Secrets are small or all-out whoppers, so enormous and complex that they can rock entire families off their foundations. "When you're hit with a crisis you either change your mind (about what you thought your life was) and/or change your behavior (about what you're doing)," she said of how "normal" families react to a secret. "What we expect is that our crises are going to crush us. We find out they don't have to." "Finding out stripped me of everything I knew, you have to go back to figure out what's true or not. You believed your loved ones before learning the secret. Then you question everything about them. It's not dysfunction, it's life. Every family has a secret. There's a fine line between being truthful and telling people everything." Dr. Pat Wiklund is writing a book.
Here's a letter I recently sent Ann Landers.
I was recently interviewed by a reporter working on a book about betrayal.
I recently had to serve jury duty. You can imagine with my history my chagrin at the nature of the case I was facing.
Online or in in person there's some of my recovery that comes up regularly that hasn't been addressed on this site. So here's the loose ends.
Here's a letter I recently mailed a producer of a sexual abuse documentary.
"I am not responsible for preventing a crisis from happening."
Don't ever give up on yourself - Parable of the Old Mule.
People of the Lie by Scott Peck rating=10:
"I am an incest survivor. This book described my family. Scary. Validated the tough choices I had made in my life. Helped me feel better about having made those choices. Scott Peck sees things clearly, and helps you see them clearly also." Cheryl Moore BarronFriends Of The Children "presents a stunningly beautiful web experience that explores the subject with sensitivity and forthrightness. A well done treatment of a difficult subject."
"He commended me for detaching from my dysfunctional family and that one day I would be able to go back as a Tourist, but I would no longer be a participant." acoa
Family.
It's not just a word.
It's a sentence.
*evil grin* Think about it.
I'm thinking about my family of origin, ex's, and others...
Movies for survivors.
"In April 1879, Captain Andrew Geddes, a decorated army officer of dubious moral reputation, faced a court-martial. The trial unearthed shocking tales of seduction, incest and abduction, and the highest figures of the US Army, including General Sherman himself, got involved. Just what was Geddes' crime? He had spoken out about an "unspeakable" act -- had accused Lieutenant Louis Orleman of committing incest with his teenage daughter, Lillie. The Army quickly charges Geddes, not Orleman, with 'conduct unbecoming of a gentleman.'"
"I heard from Jane Orleman, a great-granddaughter of Louise Henry Orleman, whose own book documents incest in another generation of her family." Louise Barnett
The book parallels my own story, about how incest moves thru generations, and how the one talking about it is the one condemned.
Louise Barnett, Ungentlemanly Acts
The web at its very best.11/02/97 "On first blush, this appears to be a fairly typical family home page. Pictures of the kids and family, links to cool stuff, nothing terribly exciting or contraversial. There is one hint on the front page: "Cheryl - incest survivor." Finding the details takes a bit of digging, so I've saved you the work.
This page is a matrix of hyperlinks to articles about how Cheryl dealt with her incest history - and how her birth family didn't. It's gut-wrenching and disturbing in odd ways. It's not that there are graphic details - it's the way the family treated Cheryl for speaking out and protecting her own children from their pedophile grandfather.
It's an online autopsy of a dysfunctional family and how it perpetuates it's dysfunction through minimisation, denials and lies. It provides an extremely telling insight into the motivations for Cheryl's mother to knowingly tolerate the sexual exploitation of her children.
Truly, the love of money is the root of all evil."
"Lying makes a problem part of the future; truth makes a problem part of the past."
-- Rick Pitino, Lead to Success
