.
Matt Lowe's book takes the autobiographical route of all 40+ years of his life, providing a before, during and after account of grooming and child abuse on a longer term scale and the frightening ease of routine with which that happened and continued. Being a bookseller's son it shows on the page that Lowe has the writing part in his blood - he takes great care to bring his childhood haunts and stomping grounds to life to illustrate his first 20 years, and also the "waterboarding" drip-drip corrosive effect of grooming, enticement and outright emotional blackmail employed by his abuser to continue his acts.
Most importantly for survivors, Lowe also describes the steps taken to not just get help in great detail but also the career paths which opened up for him as a result. It flashes back and forward from past to present but it's quite easy to follow and once I reached 100 pages out of 350, I decided to finish it in a single night even if it couldn't be called a novelistic page-turner.
Most importantly for the casual reader without any "baggage" on the subject, Lowe doesn't simplify or spare his own or anyone else's perceived failures or missed opportunities throughout any of his life, not the way his entire family was conned by the abuser in question, to how it continued after the years of grooming with his abuser trying to call his crimes a relationship in order to "keep" him, to the childhood isolation from family and breakup of his proper adult relationship and readjustment to plain fatherhood. It doesn't talk down to anyone else who was brainwashed and manipulated over a long period at the same time as being sexually abused.
Nowhere is there a hint of "poor me" to this book on the first reading. I essentially read it on two long sittings. I was waiting for the books's release and bought it to keep. There's no need for a second volume as it covers the author's life right up to where he is at the time of printing last year. It's a great book for British male survivors but in giving an uncompromising account of some the therapeutic steps involved, makes itself useful to survivors worldwide. I picked this up at the perfect time, one year into my healing process when I'm thinking about life after therapy, whenever that is, and The Family Friend also gives one man's view of how you move on.
Whenever it's published in your home country, look it up but give it the time it deserves, it's by no means a flick-read.
Want to have a book review posted? Feel free to pass it along to me if you don't have your own blog to post it to, I'd be glad to spread the word!
Rick Belden, the author of Iron Man Family Outing contacted me a little while ago, offering me a free copy of his book. Unfortunately, my to be read list is getting a bit long, so in the interest of getting his generosity pointed in a direction that would be beneficial sometime this year, I declined.
However, my backlog is your good fortune. Rick has offered to give away a free copy to one of my readers. I'm going to make this simple. In exchange for the free book, you agree to write up a short review of it. You can post that review on your own blog, and let me know about it, or you can write the review and send it to me, and I'll be more than happy to post it here.
So, if you're interested, and want to know more about the book, check the link below. The first one to comment here, gets it. Be sure to enter an email address in your comment. It doesn't get posted to the site, but I'll need it to put you in contact with Rick and you can arrange for him to ship you the book.
Matter of fact, if you want to review a book about child abuse, and don't have a blog of your own, feel free to drop me a line. I'd love to add some more book reviews without having to read them all myself! :)
Annaleigh has the first Carnival Against Child Abuse of 2008 posted over at her site.
As always, looks like there are a number of good ideas and interesting things to read. Go take a look and if you have a blog, please consider contributing to one of the future editions. The more the merrier!
Before I begin this review, I need to apologize. Nancy Richards had sent me a copy of her book months ago, with the promise that I would read and review it here. At that time, I knew it might be some time before I had the chance to read it, and expressed that, however I really have no excuse for it taking this long. Simply put, I allowed other things to get in the way. Nonetheless, I made a promise and I am keeping it.
When Nancy first contacted me about her book, and said it was a completely different way of looking at forgiveness, I was excited to read it. As I read it, much of it seemed very similar to my own experiences, constantly being told the only true way to heal was to forgive the people who hurt me. I hated that advice, in fact, I'm convinced that advice simply did more damage to me.
When she writes about divorcing her mother, not forgiving her, but simply saying "enough is enough", leaving for her own well being, I wanted to applaud. You rarely see anyone give survivors permission to be selfish. The bottom line is that your first priority is taking care of yourself. You're a survivor because someone failed to take care of you as a child. Perhaps even many people failed you. As an adult, it is your job to take care of yourself. The people who tell you that you haven't "truly" healed until you can confront your abuser, and tell them you forgive them, are more than likely setting you up to be hurt all over again.
That was why, for the majority of this book, I completely agreed with what Nancy was writing. I could see a lot of my own story in it. I recalled the conversations I had with my therapist about how I needed to decide what sort of allegiance I owed my parents, and what sort of relationship, if any, I wanted to have with my family. I remembered my own feeling of freedom when she told me I didn't have to do anything in regards to my relationships with the person who molested me, or the parents who failed to protect me, I only had to decide what was right, safe, and healthy for me.
Once past this point in the book, however, Nancy's story and my own deviated quite a bit. She goes on to discuss the fact that only now, after doing some immense healing, is she ready to start the process of forgiving. While I appreciated that, I'm just not sure I agree with the word, or the concept of forgiveness. If you'll allow me to get theological for a minute here, biblically speaking forgiveness is only meted out by God when a sinner asks for it, and repents. To me, forgiveness is about reconciling our relationship with God the only way that we can, by admitting we are sinful and need His forgiveness. The call for survivors to forgive is backwards, to me. I can't forgive and enter into a relationship with someone who will not even acknowledge the pain they caused me, in fact, who continues to cause that pain. I can only decide what boundaries need to be in place within that relationship to prevent them from hurting me. I need to take care of myself.
