Lynn C. Tolson's Blog: Beyond the Tears: A True Survivor's Story by Lynn C. Tolson, blog, page 27

Domestic Violence Awareness Month

October is National Domestic Violence Awareness month, yet domestic violence occurs globally 24/7 365 days a year. What is considered violence? John Bradshaw, author of "Homecoming" and "Creating Love" says: "I consider anything that violates a person's sense of self to be violence. Such action may not be directly physical or sexual, although it quite often is. Violence occurs when a more powerful and knowledgeable person destroys the freedom of a less powerful person for whom he or she is significant." Bradshaw also writes that "Anyone who witnesses violence is a victim of violence." Do you think children under 5 are not traumatized by seeing violence? Can a 4 year old girl really erase this scene as if it never happened? Here is an excerpt from "Beyond the Tears: A True Survivor's Story."





***When I was four years old, I was listening from my room one night while my mother and father tossed insults at each other. "You're a lousy excuse for a human being," I heard my mother say. "Well, excuse the hell out of me for living," my father said. Their phrases flew through the air like a Ping-Pong ball, paddled back and forth over a net. I was like the net, suspended by two poles, waiting to catch and contain the last word. If only they could stop fighting, then they could love each other and me.They continued their torrent: "I wish you were dead." "I hope you drop dead." "I'm gonna kill you if it's the last thing I do, so help me God." "Over my dead body." "Get out of my life." "You think you can get away with murder, don't you?" I was scared to death.While I waited for the fight to end, I held my breath and my pee. Barefoot, in my pajamas, I tiptoed from the bed to the door, and peeked out of my room. My mother and father were standing by the kitchen sink, facing each other. She was in her nightgown and robe, and in tears. He was wearing his boxer shorts, his flabby and hairy belly in full view. I looked past them toward the bathroom. Could I sneak by my parents to the toilet without them noticing?"You're such a bitch," my father said. "You're a son of a bitch," she responded. My father opened a kitchen drawer and pulled out a knife. That's the knife my mother used to cut bones from chicken. He was holding the knife over his head with the sharp blade aimed at my mother. She looked so small compared to his large body, and his rage was larger than life. My father noticed me long enough to stop killing my mother. "What the hell do you want?" my father yelled.My voice squeaked like Minnie Mouse: "I have to go to the bathroom.""Go to the bathroom and get back to bed," my mother snapped. "Go ahead. It's okay." While I went to the bathroom, I heard my mother whisper, "Get out! Get out of my sight!" Although I knew she was telling my father to leave, I wondered what I'd done wrong. Then, my mother was knocking at the bathroom door, asking me, "Do you need any help?""No," I called out as I nearly fell in the toilet because I'd forgotten to put the booster seat onto the potty. When my mother led me back to my bedroom, I didn't see the knife or my father, but I could see her wearing worry on her face like a heavy layer of cold cream that had dried and caked.***(copyright Lynn C. Tolson)





Be aware that when you fight in front of your children, you are degrading their sense of self, developing their perspective of an unsafe world, and diminishing their respect for you. 





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Tolson 4 TEARS Reviews "Living Write"

Do you want to write a book? Or do you just want to write for yourself every day? What is your vision as an author? This book will help you to achieve your goals!





Review of Living Write: The Secret to Inviting Your Craft Into Your Daily Life by Kelly L. Stone.Kelly L. Stone delivers on the promise she makes in the title. She imparts her knowledge as a counselor and an author to advise aspiring writers on the act of daily writing. Kelly encourages writers to explore their vision and reach milestones while overcoming self-doubt. Readers learn what is possible as well as how to achieve it.Whether you are a published author or a novice writer, there are tools in Living Write that will appeal to your level of development. Kelly also shows writers what self-sabotaging systems to throw out of the tool box! Instead, techniques to improve the traits of a successful writer are introduced, such as "role-modeling" and "image incorporation."Living Write is not an editing or grammar guide, nor does it contain writing prompts and brain teasers. What it does offer is a thorough examination of a writer's mind set, and methods to implement the positive traits into the act of daily writing.Living Write is a must-read for anyone searching for the secret to successful writing. It includes a CD with guided meditations and daily exercises for writers. Other books in Kelly L. Stone's series are Time to Write: No Excuses, No Distractions, No More Blank Pages and Thinking Write: The Secret to Freeing Your Creative Mind. 

Tolson 4 TEARS Reviews "In Her Wake"

