The Garden of Roses: Stories of Abuse and Healing

 Hackers have been bedeviling me since January 2020. I wish the politicians who run the state and federal government cared about the people of the United States.

One of the most serious, well-intended but thoroughly misguided therapeutic protocols is for a therapist to advocate for what a child wants.  This may be a good idea in most situations, but there is one situation that places a child in the middle of a conflict--when parents are battling over child custody.  The reason for this is obvious to me, but apparently not to the people who make therapeutic protocols. When there is a high-conflict relationship between parents, putting the child in charge puts the child squarely in the middle of the conflict.  If you want to profoundly damage a child, then put them in the middle of the conflict between parents. In any high-conflict co-parenting relationship, both parents contribute to the problems observable to third parties, such as therapists. When wellness rather than legal cases is emphasized, parents may differentiate themselves from one another by embracing therapeutic coping strategies such as Nonviole...

 The Family Mental Health and Child Custody Act by V. Jones 1. Before marriage or the birth of a child and again during separation or divorce, the state of Oregon shall provide and require parents to take mental health and communication classes. The classes shall include: Nonviolent Communication Listening skills Mindfulness or similar religious or secular practices, such as centering prayer, yoga, or Native American sacred practices, such as Sweat Lodge and traditional dances. The reason is that these practices all heal, but parents may be more likely to comply if healing skills are part of their cultural traditions. A group of professors of psychology, psychiatry, or social work may be convened to examine the literature and decide which practices and groups offer the same healing for trauma as mindfulness. Journaling is both a form of healing for trauma and a source of documentation of trauma. Professors of psychology, social work, or psychiatry. 2.  After sep...

 How to Heal: A Workbook for Survivors by a Survivor Plus Tips for Documenting Abuse by. V. Jones This is the title of my book, available for purchase at  https://www.amazon.com/How-Heal-Workbook-Survivors-Documenting/dp/B0GMQBP8R8 .     Last year,  I traveled around Oregon to promote my first book, which included a workbook and stories of my childhood trauma and the things that went right in my life. For example, I worked in wildlife and fisheries, which helped me gain self-confidence. Then I studied to become a Registered Nurse and became a psychiatric nurse. I also wrote about my marriage and divorce, and the child custody battle that followed. I won that battle so thoroughly that the judge ordered my ex-husband to pay 90% of my attorney's fees. My life's story is very interesting, in part because I worked as a Foreign Fisheries Observer on Soviet, Japanese, and Polish fishing vessels in the 1980s.       Although I think my life ...

  Why We Need Coercive Control Legislation and  What Should That Legislation Contain? by Virginia Jones I care about coercive control family violence because my family went through it in the form of a protracted child custody battle. I obtained court orders for my children to have therapy and for my ex-husband and me to work with a Court-Ordered Parenting Time Coordinator. Unfortunately, the legal system works very slowly, and my ex-husband was able to slow it down further. Moreover, even when I had therapists in place, my ex-husband frequently refused to follow their orders. This left my children in emotionally abusive situations for years before I could obtain proper help for them from the legal system.  I need to explain that I, Virginia Jones, the author of this article, am a former psychiatric nurse, so I am familiar with psychiatric diagnoses and mental health treatments. My family's story, which fills twenty file boxes of emails, legal documents, and my...

After driving around the Cascade Lakes Scenic Byway, my son and I stopped by a Mexican restaurant for dinner. We were wearing pink sweatshirts that read, "High Conflict Divorce is Child Abuse." A man, a woman, and a five or six-year-old girl sat down at the next table, and, after reading our shirts, the man said, "I like your shirts. He then proceeded to tell us that his wife and stepdaughter had been put through lots of trauma by his wife's first husband. The situation had been so difficult that the little girl's older sister had committed suicide. The family was on their way to an evening church service and invited us to come along because they found so much healing in their religion. I respect their choices, but I have a strong science background and don't feel comfortable in fundamentalist or evangelical churches. I fit in better at Catholic or mainline protestant churches, but I understand that this family's church supported them through a difficult ...