The Garden of Roses: Stories of Abuse and Healing

For those who don't know me well, I am still Catholic.  Some survivors of clergy abuse consider that tantamount to being married to the devil while a small number remain Catholic themselves.  I am not Catholic because I find inspiration in the leadership of the Church because I don't.  I am Catholic because I find inspiration in Mass. I did not start out Catholic.  I started out the daughter of an atheist (my father) and a deist (my mother).  We were a scientifically inclined family and in the early sixties we watched National Geographic specials on television for fun.  My favorite shows were about Louis Leakey and Jane Goodall.  I wanted to be a Physical Anthropologist and paleontologist and find the "missing link" when I grew up. Fundamentalist Christians who opposed the theory of evolution kept me away from Church and Christianity for a very long time.  As I grew up and studied Zoology in college I went on field trips in a plant ecology cl...

Note from Virginia Pickles Jones:  I am a child sex abuse and date rape survivor who came forward in my 40s.  I was sexually abused by two teenaged boys when I was 4 and struggled with depression, low self esteem and anxiety through out my childhood.  Due to the lack of proper treatment, I was not able to protect myself from date rape at age 22.  And yet, despite the lack of support, I managed to endure through the one thing open to me -- time spent hiking in nature.  The very act of walking helps fight depression as when we move the feet forward, we also move the mind forward.  As an adult, I tried Prozac for depression.  I actually found prayer and meditation more healing and helpful than any medicine.  Prayer and meditation did not take my problems away.  They made me calmer and stronger as I coped with my problems, but depression and anxiety can make prayer and meditation difficult because it is hard to distract the mind from repetitive,...

"The Toad and The Princess" is a story encompassing some of the great truths a certain princess has learned in her life lessons. Some truths are from the great book, the Bible; other truths are the simple steps used by Twelve-Step groups. Join a princess on her journey through lessons to serve her father while learning to keep focused on the tasks and moving forward in the face of friends who do not yet understand the truth this princess has learned. This story is about ending violence against others. Rhonda has experienced many life-changing events, including the loss of a son in a drunk-driving accident. Rhonda has also had experience with violence, including domestic violence. It is Rhonda's desire to help the world see the truth about violence and the current  attempts  to change others. When leaving a dangerous marriage, Rhonda experienced the attacks of well-meaning friends and community leaders. One day Rhonda wrote this fairytale to help kids of al...

Dear Friends:  A new blogger Rhonda Madison will be posting to The Garden of Roses:  Stories of Abuse and Healing.  Rhonda is a domestic violence survivors from Wallowa County and the author of a book for children about coping with domestic violence -- "The Toad and The Princess."  Rhonda's post, "When the Disease Strikes the Beloved Garden" appears to me to be true on more than one level.  It is about gardening, but is also about us survivors.  We have trouble trusting when our trust has been so abused, but we may not have all the tools we need for healing all by ourselves.  We need resources and help with healing to flourish and bloom abundantly.  -- Virginia Jones To treat leaf spot, mildew and scab diseases in garden plants begin with proper Ph soil. Test kits for Ph soil are available and a must first step in treating these disease. Soil Ph should be between 5 or lower or 7 or higher. Once this Ph is determined the gardener needs to trea...

Recently I was rifling through the overloaded files on my computer to see what I could delete as I have so many files, I sometimes have trouble finding the one I want to work on. I came across an article I wrote in 2008, about a Catholic parishioner who helped a survivor of clergy abuse cope with conflict with his family in the middle of the night.  He was and remans a fragile survivors with a long history of addiction and outbursts of anger that periodically get him jailed.  His mother called the police on him in the middle of the night, and he called me, and I referred him to the Catholic parishioner as I had young children and could not help him in the middle of the night.  But this other Catholic parishioner could and did. She is a passionate Catholic unwilling to be uprooted from her church, but she is also the mother of girls sexually abused by a stepfather.  When she found out about the abuse, she did whatever she could to protect her girls and keep a ro...