Daleen Berry's Blog, page 2

USPS Gives New Meaning to “Gone Postal”

I am currently without address. Unlike people who are without country, however, it isn’t that I don’t have one. I do. It’s just that the United States Postal Service and I can’t agree on where that is.

The problem began in February, while I was in Florida on book tour. I quickly found it wasn’t cheap or efficient to have someone pick up my mail and forward it to me. So I drove to the local Pompano Beach Post Office and filled out a form for mail to be temporarily forwarded there. By late March, I still hadn’t received a single piece of mail. Even the medical records my doctor tried to send me directly were returned. The envelope carried a stamp reminiscent of an Elvis Presley song: “Not at this address. Return to sender.”



Apparently, according to the USPS, I wasn’t in Florida. (I have no idea where they thought I was, given my umpteen trips to the post office to try and find out why I wasn’t getting any mail.) I knew then another trip to the post office was in order. Once there, a manager suggested I fill out yet another forwarding form. So I did.

By the time April wound down and I returned home, I still had not received one piece of mail. After arriving back in the Mountain State, I drove to my local Morgantown Post Office. That’s where I learned that none of my mail had been forwarded. It was all waiting for me right there. As it turns out, if your personal address doubles for that of a business, which mine does, the USPS won’t forward any mail.

It would have been really nice if someone in Pompano had told me that in March. That day I put in a quick call to the manager who had been helping me, and asked her to make sure that any and all forwarding orders had been stopped. After about fifteen minutes on hold, she returned to the phone and told me she herself had rescinded the forwarding order. Life was good. Or so I thought.



Apparently not. Because when I went to pay my box rent recently, I discovered that the box was closed—because in its infinite wisdom, the USPS decided I was living in Florida. So, effective July 29, two days before my one-year rental expired—someone decided to forward both my personal and business mail to Pompano.

I tried to file an online complaint with the USPS, but, as has happened again and again these past six months, they rejected it. Repeatedly. I don’t know if there’s a conflict between their site and my Mac, or my Safari browser or the ISP, but whatever glitch occurred ultimately led me to pick up the phone and dial 800-275-8777. I reached a USPS customer service rep, who told me to give them two days to fix the problem. And hopefully return my mail here. Wherever “here” is.

If that doesn’t happen, I guess my mail will just have to sit on the beach sipping mojitos, and wait for me to come and collect it.

* * * *

My seventh book, Shatter the Silence, a love story and the long-awaited sequel to my first memoir was released May 7. That’s on the heels of Tales of the Vintage Berry Wine Gang, a collection of my newspaper columns from 1988-91, which came out in April. Prior to those two books, Guilt by Matrimony was released last November. It’s about the murder of Aspen socialite Nancy Pfister.

My memoir, Sister of Silence, is about surviving domestic violence and how journalism helped free me; Cheatin’ Ain’t Easy, now in ebook format, is about the life of Preston County native, Eloise Morgan Milne; The Savage Murder of Skylar Neese (a New York Times bestseller, with coauthor Geoff Fuller) and Pretty Little Killers (also with Fuller), released July 8, 2014, and featured in the August 18 issue of People Magazine.

You can find these books either online or in print at a bookstore near you, at BenBella Books, Nellie Bly Books, Amazon, on iTunes and Barnes and Noble.

For an in-depth look at the damaging effects of the silence that surrounds abuse, please watch my live TEDx talk, given April 13, 2013, at Connecticut College.

Have a great day and remember, it’s whatever you want to make it!

~Daleen

Editor’s Note: Ms. Berry is a New York Times best-selling author and a recipient of the Pearl Buck Award in Writing for Social Change. She has won several other awards, for investigative journalism and her weekly newspaper columns, and her memoir, Sister of Silence, placed first in the West Virginia Writers’ Competition. Ms. Berry speaks about overcoming abuse through awareness, empowerment and goal attainment at conferences around the country. To read an excerpt of her memoir, please go to the Sister of Silence site. Check out the five-star review from ForeWord Reviews. Or find out why Kirkus Reviews called Ms. Berry “an engaging writer, her style fluid and easy to read, with welcome touches of humor and sustained tension throughout.”

How to Survive a Routine Hospital Procedure or Overnight Stay

Several years ago, I read an article about the importance of patient advocacy. “Never leave someone you love alone in a hospital,” the writer said. The reason? The high rate of medical mistakes, some of which are fatal.

After years of being at the bedside of hospitalized loved ones ‘round the clock, for days at a time, I know how true this is. Sometimes hospital staff—from orderlies to nurses to department heads—are rushed and overworked. Other times, they’re simply too arrogant to admit their mistakes. But recently, something happened that caused me great alarm, and which I wasn’t prepared for. It involves a friend of mine, and I believe she came very close to dying.

I drove Polly (not her real name) to the hospital for a routine colonoscopy, which involves anesthesia but not intubation (a breathing tube inserted into the airway). I was in the room when they wheeled her off to surgery; I was still there when she returned twenty minutes later. On similar occasions, while waiting for a family member or friend following surgery, they were sound asleep, with no movement whatsoever. But that day, I saw something very strange: Polly’s legs were flailing and she was trying to sit up while grasping her throat and coughing.

While trying to help calm Polly down, I asked the nurse anesthetist how she did. “Fine,” he said, “but she’s a little wild waking up. Combative.”

“Does that happen very often?” I said.

“Sometimes,” he replied.

“What causes it?” I asked him.

“Usually anxiety,” he said, “she was probably anxious about the procedure.”

Then he chastised Polly for being so “combative,” and stepped in front of me, up to the head of the bed, where he told her to lay back down and scoot up in the bed so she wouldn’t fall off. (Yes, that’s how vigorously she was thrashing around on the bed.) Polly did as she was told, but still seemed upset. Clearly, something was wrong.

A few seconds later, when she had recovered enough to speak, Polly kept saying her throat burned. Asking for Tums. “I don’t know why your throat burns,” he told her, “you didn’t have a tube down your throat.”

Which is true. During the procedure, Polly didn’t need to be intubated. She was breathing on her own—which is how she aspirated stomach fluid into her lungs. And why she was “wild and combative” and why her throat burned. (And later, she would say, her nose and ears.)

Polly, an asthmatic, was also wheezing and coughing by then. A lot. Loudly. He asked if she had her inhaler with her, and when she said yes, he told her to use it. She did, but it didn’t help much.

Still, about thirty minutes later, Polly was discharged.

In addition to the asthma, Polly has acid reflux. She’s had it since childhood, and several family members have it. Neither of us recall the medical staff talking about her reflux problem when they prepped her for the procedure, as we were too focused on another problem. That is, the type of anesthesia they planned to use. Polly requested a different one, because last year when she went for a colonoscopy, she stopped breathing, so the anesthetist stopped the procedure entirely.

