Healing Deep Within – Light Morning

Healing Deep Within: 3

Part One of this three-part series, which includes Marlene’s disturbing account
of the abuse she received as a young girl at the hands of her mother, is here.

The Chain of Abuse

At my mother’s funeral, I talked with one of my uncles. He told me that Leona had been horribly abused growing up, thanks to grandma and grandpa swinging the leather horse straps and the logging chains on their eight children. I was stunned! Never before, in all my fifty years, had I heard this story.

“Will this chain of abuse,” I wondered, “ever be broken?”

For the next two weeks I sorted through all of Mom’s “treasures on earth.” She had moved from the farm into town in 1965 and, except for the machinery and the cows, had brought everything with her. My God! Why had she saved this and that and everything in between? It was intense work physically, and even more so emotionally.

Healing Deep Within: 2

Recovering From the Wounds
of an Abusive Childhood

Part One of this three-part series, which includes Marlene’s harrowing account
of the abuse she received as a young girl at the hands of her mother, is here.

Reaching for Blackberries

I went off to college in 1958, at the age of 18, filled with excitement and enthusiasm. Even though my mother, Leona, gave the Dean of Women a fit, and some weekends at home were the usual hell, I was finally out of there. Free at last!

Or so I thought.

Healing Deep Within: 1

Recovering From the Wounds
of an Abusive Childhood

Marlene was one of Light Morning’s four co-founders. She died in 2018, shortly before her 78th birthday. Sixteen years ago, for the earlier incarnation of this website, Marlene wrote a searing account of how sustained abuse, both physical and psychological, can traumatize the psyche of a young child. Part One is a hard story to read. But as Parts Two and Three will show, even though the aftereffects of the abuse continued long after she left home, Marlene was also guided by her dreams along a path toward forgiveness and healing.

*The family farm of Marlene’s childhood*

Is it any wonder that, at 61 years of age, there are still times when I feel like a walking, ticking time-bomb, ready to explode? The home that my younger sister and brother and I grew up in, a small Wisconsin dairy farm, was seldom a nurturing one. As children, we experienced frequent physical beatings and verbal whippings, freely administered by an insecure, out-of-control mother.

The wounds to my body have long since healed; hardly a scar remains. Yet the emotional damage, while crippling, has remained mostly hidden. For unlike physical scars, self-concept disfigurement is visible only to a public of one: me.

Is it possible to heal the broken heart and splintered soul that came out of such an abusive environment? While there are no quick or easy answers to this question, the story I choose to share is one of both tragedy and hope.

Still Mowing After All These Years

Marlene would have turned 80 last month. She and Ron, along with Joyce and Robert, co-founded Light Morning in 1974. Autumn makes me remember Marlene. She loved to squirrel away firewood at this time of year, and help us can up hundreds of quarts of tomatoes and applesauce, and take her beloved John Deere riding mower out for one last gathering of mown grass mulch for the garden.

Marlene died in 2018, shortly before her 78th birthday. Sixteen years ago she wrote a brave story for the earlier incarnation of this website. She called it “Healing Deep Within: Recovering From the Wounds of an Abusive Childhood.”

Next week we’ll share the first part of her three-part story. It’s not easy reading. But it’s a testament to Marlene’s courageous willingness to finally face her demons. And, with the essential help of two strong dreams, to begin to heal.

As a prelude to that intense story, though, here’s something she wrote at the same time, telling how one of her favorite activities as a 61-year-old comes from that same childhood that caused her so much trauma.