Of course, there are a great many more influences on my life and my character than what I listed previously. A single blog post or even several isn't going to tell the whole story.
A man named Doug Turley was yet another important influence on my life.
When I was seventeen, I really lost my shit. I had been trying to get help for more than a year for the fact that I had been molested and I was running up against the fact that as a legal minor, I had no legal right to self-advocate and no one would help me.
There were people willing to help me but they couldn't. Their hands were tied because I was a minor.
So things came to a head when I was seventeen and, long story short, I spent ten days in a mental institution.
I was a real spitfire. I was a very angry young woman, and justifiably so, and I was very bright. The staff therapist assigned to me was in over his head and things were not going well.
Doug Turley was the director of the institution and he took over my case, perhaps out of compassion for me or perhaps out of pity for the poor staffer having to put up with me. And then Doug Turley was my therapist for about a year.
He was a former Catholic priest who left the Catholic church and became, I dunno, Baptist or Presbyterian or something. He remained a man of the cloth but not Catholic.
His cover story was that while stationed in France as a young man, he fell madly in love with a beautiful French ballerina whom he married and had three children with. But he once commented to me that he had been giving communion to people who had been excommunicated, so I suspect there is a bit more to the story than that, though I never heard it.
I once found his obituary or something online and it said glowing wonderful things about his many accomplishments in life. He did a lot of big deal stuff.
And he had a big impact on my life. He is part of why I am okay.
A man named Doug Turley was yet another important influence on my life.
When I was seventeen, I really lost my shit. I had been trying to get help for more than a year for the fact that I had been molested and I was running up against the fact that as a legal minor, I had no legal right to self-advocate and no one would help me.
There were people willing to help me but they couldn't. Their hands were tied because I was a minor.
So things came to a head when I was seventeen and, long story short, I spent ten days in a mental institution.
I was a real spitfire. I was a very angry young woman, and justifiably so, and I was very bright. The staff therapist assigned to me was in over his head and things were not going well.
Doug Turley was the director of the institution and he took over my case, perhaps out of compassion for me or perhaps out of pity for the poor staffer having to put up with me. And then Doug Turley was my therapist for about a year.
He was a former Catholic priest who left the Catholic church and became, I dunno, Baptist or Presbyterian or something. He remained a man of the cloth but not Catholic.
His cover story was that while stationed in France as a young man, he fell madly in love with a beautiful French ballerina whom he married and had three children with. But he once commented to me that he had been giving communion to people who had been excommunicated, so I suspect there is a bit more to the story than that, though I never heard it.
I once found his obituary or something online and it said glowing wonderful things about his many accomplishments in life. He did a lot of big deal stuff.
And he had a big impact on my life. He is part of why I am okay.