After being sent home last year, Polly, a college-educated woman who is exceptionally bright, later discussed this with her other doctors, and researched the drug. What she found convinced her the anesthesia was to blame. She tried to tell both the anesthetist and her medical doctor that she wanted a different anesthesia, but no one would listen. In the end, we both feel like the anesthetist bullied her and her physician into letting them use the same gas they used last year.

So guess what? Something went wrong again. But what? Neither of us know for sure. I was alert and conscious, unlike Polly, and I took the expert’s word for it: there was nothing wrong, and Polly could go home. In short order, she was discharged. I went to get the car, and she later told me that she was so weak from not being able to breathe well that she could barely get dressed.

Within an hour or so of arriving home from the hospital, after Polly was tucked into bed, I heard a distinct rattling in her chest, and realized she was short of breath. The airway sounds carried me back to the days of nursing a sick child, when my middle daughter came down with pneumonia every year. I told Polly to call her doctor, who told her to return to the hospital for a chest X-ray. We went to the emergency department, where we spent the next five hours. Polly received three breathing treatments from a nebulizer, steroids, and an antibiotic. The ED doc said, yes, the chest X-ray did show something in her right lung. Terms like “aspiration pneumonitis” and “pneumonia” fell from the lips of the medical staffers who saw Polly that evening.

Two days later, even using the nebulizer four times a day, she was no better, so I took Polly to see her family doctor. That doctor prescribed a different antibiotic, saying the first one wouldn’t treat this particular type of pneumonia. (Apparently, stomach fluid is gram-negative, but the ED doc had prescribed a gram-positive drug.)

By Friday, when Polly was still no better, I did some research and found that combative patients like Polly are in distress. They aren’t acting up because they have a difficult personality—something is very wrong. Being “wild and combative” after a medical procedure indicates the patient has had, as a different nurse anesthetist told me later, an “incident,”—which the medical staff should see as a potentially life-threatening problem.

Polly now says she was in distress. “I was fighting for my life!” I believe her. And wonder if the staff was more intent on the patients who were lined up, assembly-line style, for their colonoscopies, than they were on Polly? I still don’t know.

But last Monday morning, one week later, Polly still hadn’t gotten out of her nightgown, except when she went back to the doctor. She still had no energy, had developed a low-grade fever, and was in a great deal of pain—because her mouth, ears and throat burned so bad she could barely eat, much less speak. So we made yet another trip to the doctor, where she received yet another diagnosis: chemical burns, from the reflux that occurred during the colonoscopy.

I hope Polly recovers completely, and soon. Meanwhile, please learn from us and do not allow you or your loved one to be bullied into something of a medical nature which your gut tells you may kill you.

Equally vital, never ever let the hospital staff send you home when you’ve flailed around on the bed like a fish out of water, following surgery. Insist they keep you for observation, if nothing else. Patients have a bill of rights, and medical folks are supposed to honor them. When they don’t, though, you can’t be afraid to stand up for yourself and demand they find out what’s wrong—and then treat it.

Finally, always, no matter how routine the procedure, stay with your loved one in the hospital. Doing so could just save their life.

* * * *

My seventh book, Shatter the Silence, a love story and the long-awaited sequel to my first memoir was released May 7. That’s on the heels of Tales of the Vintage Berry Wine Gang, a collection of my newspaper columns from 1988-91, which came out in April. Prior to those two books, Guilt by Matrimony was released last November. It’s about the murder of Aspen socialite Nancy Pfister.

My memoir, Sister of Silence, is about surviving domestic violence and how journalism helped free me; Cheatin’ Ain’t Easy, now in ebook format, is about the life of Preston County native, Eloise Morgan Milne; The Savage Murder of Skylar Neese (a New York Times bestseller, with coauthor Geoff Fuller) and Pretty Little Killers (also with Fuller), released July 8, 2014, and featured in the August 18 issue of People Magazine.

You can find these books either online or in print at a bookstore near you, at BenBella Books, Nellie Bly Books, Amazon, on iTunes and Barnes and Noble.

For an in-depth look at the damaging effects of the silence that surrounds abuse, please watch my live TEDx talk, given April 13, 2013, at Connecticut College.

Have a great day and remember, it’s whatever you want to make it!

~Daleen

Editor’s Note: Ms. Berry is a New York Times best-selling author and a recipient of the Pearl Buck Award in Writing for Social Change. She has won several other awards, for investigative journalism and her weekly newspaper columns, and her memoir, Sister of Silence, placed first in the West Virginia Writers’ Competition. Ms. Berry speaks about overcoming abuse through awareness, empowerment and goal attainment at conferences around the country. To read an excerpt of her memoir, please go to the Sister of Silence site. Check out the five-star review from ForeWord Reviews. Or find out why Kirkus Reviews called Ms. Berry “an engaging writer, her style fluid and easy to read, with welcome touches of humor and sustained tension throughout.”

Will Write for Food!

Considering the relative ease of social media, and given how popular it’s become to post snippets of one’s life online, we might assume we know what another person, a Facebook friend, perhaps, is going through. That would be a mistake.

Three years after becoming a news reporter, I spent a summer working at the Kingsville Record in Texas.

Using myself as an example, I’ll tell you why. After The Savage Murder of Skylar Neese hit #12 on the New York Times bestseller list in 2014, and with the popularity of Pretty Little Killers, released soon thereafter, many people assumed I was set, possibly even making a six-figure income. Especially given that I appeared on several popular TV shows, such as Dr. Phil , Dateline , 20/20 , and others.

However, in actuality, after that single book advance was divided four ways, I earned $12,500 on both books. I receive a royalty check every six months; my last one was almost $850. And in 2015, I earned a whopping $7,000 for another book advance. Add to that the $2,000 in royalties and other income I received, and my grand total, before taxes, was $9,000. Certainly not enough to live on, and most definitely below the poverty level.

Seeing my book featured on the cover of Elle, just below the photo of Kristen Stewart.

There’s a reason they call us “starving writers.”

Add to this my health condition, which I finally pinpointed as a reaction to off-gassing from new construction. In particular, the toxins that pressed wood emit. So in early February, using what little savings I had, I moved out of my brand new townhouse and fled to Florida, where I hoped a combination of sea breezes and medical treatment might make a difference. And it did, amazingly so! Today, I feel like a new person.

Taking a break between interviews for the true-crime book, “Guilt by Matrimony,” in 2015.

While in Pompano Beach, I finished two more books, but typing fourteen to sixteen hours a day caused so much inflammation in my shoulder that I could barely use my left arm afterward. Fortunately, I seem to have found the solution for that problem, too, which means I’m back in full-throttle writing mode.

It hasn’t been easy. From February until now, I’ve been living on the generosity of loved ones. Thank God for good friends! But accepting handouts does little to help one’s self-esteem. Still, I try to look at the bright side: even though I’ve fallen from middle class to far below that, I have more—much more—than many people. And I am so very grateful for that, just as I am for the dozens of people who call, email or post such kind words of encouragement on Facebook, as happened again today.

