Healing The Writer: A Personal Account of Overcoming PTSD Book Review

Healing The Writer: A Personal Account of Overcoming PTSD is the second published book by my friend Dan L. Hays. It isn't the second book Dan has written. It is the second one that he published. Healing The Writer is Dan's story of why the first books weren't published and the healing that had to take place for Dan to be able to write again and become a published writer.  

Dan's is a story of healing from PTSD and facing fearful memories that his inner child blocked from adult Dan's memory for years. Through inner child exercises, over a period of time, Dan is able to get little Danny to tell his secrets and share his fears. 

What I like about Dan's books is that I always find something about Dan's healing journey that I can relate to. Sometimes it feels like Dan is telling part of my story in the feelings of being a survivor. Dan's writing always teaches me something about myself. 

I highly recommend Healing The Writer to any survivor of PTSD and anyone who has ever experienced writer's block. Dan shares some valuable exercises in working with your inner child too. 
Patricia

If you are interested, here is the link to my book review of Dan's first published book, Freedom's Just Another Word.

http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2010/04/freedoms-just-another-word-book-review.html

Silent Anger---Triggers

I am reading Healing The Writer: A Personal Account of Overcoming PTSD, a book written by my friend Dan L. Hays. I will later write a book review when I finish reading the book. Today I want to write about an issue that came up for me and brought tears to my eyes. I have been questioning, as Dan has, why it has been hard for me to start writing my own book. As I was reading a page of Dan's book, what came to mind was my mother's face when she was angry and used silence to show it rather than voicing her anger.

I am usually quite vocal with my own anger. When I get silent, it is because I am thinking and figuring out what brought out my anger. I am also looking at what fear is behind my anger. Once I figure out what that fear is, I can voice it. For me, voicing my anger and fears is very important. If I can voice it, I can release it.

My mother's silent anger was never voiced and released. You knew when she was angry but if you asked her about it, you were wrong. She wasn't angry. It was all in your mind. Her anger never got voiced. You were made to look bad and nothing was ever resolved. 

My mother lived with my family and me when I started my healing from incest. When I started going to Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACOA) meetings, my mom never asked why I was going to 2-4 meetings a week. She didn't know about the incest because I hadn't told her. She was silently angry at me for daring to reveal our family's secret of alcoholism. 

I didn't know about domestic violence and its effects back then. My mother wasn't beaten by my dad. The only time he ever hit her was before I was born. She got his gun and pulled the trigger. He never hit her again. My mom was a good shot. He could have died. The gun wasn't loaded but neither of them realized it until after she pulled the trigger. 

I grew up I with that story. Death was the threat behind my mom's silent anger. Don't make me mad or I might shoot you. I lived with that subconscious fear from sometime in my childhood.  How much has that influenced my decisions?

My parents were divorced and my mom was living with us. I was probably into my third year of healing when I asked my ACOA sponsor to help me face my mom and tell her about the incest. When I told her, I think she was shocked but she was also angry. She didn't say anything until I asked her if her brother had ever sexually abused her. Her angry comment was, "No, Papa would have killed him if he had." Then she went into her angry silence and went to her room. 

Our talk was never brought up again. I gave her a copy of My Dear Family Member letter. I also mailed a copy to both of my siblings 2 weeks before mailing copies to each of my dad's siblings. If you are interested in what I said to my siblings and to my dad's siblings about the incest, you will find a link at the end of this post that will take you to the letter.

Anger turned to silence hurts and never gets resolved. You know the anger is there. The angry person wins and you lose if you bring it up. I learned to disconnect from my mom in order to not be hurt by her silent anger or did I? 

Is that silent anger still affecting my life? Did it keep me from writing my book all this time? Today, I know my mom's anger can't hurt me, unless I let it. I refuse to let her anger control my actions and thoughts today. 

It is time to write my book about healing from incest. I started writing just this week. My husband has been telling me for awhile that I already have my book written within the pages of my blog. I ignored his words. Recently, a friend, Corinne Edwards told me the same thing. Her words got through my doubts and questioning where to start. Over last weekend, I sat down and printed out all of my blog posts and then started a list of possible chapters for my book. 

This is your official notice to my husband Daniel Singleton, my friend Slade Roberson who encouraged me to write a blog and this book and to my friend Corinne Edwards whose words finally got through to me, I am writing my book. Thank you all three and so many others of my friends who have encouraged my writing. Thank you Dan L. Hays for writing your books and being my friend whose story is so like my journey of healing from being an adult child of an alcoholic.
Patricia

Related Posts:

Dear Family Member - Notification About Incest Happening In Family
@ http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2010/10/dear-family-member-notification-about.html

My Mom---The Silent Parent
@ http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2008/02/my-mom-silent-parent.html

Birthdays And Valentine's Day
@ http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2014/02/birthdays-and-valentines-day.html

Family Generational Patterns of Behavior
@ http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2007/12/family-generational-patterns-of.html

Dialogues With Dignity Show January 17, 2012

"Peace starts within us- we cannot bring to the world what we do not have to offer." -Daily OM (January 5, 2012) (found at http://www.dailyom.com/ )

Today is January 14 and this is my first blog post of 2012. I have spent most of the first two weeks of January recovering from a bad kidney infection and the antibiotics that mess with my stomach and give me a headache the first three days of taking it. 

