June 14, 2006

Abuse and Neglect

My husband, pediatrician Dr. Ed Gustavson, has worked in the field of child abuse and neglect for years. I have heard the worst horror stories anyone could imagine. As a therapist, I, too, have heard those stories, and they never fail to knock the air out of me. In my children’s book, “Fe-Vers”, as well as in the “Fe-Vers” book for teens I have a chapter with poems designed to enable children to talk or write about abuse and neglect issues. People ask why there is such an epidemic of this horrendous condition, and I say it has something to do with our isolation. We used to live in extended family groups, or at least in villages. Now we live autonomously in large cities where we don’t know our neighbors. There is no one to help us in the middle of the night, and no one who will not judge our behavior. Our family members live 1000 miles away and we think a telephone is adequate to keep in touch with. Isolation. We need to work to develop families in the cities we live in, supportive “families” to call on for help, because we all need help sometimes. In this blog I read a poem from the two “Fe-Vers” books called “Night Secret.”