Preparing to give my 2013 TED talk, based on my memoir, “Sister of Silence,” at Connecticut College.

So folks, what I want, and need, is a real job. My first love is journalism. I’ve been told that I’m an excellent interviewer, one people open up to, revealing tidbits and stories they would tell no one else. Any many people say I’m an equally good investigator, one who has pieced together many a story that revealed some important truth the public needed to know. Had a right to know. I have other skills, such as marketing and public relations, but the world of journalism is where I truly shine. And since writing books isn’t paying the bills, I may have to relegate writing books to a hobby.

It’s an economic decision, really. One that may take me far, far away from Almost Heaven. So if you know of a reliable media outlet who needs someone like me, with a work ethic second to none, please send them my way. If you have any other ideas that may help me climb out of this economic slump, I’d love to hear them, too.

Next time, I’ll talk about why you should never leave someone you love alone in a hospital. Have a great week and thanks for reading!

* * * *

My seventh book, Shatter the Silence, a love story and the long-awaited sequel to my first memoir was released May 7. That’s on the heels of Tales of the Vintage Berry Wine Gang, a collection of my newspaper columns from 1988-91, which came out in April. Prior to those two books, Guilt by Matrimony was released last November. It’s about the murder of Aspen socialite Nancy Pfister.

My memoir, Sister of Silence, is about surviving domestic violence and how journalism helped free me; Cheatin’ Ain’t Easy, now in ebook format, is about the life of Preston County native, Eloise Morgan Milne; The Savage Murder of Skylar Neese (a New York Times bestseller, with coauthor Geoff Fuller) and Pretty Little Killers (also with Fuller), released July 8, 2014, and featured in the August 18 issue of People Magazine.

You can find these books either online or in print at a bookstore near you, at BenBella Books, Nellie Bly Books, Amazon, on iTunes and Barnes and Noble.

For an in-depth look at the damaging effects of the silence that surrounds abuse, please watch my live TEDx talk, given April 13, 2013, at Connecticut College.

Have a great day and remember, it’s whatever you want to make it!

~Daleen

Editor’s Note: Ms. Berry is a New York Times best-selling author and a recipient of the Pearl Buck Award in Writing for Social Change. She has won several other awards, for investigative journalism and her weekly newspaper columns, and her memoir, Sister of Silence, placed first in the West Virginia Writers’ Competition. Ms. Berry speaks about overcoming abuse through awareness, empowerment and goal attainment at conferences around the country. To read an excerpt of her memoir, please go to the Sister of Silence site. Check out the five-star review from ForeWord Reviews. Or find out why Kirkus Reviews called Ms. Berry “an engaging writer, her style fluid and easy to read, with welcome touches of humor and sustained tension throughout.”

Eager Journalist: Will Write for Food!

Considering the relative ease of social media, and given how popular it’s become to post snippets of one’s life online, we might assume we know what another person, a Facebook friend, perhaps, is going through. That would be a mistake.

Three years after becoming a news reporter, I spent a summer working at the Kingsville Record in Texas.

Using myself as an example, I’ll tell you why. After The Savage Murder of Skylar Neese hit #12 on the New York Times bestseller list in 2014, and with the popularity of Pretty Little Killers, released soon thereafter, many people assumed I was set, possibly even making a six-figure income. Especially given that I appeared on several popular TV shows, such as Dr. Phil , Dateline , 20/20 , and others.

However, in actuality, after that single book advance was divided four ways, I earned $12,500 on both books. I receive a royalty check every six months; my last one was almost $850. And in 2015, I earned a whopping $7,000 for another book advance. Add to that the $2,000 in royalties and other income I received, and my grand total, before taxes, was $9,000. Certainly not enough to live on, and most definitely below the poverty level.

Seeing my book featured on the cover of Elle, just below the photo of Kristen Stewart.

There’s a reason they call us “starving writers.”

Add to this my health condition, which I finally pinpointed as a reaction to off-gassing from new construction. In particular, the toxins that pressed wood emit. So in early February, using what little savings I had, I moved out of my brand new townhouse and fled to Florida, where I hoped a combination of sea breezes and medical treatment might make a difference. And it did, amazingly so! Today, I feel like a new person.

Taking a break between interviews for the true-crime book, “Guilt by Matrimony,” in 2015.

While in Pompano Beach, I finished two more books, but typing fourteen to sixteen hours a day caused so much inflammation in my shoulder that I could barely use my left arm afterward. Fortunately, I seem to have found the solution for that problem, too, which means I’m back in full-throttle writing mode.

It hasn’t been easy. From February until now, I’ve been living on the generosity of loved ones. Thank God for good friends! But accepting handouts does little to help one’s self-esteem. Still, I try to look at the bright side: even though I’ve fallen from middle class to far below that, I have more—much more—than many people. And I am so very grateful for that, just as I am for the dozens of people who call, email or post such kind words of encouragement on Facebook, as happened again today.

Preparing to give my 2013 TED talk, based on my memoir, “Sister of Silence,” at Connecticut College.

So folks, what I want, and need, is a real job. My first love is journalism. I’ve been told that I’m an excellent interviewer, one people open up to, revealing tidbits and stories they would tell no one else. Any many people say I’m an equally good investigator, one who has pieced together many a story that revealed some important truth the public needed to know. Had a right to know. I have other skills, such as marketing and public relations, but the world of journalism is where I truly shine. And since writing books isn’t paying the bills, I may have to relegate writing books to a hobby.

It’s an economic decision, really. One that may take me far, far away from Almost Heaven. So if you know of a reliable media outlet who needs someone like me, with a work ethic second to none, please send them my way. If you have any other ideas that may help me climb out of this economic slump, I’d love to hear them, too.

Next time, I’ll talk about why you should never leave someone you love alone in a hospital. Have a great week and thanks for reading!

* * * *

My seventh book, Shatter the Silence, a love story and the long-awaited sequel to my first memoir was released May 7. That’s on the heels of Tales of the Vintage Berry Wine Gang, a collection of my newspaper columns from 1988-91, which came out in April. Prior to those two books, Guilt by Matrimony was released last November. It’s about the murder of Aspen socialite Nancy Pfister.

My memoir, Sister of Silence, is about surviving domestic violence and how journalism helped free me; Cheatin’ Ain’t Easy, now in ebook format, is about the life of Preston County native, Eloise Morgan Milne; The Savage Murder of Skylar Neese (a New York Times bestseller, with coauthor Geoff Fuller) and Pretty Little Killers (also with Fuller), released July 8, 2014, and featured in the August 18 issue of People Magazine.

You can find these books either online or in print at a bookstore near you, at BenBella Books, Nellie Bly Books, Amazon, on iTunes and Barnes and Noble.

For an in-depth look at the damaging effects of the silence that surrounds abuse, please watch my live TEDx talk, given April 13, 2013, at Connecticut College.

