…my father, [was] a mid-level phonecompany manager who treated my mother at best like an incompetent employee. At worst? He never beat her, but his pure, inarticulate fury would fill the house for days, weeks,...

A person raised in a healthy family is equipped to live a confident and independent life; someone from an unhealthy family is filled with fear and self-doubt. He has difficulty with the prospect of life...

Carl’s abuse isn’t obvious. It’s not something one can even notice while it’s happening. Carl doesn’t do you the favor of punching you in the face and sending you to school with a black eye...

Abusive relationships exist because they provide enough rations of warmth, laughter, and affection to clutch onto like a security blanket in the heap of degradation. The good times are the initial euphoria that keeps addicts...

I am done looking for love where it doesn’t exist. I am done coughing up dust in attempts to drink from dry wells.

I smiled and looked at her- there she was with such a genuine grin and twinkle in her eyes. I kissed my mother on her forehead and took a long look in to her hazel...

It is important to note that research has shown that men who have abusive mothers do not tend to develop especially negative attitudes toward females, but men who have abusive fathers do; the disrespect that...

The abuser does not believe, however, that his level of authority over the children should be in any way connected to his actual level of effort or sacrifice on their behalf, or to how much...

But for a mother who was submissive to the degree my mother was, it was OK to kill girls. For a father like mine, it was normal to chop off his daughters hair with sheep...

Having DID is, for many people, a very lonely thing. If this book reaches some people whose experiences resonate with mine and gives them a sense that they aren’t alone, that there is hope, then...

Janna knew – Rikki knew — and I knew, too — that becoming Dr Cameron West wouldn’t make me feel a damn bit better about myself than I did about being Citizen West. Citizen West,...