Life in the Slow Lane

Contemplating life, faith, words, and memories

Tag: abuse

My Unconventional Loves: My Hurts, My Adulteries, My Redemption by Marie A. Abanga | A Review and Giveaway — September 9, 2014

My Unconventional Loves: My Hurts, My Adulteries, My Redemption by Marie A. Abanga | A Review and Giveaway

/Sherrey Meyer/6 Comments

What on earth could push or pull a woman and mother of three to abandon her marriage, elope with a street kid, leaving those three kids behind?

What on earth could push or pull a woman to live such parallel lives and fake such an existence whereas all the ‘glamour’ was just superficial?

What definitely went wrong in her childhood that could have contributed to the sad and dare say ‘insane’ series of unconventional loves and existence?

Read the rest here …

(Image and synopsis via Goodreads)

My Thoughts:

I met Marie Abanga here on my blog. She left a comment on a post, and later used my Contact page to email me about her memoir.

Reading the synopsis told me there was a story here like none I had read in recent months. A story of a young woman on a journey, making mistakes as we all do, making wrong choices at times, and all of this rooted in a life which had provided its share of hurts and abuses.

In taking writing workshops and classes, instructors have told me to “loosen up your writing, write like you talk.” Marie Abanga does just that. I “listened” as I read to the cadences of her mother tongue and her speech pattern. I heard in them the description given her as a child, “a jolly kid.” Despite her woes and difficulties, Marie always seems to find the joy in life.

Marie established for herself a model to live by: the three D’s consisting of Determination, Discipline, and Dedication. A young woman struggles to live by these guideposts during the most difficult of times. And she survives!

Eventually, Marie finds where her faith rests. She considers her memoir:

My Story of Faith and God’s unconditional love for me and writing this book is My Therapy.

Marie’s memoir carries an extraordinary life message of how to turn life around when it has reached a point of almost no return. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a message of survival via the three D’s.

Meet the Author:

I am a woman just like every other. I am a lawyer by professions, a mother, an ex-wife, a daughter, a sister, a lover and a friend to many. I am currently completing an LLM in International Law with International Relations from the University of Kent, Brussels School of International Studies and work as the Woman in Parliaments Global Forum Regional Coordinator for Africa.

I am a dynamic, determined, disciplined and dedication young woman and a feminist. Yes, I am a woman who tried to live a parallel life, tried to commit suicide, and tried to hide away in adulteries and failed woefully.

I currently live in Brussels, Belgium.

Connect with Marie here:

Website: http://marieabanga.com/

Twitter@marieA2013

LinkedIn: Marie A. Abanga

Facebook: Let’s Go Merry with Marie

Book Details:
Publisher: CreateSpace.com
Published: February 20, 2014
Paperback and e-book available: ISBN-10: 1495482715 / ISBN-13: 978-1495482717

Where to Purchase: Available from Amazon.

TWO COPIES OF MY UNCONVENTIONAL LOVES

BOOK GIVEAWAY — SIMPLE as 1-2-3!

Clicking on this link will take you to an entry form.
All that’s needed is your name and email address.

The giveaway ends at noon on Wednesday, September 17th.
At that time, winners will be selected using random.org.

The winners will be announced on this blog on Thursday, September 18th.

For delivery right to your inbox of upcoming memoir reviews, writing resources and tips, plus news items related to writing and publishing, sign up for my bi-weekly newsletter by clicking on the image below:

Ever Faithful to His Lead: My Journey Away from Emotional Abuse by Kathy Pooler | A Review and a Giveaway — September 4, 2014
helleborus, hellebore, lenten rose, flower, plant

Ever Faithful to His Lead: My Journey Away from Emotional Abuse by Kathy Pooler | A Review and a Giveaway

/Sherrey Meyer/22 Comments

WINNER OF BOOK GIVEAWAY IS DOLORES NICE-SIEGENTHALER!

Congratulations, Dolores. Watch your email for more information on receiving your copy of Kathy’s memoir.

Nothing can rescue her until she decides to rescue herself

Kathy loses touch with the faith she was brought up with as she attempts to find her way in the world, leaving her stable roots for adventure and romance. Despite a spiritual prophecy, self-defeating detours take her through a series of heartbreaking events.

When second husband Dan’s verbal abuse escalates, Kathy finally realizes she must escape before she and her children become a statistic.

How does a young woman from a stable, loving family make so many wise choices when it comes to career, but so many poor choices when it comes to love? Her life and the lives of her two children hinge on her choices and the answers she finds.

Join Kathleen Pooler on her roller-coaster ride of self-discovery, from shame and guilt to inner strength, in her tears to triumph.

(Image and synopsis provided by Kathy Pooler)

My Thoughts:

Having known Kathy Pooler for some years now and exchanging writing ideas via Internet, phone and blogs as well as assisting Kathy as a beta reader for her memoir, I am unable to give an unbiased review.

