The journey I travel
Sunday June 25, 2006
Dearest Alice
Hello and Thank you
I would love to share with you your influence on me and my children, my life is finally having reason and sense, i have read 3 of your books,plus ordering nearly all your other tittles this morning and i have down loaded many of your pictures.
I am a trainee person centred counsellor though i have struggled constantly throughout my course with both the academic and person development parts. though i have not given up and this i feel is due to you and my courage to continue in the face of great adversity.
You have been my silent witness with each book i read i feel the child i was meant to be grow within.
My childhood as with millions of other was abusive with a capital A, i have found this to be useful as for me it is easier to see the abuse, though for others that live with the facade that their childhood was filled with loving parents and happy memories, it is these adults that find it much harder to accept the abuse they endured in their childhoods.
I suffered extreme abuse at the hands of my parents i locked away the sexual abuse they exposed me too, by persons they allowed into my home when i was a very young child, it has only been since i started my course and counselling that i began to realise that there was a black pit in my memory that i so terrified to even focus on for than a moment or two. though i could no longer run from the pit, because it visited me in my dreams and finally i with the constant support and acceptance of my therapist i allowed the memories to come in. the fear grief sadness and anger i experienced was nearly life threatening but i did it we did it and you where there Alice as well; i knew what you where saying in your books was where my road to freedom lay. I knew they where the real truth that i had to admit so i could finally live in this world as i was meant to be.
The writing’s you did on Virgina Wood was the of most help to me I saw myself in those words, the confusion the madness that was not real madness just conformism, distortion and denial and these three ways of being will kill the child in the end if they never gain freedom from this way of thinking.
instead of just cognitively knowing what happened to me at the hands of my parents and others i have finally experianced the pain and distress i was never allowed to feel as a child my grief was and still is insurmountable but at least i grieve now.
i will not give up on myself or hopefully
the first part of this email was written some months ago, when i was in the pits of what seemed like hell, i am now in about to start the last week of my training and am feeling alive and strong
i feel my journey has just begun and that it will never end until the day i die; it is my lifes work to help heal the wounds i have suffered and those of others i counsel. life has finally begun to make sense and i do enjoy it more and more as i visit my counsellor each week and unravel the complex beliefs and thoughts i have.
thank you again for you continuing help and if ever you do a talk or public work shop please do invite me as i would dearly like to meet you.
with the kindest regards and love
s
AM: Thank you very much for your letter. It is good to know that there ARE some counselors who dare to liberate themselves from the “conformism, distortion and denial” and to feel the pain of their own childhood instead of confusing their clients again, the way their parents already did, by preaching forgetting and forgiveness as well as other destructive ideas. I wish you all the best on your journey.