Have a great day and remember, it’s whatever you want to make it!

~Daleen

Editor’s Note: Ms. Berry is a New York Times best-selling author and a recipient of the Pearl Buck Award in Writing for Social Change. She has won several other awards, for investigative journalism and her weekly newspaper columns, and her memoir, Sister of Silence, placed first in the West Virginia Writers’ Competition. Ms. Berry speaks about overcoming abuse through awareness, empowerment and goal attainment at conferences around the country. To read an excerpt of her memoir, please go to the Sister of Silence site. Check out the five-star review from ForeWord Reviews. Or find out why Kirkus Reviews called Ms. Berry “an engaging writer, her style fluid and easy to read, with welcome touches of humor and sustained tension throughout.”

Orlando: My Son Could Have Been Murdered

My heart is heavy after hearing the news out of Orlando. Upon realizing that the mass shooting at a gay nightclub is the worst one in U.S. history.

My son Zach, during AIDS/LifeCycle 2016.

My son is gay. So was my Uncle Robert. I’ve been around gay family members since the early 1970s, after my mother finally found my missing uncle. He had run away from home decades earlier because of family mistreatment over being gay.

I loved my Uncle Robert. He was as handsome as Clark Gable, a snappy dresser, and one of the most charming men I’ve ever met. He and my mother had a happy reunion when he visited our West Virginia home, and we drove to Los Angeles in 1975 to see him. Because of Uncle Robert, I saw the famous smog L.A. is home to and tasted spumoni for the first time, experiencing its delicious flavors of chocolate, pistachio, and cherry-almond. I can still remember waking up in his little apartment, which he shared with a male “roommate.” Hear my parents—yes, even my somewhat bigoted father—chuckle about how the fellow was really Robert’s lover. My uncle, you see, had not come out. No wonder, given that he felt forced to flee his own home because of being gay.

But Uncle Robert’s sexual orientation didn’t change my mother’s love for her brother. A religious woman, she knew true Christianity allows no room for homophobia. It didn’t change my father’s (who was agnostic) admiration of him, for the intelligence and charm his brother-in-law exuded. And it certainly didn’t matter to me that my Uncle Robert was gay. To me, he was simply my fun-loving, smooth-talking uncle. My mother’s older brother, whom she didn’t know was dead or alive, yet loved enough to find out, spending considerable time and energy and finally tracking him down through the Internal Revenue Service.

My son is gay. In fact, until recently, he worked in gay nightclubs in Washington, D.C., Miami, Florida, and San Francisco, California. I am not a nightclub person. They are too loud and too bright for me, neither of which I can tolerate for very long. But living so many miles apart, and both of us having hectic schedules, visiting him at work was often the only way we could see each other. Like the time I had a long layover in Miami, where I visited Zach at Halo; I’ve visited both when the clubs were open and when they were closed. Doing this, I came to know something of the people who do frequent these places. And I can tell you this: never once did I feel unsafe. As a woman who herself has been a crime victim, at the hands of a straight man, that’s important.

But more than that, I came to realize that for party-loving people, gay nightclubs offer a popular, hip social scene. You meet all kinds of people there, from millionaires to Congressmen to single mothers. Most intriguing to me was the fact that not all of them are gay. Which makes what happened in Orlando doubly tragic: in targeting what is perceived as a gay hangout, the killer undoubtedly killed straight people, too.

Zack is currently in L.A., where he was one of 2,300 cyclists who rode 545 miles over seven days for AIDS LifeCycle, raising $16,000 in the process for medical research. (His team raised $70,000.) He is the kindest, sweetest man I know, as well as one of the brightest and most generous. As a small boy who picked and brought me flowers, and was beloved by all his female classmates from the time he entered kindergarten until he graduated high school thirteen years later, Zach remains a true gentleman. He is also quite handsome and when he enters a room, heads turn.

As a mother, my heart would break if I received a call saying a mass murderer had entered a nightclub and killed my beautiful son.

Goofing off with Zach during his April layover in New York City.

As a mother, I weep for all the mothers, sisters, daughters, and aunts who weep for their loved ones, slain in such a barbaric way in Orlando. Whether they were gay or straight makes no difference. I weep that any human would slaughter another over something as complicated and so misunderstood as sexual orientation.

We are not judge and jury of our fellow man, any of us. We lack the capacity to understand or recognize why people are as they are. And we certainly can’t read hearts—the only true measure of any man. No, we are instead misguided, imperfect creatures capable of giving offense and taking it, on any given day. Any hour.

I am praying for Orlando. And for the rest of us, and for what lies ahead, if such senseless violence and hatred against our fellow humans continues unabated.

* * * *

My seventh book, Shatter the Silence, a love story and the long-awaited sequel to my first memoir was released May 7. That’s on the heels of Tales of the Vintage Berry Wine Gang, a collection of my newspaper columns from 1988-91, which came out in April. Prior to those two books, Guilt by Matrimony was released last November. It’s about the murder of Aspen socialite Nancy Pfister.

My memoir, Sister of Silence, is about surviving domestic violence and how journalism helped free me; Cheatin’ Ain’t Easy, now in ebook format, is about the life of Preston County native, Eloise Morgan Milne; The Savage Murder of Skylar Neese (a New York Times bestseller, with coauthor Geoff Fuller) and Pretty Little Killers (also with Fuller), released July 8, 2014, and featured in the August 18 issue of People Magazine.

You can find these books either online or in print at a bookstore near you, at BenBella Books, Nellie Bly Books, Amazon, on iTunes and Barnes and Noble.

For an in-depth look at the damaging effects of the silence that surrounds abuse, please watch my live TEDx talk, given April 13, 2013, at Connecticut College.

Have a great day and remember, it’s whatever you want to make it!

~Daleen

Editor’s Note: Effective June 2, 2016, Ms. Berry’s blog began appearing each Thursday, rather than Monday, as it once did. Berry is a New York Times best-selling author and a recipient of the Pearl Buck Award in Writing for Social Change. She has won several other awards, for investigative journalism and her weekly newspaper columns, and her memoir, Sister of Silence, placed first in the West Virginia Writers’ Competition. Ms. Berry speaks about overcoming abuse through awareness, empowerment and goal attainment at conferences around the country. To read an excerpt of her memoir, please go to the Sister of Silence site. Check out the five-star review from ForeWord Reviews. Or find out why Kirkus Reviews called Ms. Berry “an engaging writer, her style fluid and easy to read, with welcome touches of humor and sustained tension throughout.”

Me Before You: Neither the Novel Nor the Movie Disappoint

Editor’s note: This article contains spoilers.

I love watching movie trailers. So when I saw the one for Me Before You several months ago, the first thing I did after leaving the theatre was Google the title, where I discovered the newly-released flick was based on the 2012 fictional novel by British journalist and author Jojo Moyes.



