Overcoming Child Abuse

Reflections on recovery

by Catherine McCall

How an Affectionate Bond Influences Healing from Trauma

One of the things I love about being a therapist and a writer is that both require that I do a lot of reading. This past weekend, while preparing for a workshop on marriage, I pulled out a book I'd bought several months ago and hadn't had time to read yet: Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love by Dr. Sue Johnson, developer of Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy. Read More

Evaluate Yourself as a Coach

I married into a large Irish/Italian Catholic family of athletes, coaches, and teachers. My husband, an athlete himself, was the baby of the family by 10 years and more. We watched his married brothers and sister organize their lives around their children's sports schedules for years. Read More

Social Action for the Well-being of Our Children

I've often written about forces in our culture that create and perpetuate child abuse, and I'll continue to do so. But one of my personal blogging goals for the new year is to highlight projects and events around the country that contribute to creating the kind of social change that both protects children from abuse, and promotes the healing of those who suffer from the wounds of abuse. Read More

Having a Baby Changes Everything

"Having a baby changes everything." Most of you are probably familiar with this old Johnson & Johnson ad campaign, so appropriately devised to entice us into buying their baby powder, no tears baby shampoo, and other products. Read More

It's Time to Change the Realities of Child Abuse in Our Country

Horrific reports of child abuse have flooded our news media throughout 2011. In fact, over the past 10 years, more than 20,000 American children are believed to have been killed in their own homes by family members. That is nearly four times the number of US soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Read More

Children Learn What They Live

December has been a sweet month for my family. Our seventh grandchild, a healthy baby boy, was born this month and my husband, Peter, and I were able to spend over a week helping out his parents as they and his "big brother" welcomed him home. Now back home ourselves, Peter and I spend time looking over the pictures we took and reminiscing about special moments. Read More

How Taylor Swift Helped Me to Write This Thanksgiving Blog

I wanted to write a light, uplifting, even funny blog for Thanksgiving this year, but yesterday afternoon, after a week of intensive anxiety, extensive tests and results, one of my dearest friends was diagnosed with a very serious cancer. Since hearing the news, I've been drifting back and forth from shock and denial into sadness and depression, and yes, anger, too. Read More

What Do Jon Stewart, Matt Millen, and Penn State's Alumni Association Have in Common?

I was raped at the age of ten. That was fifty-three years ago. I know exactly what people are talking about when they speak of the life-long scarring of child sexual abuse. Yes, I've been following the events related to Penn State's scandal all week. And no, I haven't written any comments about it before now; I've been brooding. Read More

Halloween Nostalgia

Halloween always stirs up a bit of nostalgia for me. I grew up in the 1950's and 60's in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and it was beautiful, particularly in October. My neighborhood was a community. People greeted each other, talked to each other, told on each other. Read More

How Can We Help Children Deal with Natural Disasters?

My husband and I went on a short vacation mid-month, with a group of old friends. On the morning of September 16th, far from any sense of danger, I enjoyed a beautiful view of the White Mountains of New Hampshire outside a window in the dining room of our hotel,while intermittently sipping tea and flipping through the New Read More

Are You Parent Material?

I was cleaning out my filing cabinet recently and came across a handout, a list of questions under the heading Am I Parent Material? which I'd used while teaching an undergraduate class in family and human development at Auburn University almost 30 years ago. Read More

Labor Day Reflections on the Hard Labor of Parenting in Our Ailing Economy

A nine-year-old boy recently shared with me that he told his parents he wanted to stop taking the guitar lessons that he loved, because he wanted to save them the gas money they'd have to spend in order to drive him to the studio. He went on to say that he probably wouldn't be able to go to college, and that pretty soon his parents might have to sell their house and move into a trailer. Read More

The Help of "The Help"

A few weeks ago, quite accidently, I came upon an outstanding blog written by Jennifer Williams at Ms. Magazine. I loved the rigor of it - such an educated perspective, well-researched, and peppered with the passion of social activism. It stimulated my thinking, and by the time I got to the end I decided not to see the movie - even commented to that effect on her site. Read More

How to Support a Friend Who Is Recovering from Incest

As I write this blog, Hurricane Irene threatens to wreak disaster upon the Eastern seaboard, and many of my relatives and friends are making decisions about how best to respond to warnings. Like thousands of others, my husband and I watched the evening news tonight with a nervous awe, and hope that Irene will weaken her intensity. Read More

