The first book signing

I was still on a high from Wednesday evening’s amazing book launch when I walked into the scene of the annual conference of Canada’s EMDR therapists on Friday. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing is a trauma treatment I describe in Confessions of a Trauma Therapist.

Loaded down with cloth shopping bags of books, I made my way from the parking lot to the scene of the conference. I could hear the speaker at the morning session winding down in the large ballroom to my left. I set myself up at the table which was positioned to catch people as they left the session and settled in to sell and autograph my books. Through the impressive doors of the ballroom, I heard the microphone saying there was somebody selling books or something outside the door. She’d been asked to announce it. Wrong name, nothing about my book, not even the title or the relevance to the conference.

The participants flooded out from the morning session. Most didn’t even notice me sitting there trying to look friendly. A few stared with curiosity, then decided it was nothing that concerned them. The only books I sold and signed were to people I already knew and who intended to buy my book anyway.

Oh well, live and learn. It’s the sort of experience that keeps us humble.

Letter from Charron

At the age when little girls have a best friend, Charron who lived across the street was my inseparable buddy. We’ve kept in touch all these years. Charron lives in Nantuckett, has five children and numerous grandchildren. When we meet we still feel a closeness and caring based on that early bonding.

I’ve been carrying around the letter Charron sent me some weeks ago when she heard about the publication of Confessions of a Trauma Therapist. Here’s part of it.

Dear Mary K
I am so proud of you! Just imagine the distance you have travelled. It’s hard for me to come to grips with your trauma. You certainly had me fooled.

Once, years ago, Charron wrote in another letter that she’d always envied my life when we were children. Her family was struggling financially and her stressed-out mother was working long hours to save their family bakery. I lived in the big house across the street with a mother who welcomed Charron and was always available.

By the time Charron wrote about wishing she had lived in the big house, I had my memories of sexual abuse. I remember writing back cautioning Charron to be careful what she wished for. She was one of the first people to whom I disclosed my sad history.

We’ve both grown into successful older women. Charron, as her friend Mary K, is still married to the same man after close to 50 years. We both have loving relationships with our offspring and we’re both living affluent lifestyles. Not bad for a couple of little girls who spent hours every day dressing up and pretending to be ballerinas, movie stars or whatever took our fancy.

Confessions book launch draws crowd of almost 200!

What an incredible night it was! Yes, the books did arrive in the early afternoon. And all went smoothly after that.

The auditorium of Women’s College Hospital was filled to overflowing with the wonderful people who joined me in launching Confessions of a Trauma Therapist.

One of the best parts of organizing the book launch was hearing from old friends and seeing so many people who matter to me at the launch itself.

Michele Landsberg commented that any author would envy the amazing turnout for the launch. She told us of her work as a young reporter when she encountered so many women wanting to tell her about their abuse because they knew she would listen and believe.

Sylvia Fraser described in gripping detail how her memories of incest surfaced. Sylvia’s book My Father’s House was published in 1987 before most people knew about sexual abuse.

Tina Sanders praised WRAP (Women Recovering From Abuse), the wonderful group therapy programme she attended at Women’s College Hospital. Eva-Marie Stern, the WRAP art therapist, followed Tina.

Then my husband and my son, those two wonderful men in my life, spoke of their experiences with me as their wife and mother. My son’s love and sincerity moved me to tears. He is a best friend.

Boris Mischenko played his guitar and sang for us. The programme ended with the whole auditorium clapping along to Boris’s great music.

All of this was shaped and created by Judy Steed and myself. In between speakers I read from my book. Judy has an amazing sense of shaping a workshop, a presentation – and as we saw last night – a book launch. She’s my dear friend and we’re used to being together as a team running workshops.

After eight years of work, the book is finally available. If you missed last night, you can purchase a book online on Amazon at this web address:
http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Trauma-Therapist-Healing-Transformation/dp/1926645197/

Today is my book launch!

I’ve been telling readers of my blog that I was in a blissful state of calm about my coming book launch.

Well, all that bliss got shattered a few days ago when I still didn’t have any books for the book launch.

Imagine! A book launch with no books! My trust in the universe and my assurance that if I just did everything in my power, it would all turn out just as it was meant to – all that faith turned into an internal windstorm of sleepless nights and a stressed body.