I don’t always have the luxury of first reading a book before seeing the related movie, but I did with Me Before You. How could I not? Moyes’s book has thousands of reviews at Amazon, with an average of 4.6 stars, which means it was either a good story or well written. Or both. Turns out, it’s both. I love Moyes’s writing style and the way she weaves a complex, compassionate tale about the wealthy, albeit depressed Will Traynor, a quadriplegic, and his upbeat, cheery caretaker, Louisa Clark.

Like many women, I also love a good love story.

While taking Megabus to New York City recently, I had nothing but time so I opened the Kindle app on my iPhone and began reading. The bus pulled out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, about 11 p.m. I couldn’t stop turning the electronic pages until my eyes grew so heavy they would barely stay open. It was after 1 a.m.

On my way home from NYC, I began reading again. By the time I finished, I was glad I had thought to pack some tissues in my backpack, because, as my father would say, Me Before You is a real tearjerker.

Last weekend, some friends and I went to see the movie. As we left the theatre, I couldn’t help noticing an older couple behind us. He was wiping his eyes. One of my friends saw it, too, and once outside we wondered if he had lost someone like Will. Or if the couple had a loved one who committed suicide.

That’s because, at its heart, Me Before You is a love story, but it’s one which also deals with the controversial issue of assisted suicide, or euthanasia. Will Traynor doesn’t want to live as he is, trapped in a chair while in almost constant pain. He wants to be the “me” he was before the accident that turned him into a quadriplegic. Before “you,” or Louisa Clark enters his world.

Several excellent articles have been written about the ethical and moral dilemma euthanasia raises, so I’m not going there. I will say that, having faced and overcome suicidal tendencies in the past, I can understand why Will made the decision he did. But as someone who has never been trapped in a wheelchair, I am not in a position to judge anyone who makes the choice he did.

Louisa, or Lou, as her family calls her, is such a bubbly, joyful character that we root for her, in her efforts to change Will’s mind. She is one of those people you’d like as a friend, a woman whose smile never fades. (Well, not for long.) Who is sure to pick you up, when you’re feeling down. Or goad you into finding a reason to laugh over your miserable lot in life. She is literally an adult Pippi Longstocking, with the stockings to prove it. I can’t wait to see how Lou fares in her life after Will, since her life “before (him)” was dull and boring.

If you’re a reader, get the book. You won’t be sorry. (Then take your significant other to see the flick on date night.) In the movie, the story arc of Me Before You is unwavering, and actors Emilia Clarke and Sam Claftin give a spot-on performance. However, it omits two other supporting storylines: gang-rape and the legal questions that arise from assisted suicide. Moyes tackles both topics deftly, in a poignant way that left this reader longing for September, when her sequel arrives.

* * * *

My seventh book, Shatter the Silence, a love story and the long-awaited sequel to my first memoir was released May 7. That’s on the heels of Tales of the Vintage Berry Wine Gang, a collection of my newspaper columns from 1988-91, which came out in April. Prior to those two books, Guilt by Matrimony was released last November. It’s about the murder of Aspen socialite Nancy Pfister.

My memoir, Sister of Silence, is about surviving domestic violence and how journalism helped free me; Cheatin’ Ain’t Easy, now in ebook format, is about the life of Preston County native, Eloise Morgan Milne; The Savage Murder of Skylar Neese (a New York Times bestseller, with coauthor Geoff Fuller) and Pretty Little Killers (also with Fuller), released July 8, 2014, and featured in the August 18 issue of People Magazine.

You can find these books either online or in print at a bookstore near you, at BenBella Books, Nellie Bly Books, Amazon, on iTunes and Barnes and Noble.

For an in-depth look at the damaging effects of the silence that surrounds abuse, please watch my live TEDx talk, given April 13, 2013, at Connecticut College.

Have a great day and remember, it’s whatever you want to make it!

~Daleen

Editor’s Note: Effective June 2, 2016, Ms. Berry’s blog began appearing each Thursday, rather than Monday, as it once did. Berry is a New York Times best-selling author and a recipient of the Pearl Buck Award in Writing for Social Change. She has won several other awards, for investigative journalism and her weekly newspaper columns, and her memoir, Sister of Silence, placed first in the West Virginia Writers’ Competition. Ms. Berry speaks about overcoming abuse through awareness, empowerment and goal attainment at conferences around the country. To read an excerpt of her memoir, please go to the Sister of Silence site. Check out the five-star review from ForeWord Reviews. Or find out why Kirkus Reviews called Ms. Berry “an engaging writer, her style fluid and easy to read, with welcome touches of humor and sustained tension throughout.”

BREAKING NEWS—Sexual Slavery Skyrockets After Trump Bans Journalists

June 2, 2018

By Anonymous Reporter

ANY CITY, U.S.A.—Under cover of darkness, a lone woman wearing a ski mask to hide her identity met me in an empty warehouse, far from the glow of the city lights. She was skittish, and kept glancing around as if afraid she was followed to our deserted meeting place.

Lily Clark (not her real name) was released from prison two months ago. When she reached out to me with accounts of female inmates being raped or, in some cases, forced into sexual slavery inside the prison where she was held for almost a year, I knew I had to get her to talk. It took some doing, though, because Lily was nothing if not terrified. She was afraid the feds would find out she squealed, and send her back to prison.



“Back to that living hell on earth,” as she called it.

Lily said the guards are actually encouraged to rape the women prisoners, who often end up being traded around among prison officials in a form of sexual slavery never before seen in this country. “They drew our names like it was some kind of sick lottery,” she said, “and then each of them took turns with us.” According to Lily, these actions are repeated daily, or as long as it takes to break the women, and get them to talk. To turn over the names of their menfolk.

Sadly, many of the women are innocent. They haven’t been charged or sentenced. None of them have even seen the inside of a courtroom. They are simply locked up, waiting for someone to tell them why they’re there. Or when they can go home. Lily says it’s a never-ending wait. Although no one in a position of authority will cite a reason, it’s a fact that the women were only thrown into prison after their husbands, fathers or brothers took to the street in demonstrations against President Donald Trump.

Under the current administration, which has targeted any citizen who speaks out against the federal government, these acts are seen as tantamount to torture. But they have only come to light recently, because most of America’s journalists are themselves behind bars. There, these once bold and courageous members of the Fourth Estate can do little to expose the gross wrongs that seem to grow in scope and number with each passing day.

President Trump quickly turned the American people against the media. Long before he ran for the highest office in the land, in fact, public outcry about “irresponsible journalism” was a common occurrence. Within months of moving into the White House, however, the President began a concerted campaign against journalists around the country, from reporters at prestigious, daily newspapers to pundits at Fox News, and every blogger around the country.

Now, though, as more and more people disappear, with family members relating how their loved ones were picked up in the middle of the night by military police, never to be seen again, some quarters are calling for a return to the days of an unrestricted media, when “freedom of the press” actually existed.