Now, Nancy, however, obviously defines forgiveness differently. She, and many others, regard forgiveness as "letting go" of the anger and rage directed at those people. While I can certainly understand and agree that is an important part of truly healing, I don't call that forgiveness. In my own history, I refer to that more as the point where I quit caring about those people who hurt me. I did what I needed to do in those relationships to be safe, and quit caring about the consequences of those actions. I quit mourning the things I didn't have, and simply accepted that this is the way things are, the way those people are. I took the steps necessary in my life to find what I was lacking previously, in a healthy way that works for me. You might call that forgiveness, and we may just be arguing semantics here, but I would love to get survivors focused off the idea of forgiving their abusers, and onto the idea of taking care of themselves first, and letting their anger and rage be replaced by the simple contentment that comes from that.
So, if you're sick and tired of being told you need to forgive your abusers, before you've managed to heal yourself at all, I highly recommend taking a look at this book. It will serve as a great reminder that there are others out there struggling with the idea of forgiveness and give you the freedom to not forgive when you need it.
I've been off-line for a couple of days, enjoying some vacation time with the wife. Tonight we're in Boone, NC with free wi-fi so I'm spending just a little bit of time getting caught up on some things. One of those things is pointing out that the October Edition of the Carnival Against Child Abuse is up. Check it out for some interesting reads.
At least, that'll give you plenty to read while you wait for me to have some more writing time. :)
I got an email this week from Heidi Nabert, producer of the Boo Boo Gone Podcast.
Parents and Kids don't like Boo Boos, and here at BooBooGone.com we focus on preventing Boo Boos BEFORE they happen. Kids have a right to feel safe, secure and protected, and in today's fast-paced society with both parents working or in divorced families where kids live in two different homes, being prepared for safety is even more paramount.
BooBooGone.com's bi-monthly Podcast is produced as a series which focuses on a specific Safety Topic beginning with an in depth interview with an expert followed by several short tips that you and your family can implement right away.
Since she's a fellow survivor trying to draw attention to issues of child safety, I definitely wanted to point out the show to those parents who are regular readers of the blog. If you're not familiar with podcast, or how to subscribe to them, drop me a line and I'll see what I can do to help you navigate the waters of RSS, podcasts, and all those other blogging related techie terms. :)
This one was sent to me in an email from a loyal reader of the site.
The predecessor, Just a Boy, was one of the first physical abuse survival memoirs I took out of the library.
I was more interested in this second book which details his meeting of his wife and his efforts to trace other now-grown-up children of other victims of the same killer - as well as his Yorkshire-born ingrained toughness and determination to get on with his life. My only regret is having to watch the pennies and getting the paperback, which now has a fold down the spine, but it's one of these books with so many chapter stops that you can dip into the parts you wish to re-read very quickly. I will make the hardback a gift to myself I liked it that much.
I can definitely see where a toughness and determination to "get on with live" would be rather inspiring to read. For many survivors, it's that toughness to get on with life that we don't give ourselves enough credit for. We tend to focus on our struggles, and forget just how tough we had to be to have survived thus far in the first place. Thanks for the recommendation!Tags: recommendations, book, abusememoirs, RichardMcCann
Disclaimer, they did send me a free book, on the other hand, now that I've read and reviewed it, I'll be running a contest, of some sort, in the near future to give the book away, so I'm not really getting any benefit from agreeing to review it, aside from reading it for free.
Discalimer #2, I'm not a book reviewer by profession, nor do I claim to be one, so remember, this isn't the New york Times Review, just one survivor's opinion. :)
First off let me say this about the book. If you're looking for the typical child abuse memoir, with the typical chronology of the abusive childhood, followed by the troubled years, followed by a long journey of healing, you will be disappointed by this book. On the other hand, that's exactly what I liked about this story. This wasn't yet another memoir about the struggles of healing from a broken childhood, this was a story set during one particular bike racing season, when a 39 year old man takes on the physical challenge of trying to score ten points in the weekly races at the request of his daughter.
It's a story about working towards a difficult goal, and learning about yourself in the process. In this case, it's learning to identify, and overcome, the "monster" that rages inside of abuse victims.
Now, granted, as a fellow 39 year old who has been interested in bike racing since I was a little kid and used to watch the Tour de France on televison, obviously the story was going to hold my attention. The descriptions of riding in the pack, or the physical demands of sprinting toward a finish line are told in such detail that I can easily identify with the struggle. But even if you're not all that interested in bike racing, I think the all too common themes of struggle, of identifying how those things you've tried so hard to put behind you still affect you on a daily basis, and of learning to live with them, will be useful to survivors of all types.
For example, one of the themes that struck me as I read this story is the fear and shame of failing at a goal. Many survivors, myself included, struggle with failure in ways that other people don't seem to comprehend. Even the smallest project can become a source of great frustration, even rage, when we are unable to complete it, or the task will simply consume us until it is completed, no matter how unimportant it may really be. Many survivors live with a very strong sense of shame about what happened to them, as if their failure was a cause of being abused as much, if not more than, the abuser. Failing at any task, no matter how small, means reliving all that shame that has built up over the years in the present. Shame is a very powerful emotion, and the avoidance of shame is a very powerful motivator. To some extent that is natural, no one wants to fail at any task. To the shamed survivor though, it's not just about this one task. The current task is a symbol of all the shame and failure he/she has lived with for many years.
That's the beauty of this story, because it does take place over one short period of time, and focusing on one task as symbolic of all the tasks that go into a life, it gives you insight into the inner workings of a survivor as he focuses on one task. It shows us, without any sugar coating, how painful abuse can be, even long after the actual abuse has stopped. More importantly, Bill shows us these details while weaving a wonderful tale of competition around all of these other themes. Well done.
Tags: BillStrickland, TenPoints, HyperionBooks
Tags: ChildAbuse, Cult, RitualAbuse, RISE