The Garden of Roses: Stories of Abuse and Healing

 I woke up this morning with one thought on my mind: awe heals trauma.  So I googled it and found that there was a lot of research showing that awe does, indeed, help heal trauma. First, I will list some of my recent hiking experiences. My son and I hiked up Lookout Mountain east of Mt. Hook a few weeks ago. Truthfully, I almost hiked up Lookout Mountain. My son hiked the whole way, but I hiked up far enough to see the mountains and landscape for so many miles, I can only guess. 50? 100? You can see my experience on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNnX13EAF5A&t=18s We also paddled a boat across Ollallie Lake a week later and saw 6, yes, SIX, Bald Eagles. Or was it one pair that kept following us? Either way, it was amazing Then we went on a wildflower walk on the edge of a wilderness area. The place was not only filled with wildflowers but also with butterflies and lots and lots of bee species, not just honey bees. You have to get away fro...

I have taken three long journeys this year, and several last year, to both promote my mental health workbook for survivors and the importance of focusing on family mental health in high-conflict child custody battles. I suffered child sex abuse and generational sex abuse trauma as a child. My mother was a child sex abuse survivor who struggled with depression and alcoholism. Fortunately, I was a good student, and my father was determined that I receive a university education. Although I struggled with depression as a child, I discovered I felt better if I walked or rode my bike in nature. Later, I worked in wildlife and fisheries biology. I loved my work and gained self-confidence and overcame my struggles with anxiety, but permanent jobs were hard to find, so I went back to school to become a registered nurse. I married while I was in nursing school and worked briefly as a psychiatric nurse before my first child was born. He was born on the autism spectrum, and my husband had a demand...

I was trying to collect signatures for my petition for family mental health to be central in divorce and child custody battles, so I stood by one more courthouse in a small town in rural Eastern Oregon.  Several people went in and came out later, and some just came out. One was a man who reminded me of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) firefighters I worked with when I was a wildlife biology intern, except he had white hair. He wore green work pants that reminded me of the green fire-resistant Nomex pants wildland firefighters wear. I wondered if he had a higher-level, supervisory job related to firefighting because it was the kind of town where you would find a BLM office. He was very kind and signed my petition. Of the majority of the small number of people who came and went through the courthouse door during the hour and a half that I stood there, most said nothing to me. I am non-confrontational. I don't want to have the police called to remove me, so I say nothing unless som...

I have been standing outside courthouses from just before the noon lunch hour to just after it ends, as well as for the last hour of business--in other words, when people enter or leave courthouses. I don't just stand there; I wear a shirt or sweatshirt that says one of three things on the front: "High Conflict Divorce is Child Abuse," or "Emotional Abuse (Coercive Control) is Very Damaging." On his days off from work, my son joins me. We normally hold signs that reiterate the message, but a couple of signs add another message, "It Should Be Illegal. Focus Laws on Family Mental Health." In St. Helens, Oregon, a lawyer approached us to hear what we were saying. In Hillsboro, a defense attorney wanted to know what the next lawsuit issue was that he had to prepare to defend his clients from. In another rural Oregon town I won't disclose, a woman rushed up the stairs to the courthouse door. She paused when she saw my son and me. "God sent you,...

 My son and I arrived about a half hour late at a rural county courthouse distant from our home to stand with our signs--"High Conflict Divorce is Child Abuse."      We like to arrive about fifteen minutes before the usual noon court recess when employees, litigants, and lawyers stream or trickle out of the courthouse, depending on whether the location is rural or urban. Maybe my son got up late on his day off from work, or maybe I did not plan enough time for our three-hour drive, or some of both. My son feels a passion for this work, as do I, although I write all the blogs and press releases that the media usually ignores. When he was 10 years old, his father's girlfriend tried to force him to look her in the eye and repeat her criticisms of me back to her. "Your mother is nothing but a leech on your father." He reacted instead, "Stop criticizing my mother." My son knew the truth. My mother was 39 when I was born, and my father was 50. They died befo...

I have been traveling through Oregon for the last year or so to promote my issue. I want counties to teach parents involved in high-conflict divorce and child custody battles mental health and communication skills instead of requiring them to go through lengthy, time and money-consuming courtroom battles. I went through a child custody battle that lasted a decade or so, if you count all the years that led up to my ex-husband trying to take custody of our daughter away from me, and then the aftermath of his continuing harassment of me until our daughter turned 17, and there wasn't much time to fight over custody of her anymore. I won the battle so thoroughly that the judge in the case ordered my ex-husband to pay 90 percent of my attorney's fees. My attorney told me that such wins are rare. I knew that to be true because I am a former psychiatric nurse who worked with survivors of child sex abuse and domestic violence who lost their children to the men who abused them because th...