“I used to make fun of the reporters who called Trump a liar, and compared him to Kim Jong-un,” Lily said. “I mean, I know journalists are the lowest paid college graduates, and I thought they were just stupid windbags who were jealous that some rich guy was smart enough to get the American people to stand behind him.”

Lily glances again over her shoulder, before turning back to me and whispering something about a rumor that the next move is for the feds to take away citizens’ cell phones and Internet access.

“Now I know those reporters were right,” she said, shaking visibly from her fear. “But it’s too late. We’ve become North Korea.”

Editor’s Note: Today’s blog was written in the flavor of that satirical and popular publication, The Onion.

* * * *

My seventh book, Shatter the Silence, a love story and the long-awaited sequel to my first memoir was released May 7. That’s on the heels of Tales of the Vintage Berry Wine Gang, a collection of my newspaper columns from 1988-91, which came out in April. Prior to those two books, Guilt by Matrimony was released last November. It’s about the murder of Aspen socialite Nancy Pfister.

My memoir, Sister of Silence, is about surviving domestic violence and how journalism helped free me; Cheatin’ Ain’t Easy, now in ebook format, is about the life of Preston County native, Eloise Morgan Milne; The Savage Murder of Skylar Neese (a New York Times bestseller, with coauthor Geoff Fuller) and Pretty Little Killers (also with Fuller), released July 8, 2014, and featured in the August 18 issue of People Magazine.

You can find these books either online or in print at a bookstore near you, at BenBella Books, Nellie Bly Books, Amazon, on iTunes and Barnes and Noble.

For an in-depth look at the damaging effects of the silence that surrounds abuse, please watch my live TEDx talk, given April 13, 2013, at Connecticut College.

Have a great day and remember, it’s whatever you want to make it!

~Daleen

Editor’s Note: Effective June 2, 2016, Ms. Berry’s blog will begin appearing each Thursday, rather than Monday, as it has been. Berry is a New York Times best-selling author and a recipient of the Pearl Buck Award in Writing for Social Change. She has won several other awards, for investigative journalism and her weekly newspaper columns, and her memoir, Sister of Silence, placed first in the West Virginia Writers’ Competition. Ms. Berry speaks about overcoming abuse through awareness, empowerment and goal attainment at conferences around the country. To read an excerpt of her memoir, please go to the Sister of Silence site. Check out the five-star review from ForeWord Reviews. Or find out why Kirkus Reviews called Ms. Berry “an engaging writer, her style fluid and easy to read, with welcome touches of humor and sustained tension throughout.”

These Knees Are Made for Walkin’

One year ago this month, an anesthesiologist sedated me. Then a surgeon used a power saw to cut through the bones in both legs. When I woke up a few hours later I had two brand-spanking-new knees. They have served me well, too. Five weeks after surgery, I was dancing around my office on them. Recently, they carried me all over Manhattan in New York City, where I walked nine miles in one day. And five the next.

Embracing the day, and life, at The High Line, in Manhattan.

Between those two bookends, I’ve done CrossFit (pushing and bench pressing who knows how many pounds), gone swimming, and taken aqua aerobics and dance classes. I’ve flown to Colorado, driven to Florida, and carried box after box up and down staircases. Last week while shaving my legs, I raised my right one in the shower, placing my foot on a waist-high metal bar. (Now that’s a feat I haven’t done for years!) I also sat on my duff for more hours than I care to recall, where I wrote two books and edited another. That’s 153,000 words, give or take. (And it doesn’t include the 72,000 words I edited for the third book.) Even as I write this, I find these facts amazing given that I had major surgery just two months before I sent the first book to my publisher.

My morning began in NYC began when my son showed me this historic building, Saint Sava Serbian Orthodox Cathedral, believed to have caught fire from a lighted candle.

I am in awe of people who climb mountains, free fall from airplanes, and engage in extreme skiing stunts that would probably kill the likes of me. But for every one of those activities, I have accomplished something equally challenging. And I’ll bet you have, too. It’s easy to forget what we’re capable of—until we look back and see what we did. Activities that, in hindsight, only seem possible with superhuman strength. Divine intervention, if you will.

Chocolate By The Bald Man . . . he appears to be the Willy Wonka of New York.

Like arriving by bus in NYC at 7 a.m. one day, pounding 14 miles of pavement, and returning back to Morgantown, W.Va., at 9 a.m. two days later. I made that same trip 10 years ago and thought it would kill me—and my turnaround time then was nothing like this recent trip. While exhausted this time, I realized I wasn’t in pain like the last time. Then, every part of my body ached, especially my back. The only thing I can attribute the lack of pain to this time is my bionic knees. (Compliments of Dr. David Tuel, surgeon extraordinaire.) And that makes sense, when you think about it. If you have one broken body part (or, in this case, two), it’s going to affect the rest of you.

My favorite sight in all New York City was my son and walking partner for the day. He’s just started a hiking company in the San Francisco Bay Area, so if you’re looking for a great tour, he’s your guy!

That’s why it’s important to take care of the body you have right now, with good nutrition, proper rest and exercise, occasional mental health days, and moderation in all things. It’s also crucial to get any repairs taken care of in a timely manner. Before it’s too late and you’ve ruined something you dearly need—like a leg. Or a liver.

Both coming and going . . . as I entered the Big Apple I glimpsed this majestic sign. Two nights later as I left the city, I found myself right in front of The New Yorker building. Where I drooled at the thought of my literary brethren who write for this prestigious magazine.

Because once that happens, you won’t be walking nine miles anywhere.

* * * *

My seventh book, Shatter the Silence, a love story and the long-awaited sequel to my first memoir was released May 7. That’s on the heels of Tales of the Vintage Berry Wine Gang, a collection of my newspaper columns from 1988-91, which came out in April. Prior to those two books, Guilt by Matrimony was released last November. It’s about the murder of Aspen socialite Nancy Pfister.

My memoir, Sister of Silence, is about surviving domestic violence and how journalism helped free me; Cheatin’ Ain’t Easy, now in ebook format, is about the life of Preston County native, Eloise Morgan Milne; The Savage Murder of Skylar Neese (a New York Times bestseller, with coauthor Geoff Fuller) and Pretty Little Killers (also with Fuller), released July 8, 2014, and featured in the August 18 issue of People Magazine.

You can find these books either online or in print at a bookstore near you, at BenBella Books, Nellie Bly Books, Amazon, on iTunes and Barnes and Noble.

For an in-depth look at the damaging effects of the silence that surrounds abuse, please watch my live TEDx talk, given April 13, 2013, at Connecticut College.

Have a great day and remember, it’s whatever you want to make it!

