I found out a few days ago that my book REPAIR Your Life is #3 in the e-books, category ACOA (Adult Children of Alcoholics). My book, It’s Your Choice! Decisions That Will Change Your Life is #25 in the same category of e-books. I was elated. I spent many years just trying to publish or to find an agent (something I’m still working on)so having arrived at this place in my drive to succeed should have made me feel I’d accomplished a goal that has driven me since I was three years old. It did. But all I could think of was that now that I have published five books and #6 is getting ready to be released I still have five more non fictions and five more novels, all completed, to be\u00a0published.<\/p>\n
Since a young girl when my mother placed my baby sister in my arms at the age of nine my nurturing and mothering instincts have led me a merry chase with 4 children, 13 grandchildren, 3 great grands and 2 more expected, a small village. As I grew older and discovered where my child abuse had taken me, down a\u00a0painful and stormy path,\u00a0and what a large part not only having children but a great love for children everywhere has played in my life I find my mind turning so often to the enormous problem of child abuse everywhere.<\/p>\n
You can’t turn the news on today without finding out what is happening in the Casey Anthony murder trial. Each time the face of two year old Caylee\u00a0flashes across the screen my heart aches one more time for a life that will never grow to its natural path of adulthood, middle age and then elderly. It isn’t that her heart was stopped when it still had “miles to go before it slept”, but the cruel and inhumane way in which her life was ended is almost too traumatizing to be believed. What kind of human being was capable of that deed? The prosecution drives home on a continual basis the duct tape, the plastic bag, the chloroform. It sickens the mind and drives arrows into the heart. What demons drove someone, and if the prosecution is to be believed, it is the mother of that child, to do such a diabolical deed? Was it truly a desire to be with a\u00a0man who didn’t want to be tied down to a young child? Surely not. And yet, we see every day people who should\u00a0never have had a child.<\/p>\n
We need a license to drive a car, a passport to travel overseas and yet anyone, a simpleton, a child abuser, a selfish, self absorbed and totally non nurturing person can have a child. I knew a young girl once who was on welfare and found out she could collect more money if she had a child so she dug up a sperm donor and, wonder of wonders, she hit the\u00a0jackpot with twins.<\/p>\n
When I think of what the mother and the father of\u00a0Casey Anthony\u00a0are going through; when I think of the dysfunctional behavior of the entire family the sadness I feel, seems to crawl throughout my body, chilling all of my insides.<\/p>\n
Why can’t children, as they get into their teens and begin high school, take classes on parenting, take aptitude tests on parenting, have class discussions on whether having a child is really what they want in life and more important, are they capable of being healthy parents?<\/p>\n
I write books to help children heal from pain that I wish had never happened to them\u00a0in the first place. I write books on wisdom\u00a0and\u00a0how to make healthy choices. It’s never too late but I can’t help wishing that I could have written books for young teenagers on the right and the wrong of having a child.\u00a0I cannot say this often enough: Children of an untreated\u00a0sexually abused children stand a five times greater chance of being abused themselves. And this goes for any kind of abuse. If your mother verbally assaults you with negativity and painful judgments then\u00a0chances are\u00a0that her mother did that to her and her grandmother did that to her daughter and as far back as we can go this verbal abuse has happened. You tell a child he is stupid he will believe you. If you hit a child, the first thing they know is that they are not okay.\u00a0I knew of a man once whose father hung him all day\u00a0from a tree in a gunny sack when he was a small child for punishment of some minor infraction. That same child was sexually abused by an older boy when he was five. He grew up to sexually abuse his younger sister for ten years, then his own daughter for several years and eventually his wife. That pattern started the day he was placed in\u00a0a gunny sack. And there are more stories, more than you’d care to hear.<\/p>\n
We, who are parents, must promise ourselves on a daily basis that we will be the best parent we can possibly be. We’re not perfect but a hug, a tear and an “I’m so sorry, please forgive me,” go a long way to mend a day when we were feeling out of sorts and took it out on our child. If the world had started with one set of healthy parents, who produced healthy children and so on down the line we would not have child abuse and there would be no need for me to write books on recovering from child abuse. I wish to God that were true.<\/p>\n