However, I am able to tell you that from vignettes written here and there, Kathy has pulled together a stellar written work which not only tells her story honestly but also provides hope for others walking the same path.

Kathy’s growing up was parented by a loving couple who always appeared happy and stable. Members of the Catholic faith, service above all else was the message passed on to their children. Hence, Kathy’s interest in nursing and her compassion for others.

Kathy dreamed of that perfect marriage, just like mom and dad’s. Yet choices made in her first two marriages did not play out like the perfect image Kathy saw in her dreams. Concerned with her own safety and that of her children, Kathy left her first husband and promised herself to make a better choice next time. And yet once again that did not happen.

During these trials, Kathy worked hard both on the job and in advancing her education while still maintaining her role as a mother to her daughter and son. She continued to dream her dream of a good husband.

Soon Kathy begins to see what choices she needs to make in order to bring her life into focus and find happiness. From this decision came the title for Kathy’s memoir.

I highly recommend Kathy’s memoir to anyone living in an abusive situation, with or without children, and to anyone who has a son or daughter in an abusive relationship. While we as parents are not always able to say what we feel to our adult children, Kathy’s book will give you an understanding of how to cope as your adult child works through these problems and signs you can watch for to know what is happening.

DISCLAIMER: I received a copy of this book from the author in exchange for a fair and honest review. The opinions expressed are solely my own.

Meet the Author:

Kathleen Pooler is an author and a retired Family Nurse Practitioner whose memoir, Ever Faithful to His Lead: My Journey Away From Emotional Abuse, published on July 28, 2014 and work-in-progress sequel,Hope Matters: A Memoir are about how the power of hope through her faith in God helped her to transform, heal and transcend life’s obstacles and disappointments:  domestic abuse, divorce, single parenting, loving and letting go of an alcoholic son, cancer and heart failure to live a life of joy and contentment. She believes that hope matters and that we are all strengthened and enlightened when we share our stories.

She lives with her husband Wayne in eastern New York.

She blogs weekly at her Memoir Writer’s Journey blog: http://krpooler.com

Connect with Kathy here:

Twitter @kathypooler https://twitter.com/KathyPooler

LinkedIn: Kathleen Pooler https://www.linkedin.com/pub/kathleen-pooler/16/a95/20a

Google+: Kathleen Pooler https://plus.google.com/109860737182349547026/posts

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/4812560-kathleen-pooler

Facebook: Personal page: https://www.facebook.com/kathleen.pooler Author page: Kathleen Pooler/Memoir Writer’s Journey, https://www.facebook.com/memoirwritersjourney

Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/krpooler/

Book Details:
Publisher: Open Book Press
Published: July 21, 2014
Paperback and e-book available
ISBN: 978-0-9859367-9-2

Where to Purchase: Available from Open Book Press with links to Smashwords and Amazon and from Barnes and Noble. Also available from your favorite booksellers worldwide.

BOOK GIVEAWAY — SIMPLE as 1-2-3!

Clicking on this link will take you to an entry form.
All that’s needed is your name and email address.

The giveaway ends at noon on Wednesday, September 3rd.
At that time, a winner will be selected using random.org.

The winner will be announced on this blog on Thursday, September 4th.

 

A Cautionary Tale about Memories — May 29, 2014

A Cautionary Tale about Memories

/Sherrey Meyer/28 Comments
Via Google Images
Via Google Images

In posts here, here, and here, I have written on the topic of writing and its healing benefits. Today I want to share a cautionary tale with you. Something happened in our family two weeks ago today casting a different light, at least for me, on the subject of memories, writing, and healing.

I am a proponent of the healing benefits of writing because I thoughtI had come close to healing from scars and memories of my past related to my mother’s parenting skills and my ex-husband’s similar abuses. I now know this is only partially true.

The incident bringing this understanding to light occurred in our home and involved our eldest child, a son aged 43. Coincidentally, he is the son of my first marriage and later adopted at age 18, at his request, by my second husband. The details of what happened are not important to my post. However, I will say that Bob and I were stunned at their occurrence.

What is important for you to know is that I was alone here with our son when this happened and mid-point through the incident, I felt as though I had time travelled decades backward. My emotions kicked into high gear, and I immediately found myself wanting to put space between the two of us.

As soon as I did, the incident took on the heat of a glass blower’s furnace, and I felt my emotions accelerate into what felt like a nightmare. I could not be living through this again! And yet I felt as if I were staring at my mother and ex-husband rolled into one.

The reaction I was having to our son’s behavior was familiar to me — a tightness in my chest, shallow breathing, a need for air, a need to close myself off from what was happening. As a child, I would run and close my door and lock it when Mama treated me abusively. With my ex-husband, it was a different story; he was bigger and stronger than I and so I rolled into a fetal position and cried.