~Daleen

Editor’s Note: Effective June 2, 2016, Ms. Berry’s blog will begin appearing each Thursday, rather than Monday, as it has been. Berry is a New York Times best-selling author and a recipient of the Pearl Buck Award in Writing for Social Change. She has won several other awards, for investigative journalism and her weekly newspaper columns, and her memoir, Sister of Silence, placed first in the West Virginia Writers’ Competition. Ms. Berry speaks about overcoming abuse through awareness, empowerment and goal attainment at conferences around the country. To read an excerpt of her memoir, please go to the Sister of Silence site. Check out the five-star review from ForeWord Reviews. Or find out why Kirkus Reviews called Ms. Berry “an engaging writer, her style fluid and easy to read, with welcome touches of humor and sustained tension throughout.”

When Your Rights Interfere with My Privacy: Transgender Toilets, Bashful Bladders and the Law

Several years ago our local Carmike Cinemas expanded. We suddenly had far more movie choices, but if you watched a flick at the far end of the theatre, you were in for quite a hike back to the main restrooms in the lobby. If you were a man.

But for women, who often have to pee more frequently than men, for quite a number of reasons, the engineers placed one restroom at the end of the new addition. Men who need the loo have to either hold it until their movie is finished, or return to the lobby.



Or at least they did until last Friday.

So imagine my surprise when, during the middle of a movie last year, I walked into the newer, ladies only, restroom and found a man standing there peeing in one of the stalls. (Yes, he left the stall door open.) This is a blow-by-blow account of what happened next.

Me: “What are you doing in here? This is a ladies room!”

Him: “Sorry, I didn’t know.”

Me: “There’s a sign on the door!”

Him: (Beats a hasty retreat before furious woman notifies management.)

Me: (Sits down on commode but feels totally weirded out, for fear another man might walk in.)

Now, you should know that this public restroom is situated at the long end of a dark hallway, and it’s rare to even find another woman inside. Plus, if you needed to yell for help, the chances of being heard are slim to none, given that the lobby is so far away and the volume is so high in the adjacent auditoriums. So women like me might be a little more nervous using this restroom.

What is a “woman like me?” Well, I’m a rape survivor, and my rapist was a man—which makes me like at least 19.3 percent of all American women. Women who will not be comfortable finding a man inside the ladies room. Women who will be afraid to use the bathroom in public, if they think men will be using it, too.

Maybe that’s because women have to get undressed to do their business. Unlike men, if all they need to do is take a leak. We literally have to unfasten and pull down our pants, or lift our skirts and/or pull down our pantyhose, before we can pee. So imagine how it would feel to be a survivor of rape, and sit in a stall exposed in this way—when in walks a man.

This is not about fearing people who are different from me, even though men and woman are biologically different. (At least we are at birth. After that, with today’s sex-change operations and everything else, anything goes.) This is not about the rights of transgender people, some of whom I know personally.

This is about privacy. And my right to have it. This is about being about to perform a basic bodily function that many Americans have trouble performing in the safety of a public bathroom stall, for various reasons, even on a good day.

As a child, when I reached a certain age, I developed something called modesty. I still remember my dad commenting on it to my mom, because I began covering myself when I bathed and wanted my bedroom door closed when I undressed. I was ten. He was my father, but I didn’t want him seeing my girl parts.

I think most children, certainly many of them elementary school age, would feel the same way. “No boys allowed,” little girls tell little boys who, in jest, try to come into the girls’ room at school. (And this doesn’t even touch on the locker rooms, where showering naked with students who are the same gender can be traumatic for some kids.)

Almost my entire adult life, possibly as a result of being raped, I’ve had what is known as a bashful bladder. I have a hard enough time using the bathroom when other women are in the stall next to me, so who knows what would happen if I needed to go and a man was there.

And one of my three daughters was so uncomfortable using public bathroom facilities that the entire time she was growing up, she would rather risk getting a urinary tract infection, rather than pee whenever we were away from home.

~ ~ ~

Now, for a confession. I have gone into a man’s restroom. Mostly by mistake. The second I realized my error, I turned around and quickly walked right back out—because I knew I was the wrong gender. But honestly, I had no desire to see strange men doing the private things we all do when we use the bathroom.

However, on occasion I have intentionally used the men’s room. I did so on my recent drive home from Florida to West Virginia, when I stopped at Starbucks and whoever was in the ladies room was taking too long. But I knew that those public toilets are for single use, and if the door was unlocked, chances were good that no man was inside in a compromising position. So not only would I not be uncomfortable, I wouldn’t embarrass some poor man on the pot. (Unlike here, when I did just that.)

My most significant turn in the men’s room came in the early 1980s, when the Beach Boys performed on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. I was nearly nine months pregnant and the line to the ladies room was far too long for my poor bladder. So the three men in my family barricaded the entrance to the men’s room and gave me some privacy to pee. And started a trend, since many other women quickly joined me there.

The country is in turmoil over President Obama’s transgender bathroom proclamation last week, and I can see why. Everyone has to pee. Everyone has a right to feel safe while performing such a natural bodily function. But when that person’s right interferes with my privacy, I’m not a fan. At all.

However, I also think there’s an easy solution: single stall, unisex bathrooms, outside and in clear view of the public, like San Francisco already has. Those things are so small, you’d be hard pressed to get more than one person inside. Then we will all feel safe. Problem solved. (Except for you parents with diapers to change. Sorry about that. Go find a park bench somewhere.)



Speaking of parents, for years now we’ve been afraid of sending our children alone into public restrooms. So we accompany them. Or, if there’s only one parent, and the child is the opposite sex, that parent will take the child into the parent’s gender-specific bathroom. It’s what we’ve grown to do, during the era of Sandusky and other predators. Transgender people, in and of themselves, are not predators! But as a parent, I’ve seen “dirty old men” lurking outside restrooms who probably were.

We can just keep doing that, and, for women like me, adults can accompany adults. Hey, I have no problem taking my adult brother, son or male friend into the ladies room with me. They can simply self-identify as transgender, even though they aren’t, so I feel safe when I’m trying to use the loo.

Of course, by then my bladder will be so bashful I won’t be able to.

* * * *

Boy, have I been busy! My seventh book, Shatter the Silence, a love story and the long-awaited sequel to my first memoir was released May 7. That’s on the heels of Tales of the Vintage Berry Wine Gang, a collection of my newspaper columns from 1988-91, which came out in April. Prior to those two books, Guilt by Matrimony was released last November. It’s about the murder of Aspen socialite Nancy Pfister.

My memoir, Sister of Silence, is about surviving domestic violence and how journalism helped free me; Cheatin’ Ain’t Easy, now in ebook format, is about the life of Preston County native, Eloise Morgan Milne; The Savage Murder of Skylar Neese (a New York Times bestseller, with coauthor Geoff Fuller) and Pretty Little Killers (also with Fuller), released July 8, 2014, and featured in the August 18 issue of People Magazine.

You can find these books either online or in print at a bookstore near you, at BenBella Books, Nellie Bly Books, Amazon, on iTunes and Barnes and Noble.

For an in-depth look at the damaging effects of the silence that surrounds abuse, please watch my live TEDx talk, given April 13, 2013, at Connecticut College.

Have a great day and remember, it’s whatever you want to make it!

