It is time to celebrate Life Behind the Masks: Surviving and Healing from Mother-Daughter Sexual Abuse is published!
Welcome to this website and thank you for your interest in my work.
Like most of you, I’ve had to work through the label’s others placed on me, to overcome my past, and to have a brighter future. But I didn’t accomplish that work alone. I’ve had support and help along the way…and I needed it.
This interactive blog is where I will provide support and resources for you. Please share your thoughts, questions, suggestions, comments...and let me know about healing modalities that have worked (or not) for you. Everyone has a unique approach to healing, it's true. But we are all healing from something, and this is one of the places we'll create a community around the concepts of trust, forgiveness, anger, hope, dreams, love, self-care, and finding the courage and power to express yourself in positive ways.
After you've read the book, or even if you've read about the book, you know something about me. But there are some things about my experiences you couldn't know until now.
As the daughter--and also a sibling, aunt, mother, and grandmother--I had concerns about sharing my experiences with mother-daughter sexual abuse. Questions, consideration, and consternation arose in me about the repercussions of disclosing the facts of my mother Hellen’s abuse of me. How might the full story impact my family? My husband? My adult children? Their careers? How might others view me? Would I be treated as different?
When I arrived at the conclusion that it wasn’t my crime, I published the book. The crime was Hellen’s and, Hellen’s alone. My silence protected her secret. Silence wouldn’t help anyone. I knew there were other people who'd suffered sexual abuse who were afraid to confront its truths. I've confronted the truths, found paths of healing that prevented me from passing on the violence and pain, and I've spoken, written, and now...published the results of such confrontation.
It is amazing how many men and women confide their personal traumas to me when they know I have had my own. Somehow, they sense that I understand. Because I do understand. While there will always be a need for professionals in the realm of psychology, perhaps we can all join in the healing of one another in the small, personal ways.
The healing journey is just that, a journey. But it is well worth the trip. I wasn’t willing to go only part way and stop. I wasn’t willing to be a life-long victim. I wanted to--and did-- move forward with my life and leave the abuse and faulty belief systems behind me.
That’s what we will be focused on here: Looking Forward. Moving Forward.
So, welcome. And thank you.
I am "looking forward" to hearing from you.
Wilma