The Garden of Roses: Stories of Abuse and Healing

  I went through a high-conflict child custody battle that included false accusations of abuse and other wrongdoing made by my ex-husband against me; I won despite the accusations. How? I obtained the best documentation I could to cope with false accusations of abuse—a therapist for my children and a court-ordered Parenting Time Coordinator for my ex-husband and me. My ex-husband resisted obtaining a coordinator and using his health insurance to pay for my children to be in therapy, so I had to pay for our children’s therapist out of pocket while I waited for our court-ordered mediation to fail so the case could be heard by a judge. My ex-husband had found the therapist, but he rarely took our children to therapy and, even more rarely, went to therapy with them and the therapist.  Guess which parent the therapist testified in support of? Me, obviously. What do you do when you can’t afford therapy? Well, you do what a therapist would advise you to do. What wou...

Date rape is incredibly humiliating.  Date rape also destroyed my already fragile sexuality. I write this for men as well as for women, especially survivors.  My son is short and on the autism spectrum. Like many other young men of his age, with his diagnosis and short stature, dating just doesn't happen for him. He made peace with that. He lives with me, and we have a great relationship because we both like hiking and gardening. Neither of us is lonely. He also knows what rape did to my sexuality. He's in his third decade of life on this earth, so he can take that. My favorite job in wildlife and fisheries is a tie. I had an internship with the Bureau of Land Management in northwestern Nevada. Among other things, I assisted with the banding of Golden Eagles, Prairie Falcons, Red-tailed Hawks, and a variety of small passerine birds. Because I am small, I have small hands. Guess who was recruited by more senior biologists to stick their hands into holes in trees where birds wer...

 I have a Bachelor of Science degree in Zoology, so I often think of animals, whether they are mammals or arthropods, in terms of their scientific classification. I have been at war with other mothers recently, but they have all been from the phylum Arthropoda — two insects and one spider, aka arachnids. Yesterday, I was watering the strawberries I planted by my front door when I noticed what looked like a giant black-winged ant trying to pull dead bulb-flower leaves into the siding of my house. So I turned the water hose on the insect thing and pulled the leaves out of my siding. I looked it up this morning. It was a Grass Carrying Wasp that builds nests in the crevices in the bark of mature trees, but it will try to do the same thing in the siding of houses. It is not aggressive and will only sting if provoked. My washing out of the crevice in my house's siding and pulling out the dead flowering bulb leaves it had pulled into the siding was not aggressive enough fo...

 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...