The Garden of Roses: Stories of Abuse and Healing

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want ..... although I am very much in want of healthcare right now, and I worry about being in want of housing soon because of my need for healthcare. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters.... Does that mean the Waterfront Park along the Willamette River where I see so many homeless people lying when the weather is halfway warm? He restores my soul... I used to garden to heal my wounded spirit, but now I have a broken arm that needs surgery, and I can’t do much in the garden but pull weeds with my left hand. He guides me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake..... I am trying to give my children the best life I can with one arm. I still listen to abuse survivors’ stories over the phone and in person. I haven’t numbed myself with drink or drugs, but my mind is too full of worries at night to sleep so I listen to a meditation tape to guide my thoughts to healing. Even though I walk through the V...

I was drinking my morning green tea one day last week and perusing The Oregonian when my eyes fell upon the headline about House Bill 2183, “Oregon House passes bill outlawing purposely false child abuse claims”. “Huh,” I said to myself, “It needs to be easier to report child abuse, not harder.” I am the Executive Director of Compassionate Gathering, a budding not-for-profit that works to end abuse and heal the wounds in individuals and communities.  I guard our not-for-profit status zealously, so I don’t do political advocacy, but this law is so bad I had to speak out against it.  Each of the last three summers members and friends of Compassionate Gathering have walked through towns and on scenic trails from one side of Oregon to the other.  Local media usually covers our Walks (except in Portland), and people come to meet us and share their stories with us.  We’ve met frantic grandmothers and babysitting family friends trying to protect children from abusive par...

If there is good news, it is that my dear friends keep driving me to clinics for appointments for my broken arm as well as to the grocery store and the Post Office and Church.  One dear friend helping me is Elizabeth, my clergy abuse survivor partner.  The other two are Church ladies from Ascension -- Helen, who organizes the Spaghetti Dinner every year, and Mary Lou who serves as a lector, Eucharistic Minister, Sunday School Teacher (catechist) and a few other assorted Church volunteer duties.  I posted this on Facebook and a clergy abuse survivor commented that they should challenge the Church on it's faulty priests.  Actually my friends do this too -- through diplomatic private letters to the Archbishop, to priests and parishioners in public forums, and in private.  These are my stalwart friends who have stood by me for years -- when I handed out articles on clergy abuse, when I got thrown out of Church for handing out articles on clergy abuse, when we set up...

When I wrote my last blog about my recent fall and how badly injured my arm is and how sh*tty my life is right now, I received four supportive responses and one angry response from an old friend, who thought I was harming myself with self pity (more on this later).  My partner in this work, Elizabeth, sent me a really lovely response as did a Child Protective Services employee I met on the 2010 Walk Across Oregon.  Jaime Romo also wrote a kind response, but I was most moved by the kindness of this note from Kay Ebeling, who writes the City of Angels blog on clergy abuse. Oh, Virginia, I so know what you are going through.  Self Medicating has a whole new meaning in today's world of profit based health care.  I hope you are able to heal, I wish your ex-husband would pay for you to see a doctor, I have been there.  Somehow the blood in my stools disappeared, so I guess I'm not dying, but for a while I thought I had some kind of cancer and no way to treat it....

One of my favorite songs is “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” from the Monte Python movie,  Life of Brian .  My favorite line from the movie is “Life’s a piece of sh*t, when you think of it.” Sometimes it certainly seems that way.  There are a small number of people for whom everything comes easily.  There are much larger numbers of people born in desperately poor, war torn countries.  Afghanistan comes to mind.  Life is very sh*tty there for large numbers of people who live there.  Oh, and Rwanda and Somalia too.  Wouldn’t want to live in Libya right now.  Cambodia sure was a hell hole in the 1970s, but I hear it still is a country with lots of problems.  Normally Japan is a nice place to be but right now I would not want to be in the North East of the island of Honshu, particularly in Fukushima Prefecture.  Maybe my sh*t filled life in the U.S. isn’t so bad, not that the comparison to life in these other countries mak...

I was baptized Catholic by a dynamic priest in June, 2001.  Eleven months later he was removed when a man accused the priest of abusing him when he was a teenaged boy.  The people of my parish reacted to these accusations with profound grief and confusion.  The parish divided between those who loved and supported the priest and those who thought we were blessed to be rid of a dangerous pedophile.  I was among those who supported the priest.  Inspired by the Peace Prayer by St. Francis, I wrote a prayer for the him -- The Prayer of Compassion.  I wanted to offer the priest my belief and my support.  Since I was married at the time, I also wrote the prayer for my husband.  It didn't seem right to write a prayer just for the priest. It took a few years for me to come to terms with the abuses perpetrated by that priest. The first step was to recognize denial when I heard it. I remember shortly after the priest was removed from ministry some olde...

My kids came home from school every day the last few weeks talking about Egypt.  They were fascinated by the demonstrators in Tahrir Square who were protesting the regime of the American backed dictator, Hosni Mubarak.  My son, in particular, would ask me if there was news from Egypt.  They were depressed when Mubarak didn’t step down, and then they were elated when he did. True democracy inspires hope in people and when a government won’t give it to you, when elections are rigged, it is awesome to see so many people standing up for freedom, for truth, for justice. There were concerned voices.  One radio and TV host worried we’d have a new caliphate.  Some Israelis expressed understandable concerns about how change in Egypt would affect peace treaties with Israel.  Some people in American felt we shouldn’t dump a dictator who had long been a friend to America, and some people in America wanted us to dump the dictator as fast as possible. But mostly I hear...