The Garden of Roses: Stories of Abuse and Healing

My television is hooked up to my Mac Mini as a computer monitor. I guess we could watch television if we really wanted to, but we'd have to disconnect some wires and reconnect others. So we don't watch television. And if we did have our television positioned to be able to watch it, I don't subscribe to cable. I have this thing about Comcast. I have an allergy to giving them money. I prefer to use my money spending quality time with my children and to giving support to survivors of abuse. Well, anyway, to get to the point, I was reading the Huffington Post online and their front page story was Jon Stewart's show on 911 First Responders and how congress voted down compensation for 911 responders who suffered health problems.  The article contained a link to Jon Stewart's show, and I watched Jon Stewart drop his humor and interview some first responders who have lost their health and how they felt about congress voting down benefits for them and others like th...

On Monday, December 6, 2010, Elizabeth Geoke, a survivor of an assault by a priest that foreshortened her career as a nun will do something she might have done if she had remained a nun.  She will lead an Icon Labyrinth Walk to begin the Advent season.  Elizabeth’s journey to this event has not been an easy one. In 2002, almost 40 years after leaving her religious life, Elizabeth returned to her former Mother House. Another former nun asked her, Of all the young nuns, I thought you were the most likely to remain a nun.  What happened?” “Well, that was the year I was stationed away from the Mother House,” Elizabeth replied thinking about the reasons she left her order and the Catholic Church, “And then there was the fact that I was abused by a priest.” On Christmas Eve that year when she was still a novice nun, not yet professed to her final vows, her confessor told her that he had a right to her body.  She fought him off but became bruised and bloodied in the process...