Jaycee Dugard, Elizabeth Smart, and Other Children in Captivity

Why didn't they just leave? Read More

How to Help Children Deal with Loss

Children today are experiencing many kinds of losses. We read about them each time we pick up the newspaper; we see them on TV daily: floods, tornadoes, parents in Iraq, child abuse in day care centers, the list goes on. Gut-wrenching stories of catastrophic loss seem to multiply before our eyes. But not all losses are tragic. Read More

Love & Marriage; Gays & Straights

New York's gift to gay youth Read More

How New Dads Can Become Great Parents

Tips for Dads Read More

Should Parents Who Are Sex Addicts Tell Their Children?

Every couple of months a steady stream of marital infidelities among our celebrities and politicians seems to dominate news reports. Arnold Schwarzenegger, John Edwards, and Tiger Woods are among the most recent, and many of us feel a great deal of empathy for the children of these fallen stars. Read More

Childhood Sexual Abuse Survivors and Victims of Military Sexual Trauma

The month of April has lured me into the agonizing terrain of US military personnel suffering the internal wounds of war and sexual assault by their own comrades. It began several weeks ago when my husband and I attended a Theater of War Productions performance of Ajax and Philoctetes at Emory University. Read More

The Unexpected Gift of a Colonoscopy

I think it's safe to say that nobody looks forward to having a colonoscopy; I'm certainly no exception. In fact, my last one was scheduled in February and when I woke up the morning of prep day to a city paralyzed by a snow storm, I was ecstatic to receive a call from my doctor's office canceling the procedure. But ho, hum, it was rescheduled for March, and honestly, it wasn't bad at all. Read More

How Will Cybersex Addiction Affect Our Children?

Cybersex addiction is the compulsive use of Internet pornography, adult chat rooms, or adult fantasy role-play sites, impacting negatively in real-life intimate activity. Read More

Please, Stop It, Miley Cyrus!

The November 29, 2010 issue of Family Circle Magazine, opened to page 14, sits atop a pile of books on my desk. A reader's post-it is attached, with a note for me to please write about the first article on the page, which is entitled "Desperately Being Miley." Beside the post-it is a photo of Miley holding a microphone in one hand and a pole to dance against in the other. Read More

Writing and Healing

A dear friend of mine had a mild stroke several months ago, while she and her husband were preparing to leave for the airport in anticipation of a long-awaited trip to France. Instead, they traveled via ambulance to the emergency room of our local hospital. Read More

Has the Toll of Sexual Abuse Survivors in the News Taken a Toll on You?

It's been another week of sexual abuse survivors in the news. Senator Scott Brown's disclosure of having been sexually abused as a child made national news, he was featured in People Magazine, http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20466918,00.html and he'll be interviewed on 60 Minutes this evening. Read More

What Can Airline Ambassadors and You do to Protect Children?

I spent a lot of time up in the air yesterday, flying from Atlanta to Newark, where there was only one runway open because of snow, ice, and dense fog. Once on the ground I lingered by an airport window before making the trek to baggage claim. Read More

Stand Up for Children at the Super Bowl

This year's Super Bowl is less than two weeks away, and chances are that you're one of the millions of Americans making plans. Many of my family members are. Even my grandchildren are fans now, glued to the TV with their parents, intermittently clowning around, or digging into the chips and dip. They're the lucky ones, and hopefully your kids are, too. But the dark, dark Read More

What Can We Do About Saturday's Massacre in Tucson?

I live in a suburb of Atlanta and if you've been listening to the weather at all, you know that we're covered in a blanket of snow and ice. Housebound, we have plenty of time to think and to feel. My husband and I check in with the TV periodically to see what's going on in the rest of the world and what the latest is on our weather, and each time we do so we're reminded of the horrif Read More

A Choir of Children

A special seven-year-old in my life is a member of her church choir for the first time this year, and sang in last Sunday's service. Read More

Let the Healing Begin

Do you know someone who suffers from the effects of child abuse? Read More

Catherine McCall, M.S., L.M.F.T., a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, is the author of When the Piano Stops: A Memoir of Healing from Sexual Abuse.

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