Finally, I walked to our entry which prompted our son to leave. And then all of my past emotions and feelings came surging forward and out. I cried the next three hours until my husband returned home.

♦ ♦ ♦

What I have learned from this experience is as follows:

  • Although this incident brought back unhappy and painful memories, my recovery from them has been quicker. For the past two weeks, my husband and I have talked about what happened but less and less each day. Bob has yet to speak to our son about his actions but will in due course.
  • I realize that my emotions were the result of seeing in action what caused my pain before, and I began taking steps to remove myself — standing up from the kitchen table where we sat, walking step-by-step into our kitchen, and then into our entry. I placed myself at a distance from the person hurting me with his words and emotions.
  • Initially, I haven’t been able to write here or on my memoir. I realized yesterday I was ready to write again because writing is what brought me far enough to take the steps listed above. This morning the subject of this post came to me, and here I am. Later today I plan to begin work again on rewriting my first draft of my memoir.
  • Based on all of this, I have learned that yes, writing is a healing agent from whatever pain, abuse, unhappiness or loss we have experienced. However, not all of those memories disappear. They are a part of who we are forever. They make up our being, the person we have become, for we have learned from them. And yes, like in PTSD and other similar emotional situations, there are triggers which precipitate memories surging back quickly.

♦ ♦ ♦

Be cautious as you write to remember we cannot wipe away our memories by writing, but the writing itself with its cathartic nature will teach us how to handle the resurgence of those memories should something or someone trigger them.

“It has been said, ‘time heals all wounds.’ I do not agree.
The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity,
covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens.
But it is never gone.”
∼ Rose Kennedy

Is Memoir Writing Always a Healing Agent? — April 11, 2014

Is Memoir Writing Always a Healing Agent?

/Sherrey Meyer/16 Comments

Earlier this week after reading a post on Marion Roach’s blog by Jill Smolowe, author of Four Funerals and a Wedding , I felt I may have held my theory on the healing benefit of writing memoir a bit too tightly. So tightly in fact that I took a step back and re-read Smolowe’s post, Finding the Message in Memoir.

The result of that re-reading and analysis on my part is this post. Granted there are more than two views on the healing benefit of writing memoir, but here I share only two with you, mine and Jill Smolowe’s.

In her post, which I strongly encourage you to read, Smolowe points to a question that comes to many of us who write memoir, “Did you find writing the book cathartic?” There are multiple answers to this question depending upon whom is answering. For Smolowe, who obviously gave much thought to the inquiry, it was a matter of defining her message and it’s value for her readers:

But before I can make the commitment to breaching my own privacy and spending considerable time revisiting a painful chapter in my life, I need clarity on two points: What is the lens through which I will tell my story? What is my message, the bit of hard-earned wisdom that I aim to share? For me, finding the answers to those questions requires detachment and emotional distance from the events.

Smolowe continues in the next paragraph:

As a result, I do not find the writing of a memoir cathartic. Nor do I approach the task with a hope or expectation that the process will heal me. Instead, what propels me is my belief that there is a book missing from the shelves—one that would have been helpful to me in my time of turmoil, one that I hope may now be of use to others.

For Smolowe, detaching from the painful events is accomplished through journalling:

That’s not to say that writing can’t be therapeutic. When I want to alleviate tension, stress or upset, I regurgitate my experiences into a journal. Raw and unfiltered, these entries provide an outlet to vent. Sometimes that act of writing helps to calm my roiling emotions. Sometimes the writing even serves, yes, a cathartic function. 

…

For me, the work of memoir writing is selecting, culling, honing, shaping, rewriting. Rewriting. Ruthlessly chopping. Rewriting once more. The driver is my intellect, not my emotions. Catharsis? For that, my journal will have to suffice.

Before I continue, I want to underscore my respect for Smolowe’s choice in her handling of this particular theme. Her decision to write without baring her emotions will likely be more helpful to her readers. 

* * *

Via Google Images
Via Google Images

And this is where our paths diverge. Where Smolowe and I differ is in the relevant theme behind our writing.

Smolowe is dealing with unbelievable loss in her life and the emotions following them. Her writing is predicated on the hope of helping others cope under similar circumstances, but she is careful and, rightly so, not to characterize her writing with the emotional weight of her own losses. I applaud Smolowe for this consideration. And I understand and respect the detachment in her writing.

On the other hand, I am writing my memoir around a theme of a different type of loss–the loss of my inner child’s voice during childhood abuses. In order to voice the still raw pain and confusion from childhood abuses handed out by my mother until I moved across the country in 1983, I began to feel a tremendous sense of freedom as I worked at my writing.