~Daleen

Editor’s Note: Daleen Berry is a New York Times best-selling author and a recipient of the Pearl Buck Award in Writing for Social Change. She has won several other awards, for investigative journalism and her weekly newspaper columns, and her memoir, Sister of Silence, placed first in the West Virginia Writers’ Competition. Ms. Berry speaks about overcoming abuse through awareness, empowerment and goal attainment at conferences around the country. To read an excerpt of her memoir, please go to the Sister of Silence site. Check out the five-star review from ForeWord Reviews. Or find out why Kirkus Reviews called Ms. Berry “an engaging writer, her style fluid and easy to read, with welcome touches of humor and sustained tension throughout.”

Goodbye, Alicia

Editor’s note: Spoiler alert for anyone who missed The Good Wife last night.

Alicia Florrick, you have made us proud. And shown women everywhere what is possible. As well as what it means to love and truly be loved in return.

I didn’t like The Good Wife farewell last night. But I do today. Last night I was disappointed, because your future seemed ambiguous. Today, I see there was no other ending. After you couldn’t reach Jason, after you abandoned Peter at the last second, and after Diane slapped you, it felt like you were in limbo.

Until I watched the pilot episode again. There you were, naïvely standing beside your man in spite of everything he’d done. That’s when I realized that leaving you hanging, as happened in last night’s ending, was the only option. It was, after all, in keeping with your growth during the last seven seasons.

Except your creators, husband and wife writers Robert and Michelle King, didn’t do that. Instead, they gave you choices—much as women today have choices.

Let’s face it; seven years ago you didn’t have many. You had been absent from the job market for thirteen years. You stood at your husband’s side, looking frightened and confused, while flashbacking to the video scene that the prosecution leaked. That humiliating scene of Peter with a prostitute. When you turned and saw him standing there, addressing the crowd, a white thread on his dark suit jacket caught your attention and—good wife that you are—you instinctively reached out to remove that small imperfection from his person.

But before you could, he grabbed your hand and pulled you behind him and away from the crowd. Your body language was very telling. You let yourself be dragged along by Peter, because you didn’t know what else to do. You clearly didn’t know what you wanted seven years ago.

Through Diane Lockhart’s words, we learned how you reached that point in your marriage, and how, fifteen years earlier, you had graduated at the top of your Georgetown Law School class, and “clocked the highest billable hours” at the law firm where you then worked for two years. And how, after trading your career for marriage and motherhood, you became tentative and insecure.

What happened to you, Alicia? I daresay the same thing that happened to us all. You ditched your dreams and doused your desires to wholly support those of your mate. Somehow, you lost your footing, and yourself, along the way. It took you a while, but you finally found yourself again. I have to say, “you’ve come a long way, baby!” You’ve shown us that following around a husband with such questionable ethics (not to mention corrupt habits) is detrimental to one’s well being. Because any man who can’t behave well with a woman of your caliber, intellect, and beauty, is simply unworthy of you.

Now about your rendezvous with Will Gardner last night. Personally, I don’t believe in ghosts. But I do know how valuable it can be when troubleshooting a situation to carry on a hypothetical conversation with someone else inside your head. Role playing, if you will. And Will, who was once so important to you, was the appropriate person to turn to, as you came to terms with your future. So yes, I cheered at Will’s return last night, as his words of wisdom. After all, isn’t that how your story as a career woman began, with Will advising you in your first case at Stern, Lockhart and Gardner?

As someone who has loved and lost, I also understand your intense need for closure. Especially when that lost loved one was The One. Before, you didn’t have that, Alicia. When Will died, you lost the chance to tell him how you really felt. But last night you got to say those words. Some of the most romantic ever, and some I’ve said and heard myself.

“I’ll love you forever,” you told Will.

“I’m okay with that,” he said, as he held you close.

What could Jason Crouse—as handsome as he is and wherever he is—possibly even say to compare with that?

Last night, someone tweeted that your departure was absent any feminism. At first, I agreed. Then I thought back over your last seven years. Almost throughout, women helped women, which is what Diane called the “closest thing we have to an old boy’s network in this town” when we first met you in September 2009.

And I’m sure you never intended to ruin Diane’s marriage or humiliate her like you did—but let’s be honest, don’t all good wives let their female friends flounder when they’re called upon to stand by their men?

Actually, I think you’re more of a feminist by far than you were before—choosing who to love and leave, and living life on your own terms. You are no longer that timid creature who once used to make a pot roast and then call Peter, asking if he was coming home for dinner. Nor are you the new attorney who advised her first client to “put on nice clothes and makeup. Force yourself to . . . for you. It’s the superficial things that matter right now.”

What you showed us last night, what we’ve learned as we’ve taken this wild ride with you, is this: women remain stuck when they don’t have options. Like you were, seven years ago. To have options, like you, we need money—and money usually only comes with employment. The more money, the more options. That’s what feminism means, what equality provides.

When we first met you, you tightly grasped your husband’s hand. Last night, your hand was moving away before his fingers even reached for yours. But your heart was already gone. Headed for a bright, independent, and satisfying future.

I wish you well, Alisha.

* * * *

Boy, have I been busy! My seventh book, Shatter the Silence, a love story and the long-awaited sequel to my first memoir was released May 7. That’s on the heels of Tales of the Vintage Berry Wine Gang, a collection of my newspaper columns from 1988-91, which came out in April. Prior to those two books, Guilt by Matrimony was released last November. It’s about the murder of Aspen socialite Nancy Pfister.

My memoir, Sister of Silence, is about surviving domestic violence and how journalism helped free me; Cheatin’ Ain’t Easy, now in ebook format, is about the life of Preston County native, Eloise Morgan Milne; The Savage Murder of Skylar Neese (a New York Times bestseller, with coauthor Geoff Fuller) and Pretty Little Killers (also with Fuller), released July 8, 2014, and featured in the August 18 issue of People Magazine.

You can find these books either online or in print at a bookstore near you, at BenBella Books, Nellie Bly Books, Amazon, on iTunes and Barnes and Noble.

For an in-depth look at the damaging effects of the silence that surrounds abuse, please watch my live TEDx talk, given April 13, 2013, at Connecticut College.

Have a great day and remember, it’s whatever you want to make it!

~Daleen

Editor’s Note: Daleen Berry is a New York Times best-selling author and a recipient of the Pearl Buck Award in Writing for Social Change. She has won several other awards, for investigative journalism and her weekly newspaper columns, and her memoir, Sister of Silence, placed first in the West Virginia Writers’ Competition. Ms. Berry speaks about overcoming abuse through awareness, empowerment and goal attainment at conferences around the country. To read an excerpt of her memoir, please go to the Sister of Silence site. Check out the five-star review from ForeWord Reviews. Or find out why Kirkus Reviews called Ms. Berry “an engaging writer, her style fluid and easy to read, with welcome touches of humor and sustained tension throughout.”