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I lived a life of physical, mental, sexual, emotional, and spiritual PAIN for my first 34 years on planet Earth. It was not pretty. It was not fun. It was very dramatic and dysfunctional.
Then one Sunday in September of 1999, all of that changed. Well, okay, it didn't all change just like that. But the way I DID my life was forever altered when I turned on my television and heard a woman say, "If you continue down the road you're on, you're going to end up where you're headed." And then on the heels of that, "Just a little shift in direction and a mile down the road you're in a whole new place." That woman was Mary Manin Morrissey, and my life has never been the same.
It has now been more than sixteen years since that fateful day, and I have written three books about what it was like to leave that last abusive relationship. And let me tell you, it was SPECTACULAR! (That's why I've written so much about it.)
My first three books cover various aspects of what happened when I left that life behind. Those books are, in chronological order: Choose Your Universe, Pop Your Paradigm, and Successfully MidAir
It is my passion to serve as a living, breathing example that the cycle of abuse can be broken, and that a very low sense of self-worth CAN be shifted to much higher and healthier levels if one is willing to do the work. In that capacity I have served as a speaker for the Arizona Coalition Against Domestic Violence (now called the Arizona Coalition to End Sexual and Domestic Violence, or "ACESDV"), speaking mainly to inmates in prisons around the state of Arizona. In fact, it was those inmates who asked me to write Choose Your Universe. It was my privilege to honor that request.
I have recently been inspired to write book #4, which will address the FACT that leaving a domestic violence relationship is NOT an "event." It's a process. I hadn't looked at it that way until recently, and when I did I saw that with my sharing of my "spectacular" experience of leaving, I was really doing other victims a huge disservice, because I (unknowingly - and certainly not purposely) left out a full nine months of REALLY hard work that led up to me being able to leave in that way, have the amazing experiences I had, and then not wind up in another abusive relationship.
I am currently working on that manuscript, with the intention of creating both a standalone book AND a program that will be made available in domestic violence and homeless shelters, and in prison "re-entry" transitional housing programs.
THIS is my passion. THIS is what I call my "Heart Work," and it is the most amazing and fulfilling thing I've ever done.
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