While drafting my memoir, I am at last allowed to have a voice and say what my young heart and mind experienced some six decades ago. Had I spoken at the time of these abuses, punishments would have been harsher and the imprint would have left deeper scars. I remained quiet and still, never fighting back.

Now, as I write, including letters to my mother after her death in 2001, I experience unimaginable release from some of those scars and pains. It has been extremely cathartic for me to feel the unbinding of emotions as the words flow.

The most important takeaway from this post, I hope, is that you are the master of your memoir writing journey. In the event that I have left the impression that writing a memoir is always healing, I want to clear the air: The healing benefit that some find in writing memoir is not necessarily the same for all. As mentioned above, it is dependent on your chosen theme.

Bottom line: Each life story is different because each life is lived differently. Each life is lived in a different environment, a different place, a different time, with different experiences.

You know the reason behind your writing. Write your truth. Write the story that you know.

Living with Fear | Guest Post on An Untold Story with Sue Mitchell — November 9, 2013

Living with Fear | Guest Post on An Untold Story with Sue Mitchell

/Sherrey Meyer/7 Comments

I am honored to be with Sue Mitchell at An Untold Story sharing a portion of my story. I do hope you’ll follow me over to Sue’s blog to read the rest.Note: As Sue and I discussed this guest post and using an excerpt from my work-in-progress, I expressed thoughts about a memoir I had just read. In that life story, the writer’s experiences somewhat paralleled my own. The author’s words opened up new avenues of thought and reflection I’d never expected to experience. I’m writing my story hoping to touch others so that they too may begin to think, reflect and heal.

Living with Fear

Young children scare easily—a tough tone, a sharp reprimand, an exasperated glance,
a peeved scowl will do it. Little signs of rejection— you don’t have to
hit young children to hurt them—cut very deeply.
~ James L. Hymes, Jr.

For a child, living in fear has to be one of the worst emotional states to find in one’s environment. Living isn’t living when it’s done in fear of something or someone. And that’s how life was in my childhood home.

Fear was an everyday occurrence. Not the fear of physical harm. Instead, the fear of words, another’s emotions gone wild, punishment, the unexpected. A child is supposed to be happy, carefree. This is impossible under a cloud of fear. Like waiting for the thunder to roll, the clouds to burst open, then drenching, chilling rain falling on you.

Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary defines “fear” as:

a:  an unpleasant often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger

b (1):  an instance of this emotion (2):  a state marked by this emotion.

Imagine living with these feelings day in, day out. Never knowing what to expect. Always on guard for that moment when tensions rise, tempers flare and you become the focus of anger and temperament.

~~~~

July 3, 2012

Dear Mama,

Brad, almost age 3
Brad, almost age 3

I wonder if you remember anything special about cherry Jell-O.  Probably you remember making it quite often.  After all, it was Brad’s favorite!

BUT do you remember an afternoon when the worst thing that could have happened to a mother happened to you?

Lovingly, I’m sure, you had prepared another of those “humongous” pans of cherry Jell-O.  And you had carefully placed it in the refrigerator to do that gelling thing it was so clever at doing.

I don’t remember where you had gone after that, but little eyes were watching and big ears were listening.  As soon as they had perceived you were nowhere near the kitchen, Brad went to work.

Despite the fact that he was just passed three years old, he had somehow managed to learn how to reach up far enough to open the refrigerator door.  His eyes spied that pan of Jell-O, and Brad was going to have some.  And onto the floor it went!

As always, the minute you heard a crashing sound you were right there to see what one of us had done.  And there it was — red Jell-O all over your kitchen floor!

Read more here . . .

Hope and Fear: Inseparable Emotions — September 9, 2013

Hope and Fear: Inseparable Emotions

/Sherrey Meyer/5 Comments

Today I am visiting with Susan Weidener at her blog, Women’s Writing Circle. I do hope you will join us for a discussion of hope and fear and what makes them inseparable as emotions. Come on over!

“Hope and fear are inseparable. There is no hope
without fear, nor any fear without hope.”
~ François de La Rochefoucauld
(French memoirist, 1613-1680)

Hope and fear are as inseparable as dormancy and life in the plant kingdom.
Hope and fear are as inseparable as dormancy and life in the plant kingdom.

What strange companions these two emotions are. Hope presents all we see as positive, and fear just the opposite showing all we believe negative. And yet, they are inseparable.

As a child growing up, I knew fear. My mother disciplined using fear in the form of verbal and emotional abuses. One of my greatest anxieties arose from the thought I might displease her. I knew too well the result of her displeasure. Because I hoped to please her, I never gave up trying despite fearing the reward for possibly failing.

An excerpt from my memoir in progress provides an example: (You can read more here . . . ), 

* * *

Wednesday, 9/11, I am guest posting at Madeline Sharples’ blog, Choices. I hope you’ll come and visit me there as I write on the topic, “Too Old to Write? Proof the Answer is No!”