Review of a Wounded Daughter's Survival

In order for victims of childhood emotional abuse to live a functional life, it is necessary for them to find healing. This in turn, helps them avoid passing on their damage to others. "A Wounded Daughter's Survival" shares through true life experience how to heal, how to build positive relationships, and how to pass on a functional, emotionally sound family legacy.

Through understanding, our world can be better for all.

"A Wounded Daughter's Survival" by using real-life examples, shows how generational dysfunction leads to childhood emotional abuse. It introduces the reader to lives damaged by this abuse and relates that many suffer in silence because it is a condition so misunderstood. Solutions to heal the emotional damage are offered along with hope for a suffering world where hurting people can climb out of the pit of depression and despair. And then go on to live a functional, productive life in spite of damaging beginnings.

If you have not suffered from childhood emotional abuse, you very likely know someone who has. This is a condition reaching epidemic proportions in society today.

What do I hope to accomplish by exposing well kept secrets?

I chose to share my experience with childhood emotional abuse in order to bring understanding to a condition many suffer from but few recognize. If we don't understand where the turmoil and damage come from, we can never hope to fix it.

Many people need emotional healing but choose to believe their symptoms such as inappropriate anger, abnormal anxiety, trouble with coping, low self-esteem, a need to control others, narcissistic tendencies, inability to connect emotionally with others, and/or rejection of others, etc . . . are just normal behaviors for them or simply inherited family traits. They deny their true state. But sadly, if the illness is not recognized, there will be no hope for healing.

As a child I experienced emotional abuse daily. As an adult at age 46, after an event triggered all my repressed memories forth, I had to revisit the pain in order to heal from the damage. Through my journey back, I found how to look past my own pain to see and understand my parents' pain which had caused them to be the way they were.

I want to help others who have experienced emotional damage to find understanding for their own pain. And, in turn, make something good from my unfortunate childhood. Sharing the message of hope with people hurt by emotional damage and telling them that they do matter makes a positive impact. It is important to send the message that healing is possible and life can improve.

I did not tell my story to hurt my parents or get revenge. I believe that revenge is God's, not mine. It is my place to bring understanding, to bring awareness in order to prevent the pain, and to share how to heal from the damage.

My book documents my life as proof of what God can do to change dysfunction into function. I give God all the glory for who I am, what I have accomplished, and all I will be. Without the pain of my childhood, I would not have a story to tell or hope to offer. I understand and I want to help others who hurt. There is a way out of the pit and a light for your way.

What do you think?

Telling the truth makes them sound like monsters ...

A sample of the emotional abuse in my life as a child is found in this example when the emotional damage culminated into a life-threatening physical illness. At age 8, I was hospitalized after weeks of medical tests when it was finally confirmed that I had a dangerous illness, causing me to fade fast at this progressed state. My dad visited me only once during my week-long stay in the hospital. During this visit, he talked to me only about all the money I was costing him and he did not believe I was sick at all.

Prior to the doctors discovery of my illness, my mother grew frustrated with having a sick child and blamed me for her having something else to deal with. She threw me around in the bathroom and said I just needed to get over it and get on with life. I felt no comfort, love, or understanding from either parent. I felt alone.

One other hurtful interaction with my dad that happened too often was at the dinner table. He would tell me and my brother, "I will be glad when you kids are grown and gone so I don't have to feed you anymore."

There are numerous examples of things I lived with as a child and many are revealed in my book.

My parents are not monsters, they are emotionally wounded individuals.

People not directly involved with the family often display extreme hate towards the abusive parent. This is a normal reaction. One thing that is usually not considered at this point is, "Why is a parent behaving this way?" This must become a more prevalent question in order to understand the real truth in these dysfunctional situations and ever hope to bring healing to our society. The longer this goes misunderstood, the worse and wider spread the problem becomes.

Children are emotional beings and must grow up feeling that they belong, they are worthy, and they are competent individuals. When they do not receive these basic needs in their home from their parents on a daily basis, emotional damage occurs and grows. Often parents do not give their children these basic emotional needs because of their own emotional damage, they just do not have it to give. They have never had their own needs met and do not grasp these basic needs of their child. They spend their time continuing to seek their significance and are not emotionally open to nurture as a parent should.

In these situations there should always be sympathy for the abused child with something done to eliminate their pain and bring healing for their abuse. Then the next step needs to be to understand what the parent is experiencing, look at their history, and get help for them. This is where this cycle of abuse can be healed. If healing for both the parent and child is found through understanding, there is less of a chance the abuse will continue on into the next generation.

What is your family legacy? Will you be proud of what you pass on to the next generation?

Possible Reasons

Exploring family history brings to light reasons for damaging behaviors. Generational dysfunction was present in both my parents' childhoods in one form or another.

There is much involved in the dynamics of my parents' dysfunction, but I share here one example for each of them as some insight into why they were emotionally abusive parents.

At some point In his teenage years, my dad was responsible for the death of a woman. It was an accident and caused emotional damage that he needed to talk about and heal from. But he never talked about this incident that changed his life forever and it made him emotionally detached.

My mother was raped as a young woman. This incident also was denied and never talked about. She carried the damage with her throughout the years. It became something that changed the person she was. She needed counseling and healing but it was just one more example of permanent emotional damage that caused her emotionally detached behavior..

Without proper healing, emotionally damaged people find it almost impossible to build connected and loving relationships.

Hurting people need understanding and help in healing so they do not pass on the damage to their children and others.