Review of In Her Wake: A Child Psychiatrist Explores the Mystery of Her Mother's Suicide by Nancy Rappaport http://www.nancyrappaport.comNancy Rappaport was four years old when her mother committed suicide in 1963. The question anyone asks of someone who has taken his/her own life is "why?" Why would a mother of six take her own life? After years of not speaking about their mother's death, Nancy takes on the task of talking to her siblings to determine the answer to the question "why?" Nancy's children want to know about their deceased grandmother. A saga of generations of complexities evolves that reads like an unsolved mystery.What would make a mother who seemed to "have it all" kill herself? Nancy relies on interviews, articles, and photographs to discover the woman behind the self-destruction. Nancy reads between the lines of court documents and personal diaries to reveal decades of secrets, and she narrates the unfolding story like an emotionally charged archeology expedition.Nancy carefully constructs the story of a life, death, and the aftermath with continuity, clarity, and originality. This is a book well-written within the confines of tough subject matter, and without the full approval of her family members. Nancy unearths the conflicts within a prominent family, as well as the details of custody battles and financial settlements. She faces the differing perspectives and memories of her family members regarding the same events. These are challenges for anyone seeking the truth.It seems fitting that Nancy chose to be a child psychiatrist. She includes relevant cases in the book, weaving her past with their present, their personal with her profession. There is no cover of denial, and no evidence of self-pity. Her purpose must be to help others who have lost someone to face reality.In Her Wake is recommended to anyone trying to understand a variety of aspects of suicide. It's also recommended as an example of the work it takes to develop a sense of self in the wake of suicide.

(My father committed suicide when I was 19. He left no note; just a mess of emotional debris. I attempted suicide for the last time when I was 25. After taking 300 pills, I had to be resuscitated. I was left with psychological wreckage, and I'm still picking up the pieces. LCT)

Tolson 4 TEARS Talks About Memory

Blocked memory is a method of coping with the incomprehensible. My father had committed acts of violence upon me before I was a teen, all the while telling me, "You will remember...Nothing." But my mind took pictures with photographic precision. I remembered what he'd done and how he had reasoned that it was my duty as his daughter. When I was twelve, my brother raped me. He also used that phrase, telling me, "You will remember…. Nothing." What rationalization did he have? None! It was a calculated crime of unspeakable betrayal upon my mind, body, and soul. I practiced forgetting, training my mind to zoom in on one event (my father) and zoom out on another (my brother). There was no clear focus; multiple transposed images soaked in a solution too corrosive for my brain to process.But nightmares would awaken me with their shrewd yet senseless messages; the nightmares lingered long into the days. The images did not fade; they developed into flashbacks. What were they telling me? The images were more than I could handle, and I attempted suicide at age 25. Memories are not chronological, linear, or mathematical. They advance, retreat, and delete themselves according to the quantity/quality of the information the individual can manage at the time.Anna Freud wrote: "Human beings are acquainted with only a fragment of their own inner life, and know nothing about a great many feelings and thoughts which go on within them, that is to say, all these things happen unconsciously without their awareness…. The importance of any event is by no means a guarantee of its permanence in our memory; indeed, on the contrary, it is just the most significant impressions that regularly escape recollection." Anna Freud, Psychoanalysis for Teachers and Parents: Introductory Lectures (New York: Norton, 1935), pp. 65-66

Tolson 4 TEARS Talks 2 Dreamcatchers

Dreamcatchers is dedicated to educating the public on child abuse signs/symptoms, intervention, prevention, statistics, reporting, and helping victims locate the proper resources to achieve a full recovery.





Advocate and author Lynn C. Tolson talks with hosts Elizabeth Brawley and Laurie Ann Smith on Blog Talk Radio, August 2, 2010.







Dreamcatchers Talk Radio was created by authors and advocates Sandra Potter and Donna Kshir. Their goal is to promote awareness and create a voice for all children!

Beyond the Tears: A True Survivor's Story, A Hollywood Story?

I am the author, and I am posting this review on behalf of the reader, with her permission, because she (the reader/reviewer) is not yet on Goodreads.
*****
Reviewed by Karen Sucharski, survivor, former journalist, poet

One has to keep two things in mind when reading Beyond the Tears: A True Survivor's Story: first this is a memoir, a true story and atop the best-seller list. Why not? And second, why hasn’t Lynn C. Tolson written more books?
Beyond the Tears: A True Survivor's Story grabs the reader from page one and does not let go. Tolson’s story is deftly woven into conversation and story-telling and sprinkled with self-revelation along the way. This is the story of a young woman who, after a serious but unsuccessful attempt to take her own life, finds an amazing counselor and begins a journey of self-discovery and healing. It may be classified as a “self-help” book but it goes so far beyond that. It does fit firmly into the genre of memoir although much of what is remembered is emotionally painful to read. Imagine living it.
Tolson’s story starts in a dysfunctional, middle-class family in the Poconos and New Jersey (Think Billy Joel’s “Captain Jack”) and moves out west to the wide open desert of Arizona. Sexually abused and assaulted as a child, locked up in a mental ward as a teenager and feeling numb and lost as a young adult, Tolson turned to suicide as an answer. After that, we follow the road that led her to such a desperate act.
The writing, however, is not desperate. It is thoughtful, artistic and full of rich detail that transports the reader into the chasm that was Tolson’s life. There are many reasons to publish a book independent of a traditional publisher. It may be called self-publishing (with the baggage associated with that moniker) but this book is definitely not in that genre. Tolson, herself, says she went the self-publishing route because she was diagnosed with breast cancer and didn’t know if she had the years traditional publishers can take to get her story out.
Beyond the Tears: A True Survivor's Story is as fascinating to read as a horror-movie is to watch. In fact, it would make a fine mini series. Hollywood? It is also as beautifully-written as an Arizona sunset.