The Garden of Roses: Stories of Abuse and Healing

By Preston V. McMurry Jr. as told to Virginia Jones Donna Theresa, Preston McMurry, Jr.’s wife, was horribly abused as a child in Agnone, Italy, the  a mountaintop village where she was born.  During their marriage the physical and emotional scars of her childhood torture played havoc with their life beneath matrimonial blankets. More of the story is told in the preceding two blogs:  Pres and Donna Theresa: The Love Story That Inspired A Nonprofit Combatting Domestic Violence  and  Pres and Donna Theresa Part Two: Pres Works on Healing From the Loss of Donna Theresa Periodically, Donna Theresa left home.  At first, for a few weeks.  Each time she left it was for a longer period of time. She was never able to explain why, but always announced her intended departure with the same words, “I love you. But, I am leaving.” She heard the line in a movie the couple attended three nights before her first disappearance.  Donna Theresa and ...

By Preston McMurry as told to Virginia Pickles Jones In part one,  Pres and Donna Theresa:  The Love Story That Inspired A Nonprofit Combatting Domestic Violence,   we watched as Preston V. McMurry, Jr. and his beloved wife, Donna Theresa, who was born in Italy, struggled through 16 years of marriage.  Their marriage was burdened by the emotional and physical scars Donna carried as the of result of the horrific abuse she suffered prior to her adoption at age five by a fine American family.  In pursuit of a fully compatible marriage, the deeply in love couple committed to psychological counseling. After ten years of therapy and an ongoing struggle with intimacy, they followed their therapist’s advice to travel to Italy to find Donna Theresa’s roots in Agnone,  the mountaintop village where she was born in 1947.  They hoped to fill in her lost memories about her childhood with insights that might  improve their amorous relationship....