A child living in dysfunction is unlikely to have a clear understanding of their situation, much less have the courage to react and or know how to do anything about it.

1. Abusive parents are controlling and lead the child to believe that they are always right and the child is always wrong.
2. The child does not comprehend that their circumstances are abnormal.
3. The child trusts their parents; they have no one else to depend upon.
4. The child believes that everyone else's childhood is just like theirs.
5. The child does not know who to talk to or how to start.
6. The child believes that their parents are good and they are bad.
7. Children have a difficult time betraying their parents or really believing that their parents are bad--no matter how damaging their circumstances are.
8. The child believes, "This is life and there is nothing better" especially when the lifestyle is created by parents they are supposed to trust. And the child has never known another way.

Healing came to my life when I began my relationship with God, my Father through His Son, Jesus Christ.

Jesus saved my life emotionally and spiritually by putting me on a functional path at age ten. This was when I found salvation in Him and began the most significant relationship of my life. Everything became forever better. My future was changed and I found what I was missing when God became my Father.

Hope for healing from emotional damage is found through faith in God and a relationship with Him

I also found help at school when at age nine, I could no longer put up the front and continue on in the abuse. There was a situation at school which allowed me to find support and understanding from the principal. I needed an adult to help me cope with life and this kind man became my friend. This friendship continued on through my childhood years and he even became acquainted with my future husband when we began dating. Children need support and caring from adults, and when parents fail in this area, it is a blessing when other adults are willing to step in.

Life As It Is Now

Understanding brings healing and an ability to see another's perspective. It also allows you to feel another's pain, even when that person has hurt you permanently and deeply.

The things my parents did to me were not right and damaged me for life in some ways--even with healing, scars from some things do not go away. But I still forgive them and have never tried to get even or make their life hurt more. I could always see that their lives hurt plenty without me making it worse for them. I believe that God has blessed me greatly because this has been my stance. And with God as my witness, I have cared for, loved, and tried many times in many ways to help my parents make their life better. Bottom line is that I love my parents and no matter how they have hurt me, I do not feel any justification in making them pay for their bad choices and behaviors in parenting me. I find freedom and peace in forgiveness because it releases the pain and I am not held hostage to the baggage that accompanies unforgiveness.

Hurt people; hurt people. This is a perpetual cycle that moves from one generation to another unless someone makes a focused effort to end the pain, damage, and abuse.

My parents were both bundles of unresolved pain, held hostage by the hurt of their pasts. And thankfully, by God's enabling, I chose a different path to deal with the pain they each passed on to me . . . by writing to release the hurt and forgiving them both for the lifetime of damage.

Today, my parents both are born again Christians. They still have much to overcome and it is a struggle for them but they are trying to understand and improve. There is always hope when you face the truth and end the denial.

I asked my mother to pray that my book helps many people struggling with emotional abuse. I believe she will.

1. To have a clearer understanding of why my parents were unattached emotionally
2. To realize how very important it is to raise children in an emotionally stable home where they feel belonging, worthiness, and competency on a daily basis
3. Share through example the life changing benefit of spiritual growth and faith in God
4. What matters most in life is building functional relationships with family, friends, and others.
5. All of us make mistakes, nobody is perfect. Resulting damage to individuals and families is unlikely to be permanent when God is present and honored in your home
6. Confront life head on; don't live in denial; be an adult. Don't spend your life "running for cover"; Grow up, and "face the music".
7. I have become aware that emotional damage is all around us and everyone is touched in some way by emotionally damaged people.
8. That writing about your emotional pain is one of the best ways to heal from the damage

A Common Example of the "Me" Generation

We are all affected by the epidemic of emotional abuse in some way. Our self-centered, "me generation" has definite roots in some form of emotional damage and/or abuse which causes people to seek their own significance and care little for others.

I witnessed the evidence of emotional abuse over and over in my employees during the years I owned and operated our McDonald's Restaurants. They expected for their needs to be met but cared little for meeting the needs of others. Getting paid to do a job was not even incentive enough to change their damaging attitude. Many times they just expected to draw pay for simply showing up.

It's easy to find this problem almost anywhere you go. Self-centered employees are a big part of the poor service we all experience from almost every industry these days. They are usually the reason why you don't get the service that you expect and have paid for. And then if you do speak up, that employee may try to blame you for the problem and is usually more concerned about what they would rather be doing than giving you what you paid for. They treat you more as an inconvenience instead of the reason they have a job.

This picture shows the typical attitude, "How dare you come in here and interrupt my stand around time?"

These are all direct quotes I have heard and received from readers.

1. "You did a beautiful thing by writing this book. I know I'm not the only one who has been touched and validated by it. Your courage to seek the truth and healing for yourself has encouraged me to do the same. And I can say without hesitation that the best part of my life is yet to come. Thank you!"
2. "I ruined two pairs of contacts reading your book because I cried so much"
3. "There is a definite need for this book, many will benefit"
4. "It brought understanding to a situation I had not previously grasped"
5. "It is an awesome book"
6. "It inspired me to make my family better"
7. "After reading your book, I want to share my story, to bring help and hope"
8. "'A Wounded Daughter's Survival' proves how important it is to end denial and face the truth"

I have found all of these to be very helpful, plus all the other books listed at the end of my book.

Photo credit--All photos were purchased at: http://www.bigstockphoto.com/

I would be very interested in hearing your point-of-view on this subject.