Heal & Forgive: Forgiveness in the Face of Abuse

Nancy Richards offers a fresh face to the concept of forgiveness in her book Heal and Forgive: Forgiveness in the Face of Abuse. It deserves a closer look from anyone struggling with recovery from childhood abuse. A woman who runs a ministry for adult daughters of controlling and abusive families recommended I take a look at Richards' work when I shared with her my own journey. I ordered it last week and found it so absorbing I finished it in just over two hours. Ms. Richards walks us through her own brutal childhood, one that we discover began at birth, and became exacerbated after her father died and her mother remarried to a man who was extremely cruel and sadistic. We learn about the literal joy he took out of beating Nancy and her brothers, how he ripped everyone apart with his words and would look for anything he could find to perpetrate the terror he inflicted. Worse yet is the ways we learn this man is able to influence Nancy and her siblings to turn on each other, and how she becomes the household scapegoat. Eventually Nancy leaves home to marry and start a family of her own. We learn her family of origin does not improve, take responsibility or offer amends for their past behavior. Instead, her mother proceeds to divorce and remarry several abusive men in succession, and continues to promote blaming Nancy for all the "family's" problems, to the extent that she convinces everyone Nancy is crazy and to side against her. Ms. Richards attempts this whole time to forgive her abusers. After all, aren't we all taught to leave the past behind, forgive other's wrongs, and be family no matter what? Don't they tell us that unless we do these things, we won't heal? But in the course of her efforts she finds the opposite - she is unable to heal. To the contrary, the harder she tries, the more pain she feels, the greater her resentments, and the more abuse her family of origin is able to heap on her. In Nancy's quest to figure out why this isn't working, she comes across an understanding therapist and several books from psychological and spiritual perspectives that turn our culture's traditional concept of forgiveness upside down. She learns that perhaps the solution for her is to NOT forgive in the way she has been led to believe, that the whole idea of making peace while overlooking the evil of abusive behaviors is in fact self-defeating and self-destructive. Nancy realized that she must think first of her own needs, to protect herself and her own family. The end result is that Ms. Richards ends up "divorcing" her mother, which also causes an unfortunate loss of relationships with other family members, including her brothers. As of the publication she had not spoken to any of them in twelve years. She also decides to stop working on forgiving them, and start focusing on her recovery and her daughters. It is these actions in themselves that allow healing to flow into her life, and eventually, she is able to find TRUE forgiveness. I

Heal and Forgive is the best book I've read in a very long time. As the director of Luke 17:3 Ministries for adult children of abusive, controlling or abandoning birth-families, I would be hard-pressed to come up with a more helpful book to recommend. It is unique in its perspective in that it teaches the reader that sometimes it is okay, and even necessary, NOT to forgive. It is a page turner right from the beginning, gripping you with Nancy Richards' riveting and disturbing story of her sadistic stepfather's violence and relentless abuse of herself and her brothers, and her mother's complicity in the abuse and complete refusal to protect her children in the slightest way. Even more distressing is the author's account of her attempts to protect herself and her brothers, and to stand up and speak the truth about the abuse, which resulted in her treacherous mother convincing anyone who would listen that she was a liar and troublemaker with mental problems. There is a twisted episode in which her stepfather was finally going to move out, but her mother told the then 12-year old author to ask him to stay. He did stay, and years later the mother blamed her daughter for controlling her marriage (at age 12!) and making her husband stay when she could have been rid of him sooner. Long after the evil stepfather was gone and the author was grown, her mother continued to expose the author's younger brothers to repeated abuse from a string of other losers she became involved with. Nancy Richards tells, in heart-wrenching detail, of her attempts to protect her younger siblings, to get anyone to listen to her or believe her, and to somehow maintain a relationship with the mother she still loved and the rest of her family. But, in a scenario disturbingly familiar to many abuse survivors, her mother managed to convince most of the family that Richards was the problem, and to turn almost her entire family against her, including the brothers she had tried so hard and sacrificed so much to protect. The denial, betrayals, and blatant lies as the family protected the abusers and scape-goated the author will ring true with so many of us. And then the author was left to embark on the path to forgiveness, with absolutely no remorse or repentance from those she was pressured to forgive, and not even any validation of her traumatic experiences. At each stage of the process, she faced renewed pain with every new revelation, such as the realizations that her mother was the one who betrayed her the most, and that her mother really never loved her. Throughout her long and difficult journey to forgiveness and recovery, the author has many valuable insights which she lovingly shares with us. The most important insight, which is the main premise of the book, is that healing needs to come FIRST, BEFORE forgiveness. We usually feel pressured to forgive prematurely, by family and friends, therapists, and society in general. But forced forgiveness is n

