“What do you do for a living?” or “What do you do?” One of these questions is often asked when people are first getting acquainted. My answer to that question is, “Among the things I do, my wife and I lead a ministry that helps husbands and wives rebuild their marriage that has been affected by a wife’s childhood sexual…
My wife and I were at a dinner party last week. Since we are still relatively new in our community, we were asked to tell about ourselves. We talked about our involvement with Marriage Reconstruction Ministries and its mission of “helping men and women rebuild marriages affected by a wife’s childhood sexual abuse.” Our new friends around the dinner table…
In the current issue of Time, editorialist Laurie Penny identified questions that many people are prone to ask in response to the recent #MeToo trend; the declaration of being a victim of childhood sexual abuse, sexual assault, or sexual harassment. Could this [referring to childhood sexual abuse, sexual assault, and sexual harassment] really have been happening to so many women…
Thousands of survivors of childhood sexual abuse and women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted were emboldened last week. On Monday, a Huffington Post entry communicated that the “#MeToo quickly became the top trending Twitter hashtag” as sexually abused and assaulted women were emboldened to inform the world that they too had been affected by this blight. According to…
Caleb stood in the hallway and poked his head into the room, enough to see in but not enough to be easily seen. He was deciding whether to attend my breakout session at a men’s conference or the breakout session on pornography – how men are enticed into it and neurologically affected by it. My breakout session focused on helping…
This week, every one of us will hear it sung, “We wish you a Merry Christmas.” For survivors of childhood sexual abuse, however, Christmas can be accompanied by heightened anxiety and shame. It’s anything but merry. The long-term effects of childhood sexual abuse are vast in that they include psychological, physiological, and social impact on the survivor’s life. They are…
Clark Barshinger, in Haunted Marriage, calls childhood sexual abuse “murder of the psyche.” The depth of psychological injury from childhood sexual abuse and the long-term existence of its manifestations surpass the effects of most other forms of trauma. The notion that survivors “just get over it” ignores the trauma of abuse and the intricately intertwined wiring of our personhood; emotional,…