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What Calms the Wounds of Trauma?

My son was born on the autism spectrum, and although he is now a very functional adult with a full-time job and two community college degrees, raising him was challenging. Only three people could reliably babysit him for me: his father, a friend who had two sons on the spectrum, and another friend who was a former nun and child psychologist. He drove other babysitters crazy, and they drove him crazy. Somewhere I read that riding and grooming horses was very calming to children on the autism spectrum, so I took him and his younger sister to horseback riding classes. We were not even remotely interested in competition. In fact, my children preferred grooming the horses to riding them because the horses seemed to prefer being groomed to being ridden. Horses helped my son feel safe around other living beings, as well as learn how to be sensitive to the feelings and needs of other living beings. Horses were so much kinder and more predictable than other kids, and so were dogs, cats, and ger...
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Coping with a High Conflict Co-parent Until Society Addresses the Problem

Therapeutic protocols and the legal system often facilitate the worst emotional abuse in high-conflict divorced and divorcing families.  Both legal and therapeutic professionals are aware that problems exist, but neither has addressed the problem with inadequate medical and legal protocols.  This may be due to the fact that Father’s Rights and Protective Mother advocates are at loggerheads over who is most responsible for and most victimized by these abuses.  But high-conflict families are the ones that produce the children most wounded by divorce.  Moreover, the emotional abuse suffered in these families is every bit as damaging to children as child sex abuse.  I know this because my son, daughter, and I all suffered extreme emotional abuse from my ex-husband and his second wife.  While my son and I survived the emotional abuse with permanent emotional scars, we are basically OK.  On the other hand, my daughter long struggled with Borderl...
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All Are Welcome? My Personal Reflections on Clergy Abuse and What God Wants Parishioners to Do

I wrote this blog about a decade and a half ago, or maybe a little longer.       I was thrown out of my Catholic Church in 2004 for handing out articles that showed that the Provincial Minister of the Franciscan Order had known about our former Franciscan priest pastor’s abuse of minors and a few adult women. Instead of protecting vulnerable children and adults, he covered up the priest’s abuses. The priest had been wonderful with my autistic son, so kind and friendly. My son loved him, but eventually I realized it was really good for my family that the priest was removed, or my son might have become one of his victims. While I came to terms with why the priest had to be removed, I felt the provincial minister who had decades earlier covered up the priest’s abuses should have also suffered consequences. So I handed out articles on the priest and the provincial minister before and after Mass at my church. During Mass one Sunday, the female pastoral associate came up b...
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Five Steps to Healing

  Both my ex-husband and I suffered trauma in our childhood. Mine is discussed elsewhere in this blog. Look for it. My ex-husband’s parents never married and were unprepared to be parents when he was born. Growing up, he was shuffled between different family members’ homes. Some family members were loving and supportive. Some were stressed by their lives. They tried to give him a good life but also failed to give him all the love and support he needed. Perhaps due to his insecure childhood, my ex-husband was the most jealous man I had ever dated. In addition, I was eight years older than him and had worked about four years as an observer on foreign fishing vessels in the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska. The job came with lots of male friends and significant growth in my self-confidence.  Before we married, my husband and I went to couples’ counseling to work on our struggles. The therapist told my soon-to-be husband to be less jealous and gave us a book by Harville Hendr...
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