It’s many years since I’ve felt electrical charges of nervous energy tightening my muscles and turning this usually relaxed and happy body into a minefield of doubt and worry. It was an unpleasant reminder of how my body felt most of the time before I healed from childhood trauma.

Today – the very day of the launch – my publisher promises my books will arrive in time for tonight’s celebration. I got the news late yesterday and slept the whole night through in a state of relaxed gratitude and relief. My faith in the universe is restored.

This evening at the launch those books will go out into the hands of people who have been waiting for them. For me, it’s the fulfillment of my life’s work, getting what I know from personal experience and from my 30 years of studying and treating trauma into the hands, hearts and minds of others. I feel a deep sense of gratitude for the opportunity life has given me.

Now if only those books arrive on time...

I was the smartest of the dumb bunnies

Childhood trauma is cumulative. You start out being traumatized by the original abuse. Then, each stage of life piles on more bad experiences. As a child, I couldn’t clear my head to think. This excerpt from Confessions of a Trauma Therapist describes my life in grade three.

Grade three was the year the class was divided into two. Smart kids got to do grade four work, skipping a grade. Dumb kids sat in separate rows doing grade three stuff. I was held back with the dumb kids.

I dreaded telling my parents. Standing in front of them that evening, I looked for a way to soften the blow.

“Well,” I assured them, “I’m the smartest of the dumb bunnies.”

My father howled with laughter, doubled over, smoker’s cough erupting, breathless with the hilarity of it. That was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. Smartest of the dumb bunnies! Ha, ha, ha!

My mother shared his amusement, albeit less raucously.

As for me, I just slunk away, relieved they weren’t mad at me. Nobody ever asked me how I felt. I don’t remember my parents ever mentioning it again.

My friends went on with the smart kids and I stayed behind. By the time I got to high school, I was already older and feeling more sophisticated than my classmates especially the late-maturing boys. When I was sixteen, I tried to makeup for the lag by choosing an older boyfriend. His interest in me may have soothed one part of my battered ego, but the fact that I couldn’t say no to his sexual urges made me feel even worse about myself.

Travelling around with my father

Here is an excerpt from Confessions of a Trauma Therapist describing my camping trips and visits to cottage country with my father.

I was aware and at the same time I wasn’t aware that my father’s frequent stops to open the trunk of the car were making him more and more drunk. He kept a red metal Coke cooler there with a block of ice and glass bottles of Coke. He would drink a bit from the bottle, pour in a belt of rye and continue sipping and driving until the next stop.

The more he drank, the more my head fuzzed over. That’s how my brain protected me from being terrified of the danger I was in, driving with this drunken protector. In fact, I was angry with the people along the way who snickered at his slurred speech and wobbly gait. It never occurred to me to be mad at him. I realize now that those amused stares from passersby threatened to pry open my reality: that I was with a man who was not a proper guardian for a child.

I remember being embarrassed by his attempts to impress the blonde waitress at the soda counter in the Port Carling drug store. I wanted to explain to her that my father was really a very nice man. And when we stayed overnight at the cottage of one of my mother’s friends, I resented her wanting to take care of me. Her solicitous attention made it clear she considered my father an unsuitable caregiver for a seven-year-old child.

When Father came marching home

Here is another excerpt from my book about father-daughter incest.

In 1945 when I was seven, the war ended and the men came home. What a strange time for the world. It was an era of post-traumatic stress disorders from the horrors of war. And for many it was a time of marital stress from too many years of living separate lives.

I don’t know how my parents’ marriage would have been different if it hadn’t been interrupted by the war. And I don’t know if my father would have relied less on rye and Coke to face his world. He had always been a party boy, but after the war he was seldom sober.

Each time he returned home during the war years I had initially been scared of him. He was huge. He could lift me up with one hand. Mostly I remember his smell. It was different from anyone else’s: a nose-tingling blend of the rough khaki wool of his scratchy uniform, the whisky on his breath and the ever-present Export A in his mouth.

Once he had been with us for a day or two, my shyness faded and I delighted in climbing into his giant lap.

When he returned home for good I experienced a strange mixture of fear and intense love. I wanted to be with him as much as possible. The most important thing in my young life was keeping Daddy happy.

Many years later, I learned he had another woman in England and that my role in the family, as my mother saw it, was to keep him home with us in Canada.

I grew up believing I was very fortunate to be my father’s companion. I thought I was lucky to go off camping with him, just the two of us.