Nancy Richards has written a poignant memoir that should be read by a wide audience. It opens with her early life as a well-adjusted child in a happy, healthy family; but soon it veers to the death of her father, the remarriage of her mother, and the onset of physical and emotional abuse from her stepfather and, through enabling and collaboration, her own mother. Ms. Richards' journey through adolescence, young adulthood, to mature adulthood is vividly recounted. Any reader whose journey has been analogous to Richards' will readily identify with her attempts to give voice to--and then cope with the consequences of--her childhood abuse. I found myself underlining or bracketing large portions of the second half of the book. Richards not only was betrayed by her mother and stepfather but also was scapegoated by her own brothers and other relatives as being the "sick" one, the "troublemaker," the girl who never liked to be hugged and who always gave her mother a hard time. Even community members outside of her immediate family who saw the bruises and the blood refused to help or to even acknowledge that something was wrong. For a victim of childhood abuse (and I am one myself), few things are more damning or confusing than the utter refusal of family or friends to speak up on one's behalf. It's a double-whammy: one quickly learns to "cover" for the abusers and to blame oneself for the evils. How could parents, the ultimate protectors and nurturers, possibly hurt their own flesh and blood? America as a whole is in utter denial over the not uncommon abuse of children and adolescents by parents and relatives. Europe much more readily accepts the "divorcing" of one's own parents; but here, with a blind allegiance to the Old Testament's "Honor one's mother and father" and a nearly complete neglect of the true meaning behind "Loving one's neighbor (or child) as oneself," we perpetuate the treating of children as property and the goings-on within any "nuclear family" as inviolable, untouchable--none of our own business. Because of this, Richards' account is a much-needed one. Her own steps toward health and wholeness are realistic and clear-sighted. Although she advocates forgiveness, she states that true forgiveness can come only with acknowledgement, reparation, and change on the part of the abuser(s). Self-preservation takes precedence over blind and blanket allegiance/forgiveness. One cannot love others as oneself if one loves oneself so little that that Self is permitted to be the object of continued (and unacknolwedged) abuse. I am grateful that Nancy Richards has had the courage to publish this intelligent, sensitive exploration of her own experiences that so mirror the experiences of many others.

"I left Mom's house stripped, whipped, naked, and destroyed." Heal & Forgive is the author's potent account of the raw abusive underbelly of human nature and the triumph over it. Thinking about child abuse puts most people in an uncomfortable zone yet many people are abusive without realizing it. Telltale signs of abuse are being uncovered daily. Healing from abuse is walking a complicated grief path of multiples losses. Working through the trauma takes on a power. The power of healing is the ability to reshape your life. The author courageously rips through the barriers of denial, leaving the crude truth exposed. Richards's gutsy mission of cleaning out the wounds of abuse and setting new boundaries is humbling. As the author searches through the rearview mirror of her life, she learns that healing first is the foundation for true forgiveness. The perfect punctuation mark to her lessons is the purging of the patterns of abuse. By shedding her layers of pain, anger and confusion, she transforms her life and the life of those she touches. This is an excellent book for abuse survivors and for those dealing with or helping abuse survivors. Sherry Russell Grief Management Specialist

My story was written on every page of Nancy Richards' book "Heal and Forgive." This page-turner is inspiring, validating and wise. Her heartbreaking life story shows that forgiveness is not a single act but a life work that has many layers and many seasons. In sharing her recovery Richards offers a healing blueprint for physical and emotional abuse, a mother's lifelong rejection, and being viewed as an enemy by siblings. She shows how to move from her personal betrayal to the larger collective betrayal we all face. She illustrates how forced forgiveness and forgiveness in order to heal is shallow and does not last. We need to heal first in order to forgive. Forgiveness without healing is from a position of weakness. She says forgiveness is not a choice but a process that results from healing. Only when we work towards healing does forgiveness become a realistic goal. Richards chose to stop seeing her mother and take care of herself when her mother continued to heap contempt on her and be oblivious to her feelings. She said the act of not forgiving her mother liberated her from her abuse and set her free to forgive. She stated, "I never would have been able to forgive my mother if I still had a relationship with her." Her story shows how healing comes with self-preservation and self-compassion when we feel safe to acknowledge and talk about our injuries and begin to deal with the trauma. Richards said, "Each time I thought I had finished mourning, another wave of heart breaking losses emerged. However as I peeled away each layer of pain, I grew stronger."