I am also officially dieting, which I rarely do. I am a vegetarian and have diabetes so most diets just don't fit. I will let you know how this goes. I have lost one and a fourth pounds this week. I am hoping now that the doctors have finally diagnosed me with a thyroid problem and I am on medication for it, I can finally lose weight and get healthier. I will post more on this topic soon.

On January 17 at 5:30 ET/4:30 CT, I will be a guest on Dialogues With Dignity, one of my favorite radio talk shows.  The show isn't live but it will be taped and posted shortly after it is finished. I so enjoy being on the show with my friends Dan Hays, Ellen Brown and Stash Serafin. In the meantime, there are plenty of other shows that you might want to listen to. The link is as follows:

http://dialogueswithdignity.podbean.com/

Some of Dialogues With Dignity's latest show were on topics such as:
Feeling Good Without Feeling Guilty
Listening Between The Lines
Creative Waiting
Faith at the Crossroads
Timing Is Everything

The show on January 17 has the topic of learning to love yourself as part of your healing process. I am not sure of the title. I will come back and post the title and the link when it is posted. As always, I am looking forward to this talk with my friends Dan, Ellen and Stash.

My friend Dan Hays from Dialogues With Dignity has a birthday this week on Sunday.  Happy Birthday Dan.  Hope you have a glorious birthday and 2012. 
Patricia

Related Articles:

DialoguesWithDignity Guest February 23, 2011 @
http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2011/02/dialogueswithdignity-guest-february-23.html topic was "Reconciliation Is It Always Possible?"

Dialogues With Dignity: Progress Over Perfection @
http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2011/08/dialogues-with-dignity-progress-over.html topic was "Progress Over Perfection"

How To Write A Book - Automatic Author Tutorial - Slade Roberson

A highlight of my day on Thursday, October 20 was an email that I received from my friend Slade Roberson.  Slade emailed me to let me know that I had been picked to receive a free copy of his Automatic Author program along with 2-Author Consultations.  If you are like me have an idea to write your own story for future generations to read, then you can find Slade's Automatic Author Tutorial at the following link:

http://sladeroberson.com/automatic-author

I have used one of Slade's tutorials in the past that took me step by step through the process of setting up this blog.  Without that tutorial, this blog would not exist.  I am still very limited in the technical skills that I have for using my computer.  That is one of the reasons that you won't find pictures at the head of each of my posts.  One of these days, I will have my daughter-in-law sit down with me and write out step by step how to download pictures on to my blog.  My daughter is the one who posted the picture of my husband and me for my profile picture.

Slade knows that I have recently made the committment to my family and friends telling them that I am going to write a memoir of my experiences with childhood incest and the healing journey that I have been going through for the past 20+ years.  I have already decided that my memory of being what I called a "3-year-old adulteress" is going to be the beginning of my story since it is one of my earliest memories.  I am not sure where my story will go after that.  My earliest memories of the incest happening didn't happen until I was 11 years old.  I still need to decide exactly what I want the focus of my book to be.  Do I just want to write one book like my friend Colleen Spiro has done in her book The Third Floor Window or divide my life up into more than one book as my friend Dan L. Hays has done.  Dan's first book is called Freedom's Just Another Word.  He is currently working on book number two which is due out sometime in 2012.  Reading both of those memoirs has given me much encouragement to write my own.

I have lots of encouragement from you, my readers, my friends and my family to write this book. With Slade's Automatic Author Tutorial, I have no reason to put off writing this book any longer. Now I am going to sit down and start reading the tutorial.

Before I do that, I need to apologize to my readers for not writing much on Spiritual Journey Of A Lightworker recently.  I am going through some minor health problems which I hope will be resolved soon.  As minor as they are, my energy levels have been low lately.  I feel just bad enough to not get much done throughout the day. 

With Thanksgiving and Christmas coming up, that needs to change.  Family is coming to our house for Thanksgiving and I have major house cleaning and rearranging to do so that everyone will fit and have room to move around.  I love it when my family and Daniel's come to visit.  It takes a lot of preparation to get ready for them.  We will have about 11 or 12 people in the house for about 3-4 days.  My house is noisy and full of love, disagreements, and compromise as families do when they get together for any period of time. I am blessed with the wonderful mother-in-law and sister-in-law that I dearly love. It is the 3 brothers, of which my husband is the baby of the family, that usually provides the noise.  They are all in their 60's now and losing their hearing so they talk loud because none of them wants to spend the money to get a hearing aid. The youngest of the clan who will be gathering here are two sisters - twin 4-year-old who have me wishing that I had just a little of their energy.  They are sweethearts, who being four like a lot of attention.  They are easy to give it to.  Being around children can keep you young at heart. Being around them also gives me reason to miss my grandchildren who live in Idaho.  They are all growing up so fast. I hope that you are all having a glorious October and enjoying the Fall weather and colors.  Autumn is my favorite time of the year.
Patricia

Related Articles:

The Most Influencial Person---#4---Birth Of A Dream
@ http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2007/07/most-influencial-person-4-birth-of.html

Out Of My Comfort Zone---The Third Floor Window
@ http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2009/09/out-of-my-comfort-zone-third-floor.html

"Freedom's Just Another Word" Book Review
@ http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2010/04/freedoms-just-another-word-book-review.html

Let's Talk About Spirit Guides Teleconference With Andrea Hess And Slade Roberson
@ http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2007/11/lets-talk-about-spirit-guides.html

Name It, Claim It, Make It So---Intention To Hear Your Spirit Guides
@ http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2008/09/name-it-claim-it-make-it-so-intention.html