Jane's Inner Child Memoir

2012-01-25T19:55:00.000-05:00

I'm delighted to be featured on Mari McCarthy's terrific blog about journaling. My topic is

How Journaling Helped Me Write a Memoir.

I discuss the purpose of a private journal, how it differs from writing for public consumption, and how keeping a journal during the difficult years of my healing from abuse helped in writing my memoir, The River of Forgetting: A Memoir of Healing from Sexual Abuse.

Death, Grieving, and the Inner Child

2012-01-04T14:56:00.000-05:00

My older sister Suzie died a month ago today. She’s the one with Down Syndrome. Suzie’s death was peaceful and I was with her to the end. It was as good a death as I can imagine for her. I had lost Suzie once before, when she was 3 and I was 2, when my parents sent her to a school far away (those were the old days when people like her were called “Mongolian Idiots,” I kid you not).

My Inner Child remembers the first loss, the confusion and disorientation when my buddy was just gone, the loss of the security of someone to hug. This new loss brings memories of the old losses. My psyche remembers being told not to cry. It was the first big trauma of a childhood that brought other traumas. My family dealt with such things by avoiding them, not speaking, not expressing sadness and fear. My family successfully repressed sexual abuse the same way. As a child I was disoriented and scared--No one talks about things. What is happening? What is reality when we don’t go near the real things?

Now I sit with my Inner Child every morning, and when she needs it I rock and hold her as she cries about Suzie. I’m not avoiding grief now. I know how to be with it and let it unfold. I also can let my Child Within be happy or have other feelings; I don’t dictate what she is to feel. This is one blessing of all the hard work I’ve done around abuse and trauma. Gradually over the last month the grieving has shifted and peace has come.

It’s Never Too Late to Have a Happy Childhood*

2011-12-08T19:28:00.002-05:00

Many of us didn’t grow up in safety with love, in fact we grew up with trauma, but it really is possible to feel the joy and safety of a happy childhood: Right here, right now. It doesn’t just happen, we need to build it up by listening to the Inner Child and her/his fears and grief. As I wrote in my memoir, The River of Forgetting, I learned from my therapist how to be present consistently for my Child Within just as a good parent would for a real child.

This morning I felt overcome by responsibility and things I need to do, but I sat and asked the Little Girls in me what they needed. They told me quite plainly they need to be little and loved, so I simply sat there and held them and felt the love. My Inner Adult held them tenderly as they surrendered and let go of the need to be grown-up.

Our new happy Inner Children are

safe, with an inner safety that is solid and dependable
loved by our Inner Adults
accepted just the way we are, with fears and quirks and all our feelings
able to feel connection with other people
open and spontaneous, able to move freely because of the safety
playful and creative.

It’s been a tough few weeks for me with huge adult responsibilities. I promise my Inner Children to take time today to mess with paints and take a walk.

How do you reassure your Inner Child and keep her/him safe?

* Quote is attributed to Tom Robbins, Berke Breathed, Wayne Dyer, and many others!

Writing for Oneself vs. Writing for Others

2011-11-11T18:14:00.000-05:00

Lynette Benton is a writer and editor who runs a terrific blog about writing. She's especially interested in memoirs, and I'm delighted she asked me to write a guest blog about the differences between writing we do for ourselves vs. writing for others. Check out Lynette's blog, Polish and Publish | Tools and Tactics for Creative Writers.

Here's what I wrote:

For more than 30 years, I’ve been a passionate journal-writer. Fifteen years ago, when I first got an inkling that I might have been sexually abused as a child, the journal became a life-line. I had a wonderful therapist, but I needed an everyday friend to hear my ramblings.

I’d sit at my kitchen table and scrawl, no structure, no cohesion, just the outpouring of doubt and pain. I followed Peter Elbow’s advice of “freewriting,” letting it come uncensored, pen flying, words repeating. Over and over I told myself, “It’s just for me. No one will ever read it.”

When I received the inspiration to write a memoir, I knew I’d draw on the earlier journals for details of conversations, memories, and emotions, but the new writing was startlingly different. Having an audience in mind gave me responsibility for creating a narrative thread, finding a clear voice to address the reader, and honing the prose to carry the story forward. Read on...

Daily Meditation with the Inner Child

2011-11-02T09:36:00.000-05:00

Sixteen years ago, I was slammed by a memory of sexual abuse. I was only three years old when the incest started, and I repressed the memories to survive in my family. After I remembered, I absolutely had to dedicate myself to caring for my wounded, sad Inner Child and healing her. Her feelings were so overwhelming that I developed a practice of sitting every morning with her before I went off to work.

Ever since then, I’ve been caring for my Inner Child—learning to listen to her and nurture her. I needed to let her know that I believed her and I that would always be there, the strong Inner Adult (Big Jane). I wrote about this journey of healing in my memoir, The River of Forgetting.

Now I’m at a place of peace about the abuse. It should never have happened, it was wrong, my father was a selfish man, but it doesn’t rule my life. Still, I am drawn to care for this inner child, or these inner children. Every morning without fail I sit for 20 minutes and listen. It has become integrated into my spiritual life.

This morning, for example, my inner children were agitated, busy, full of idea of things to do. I smiled and rocked in my rocking chair, holding their anxious energy and letting the quiet of my living room envelop us. Other days my little girls bring sadness or excitement or love or fear about relationships. All those feelings are welcome. As I sit and let them be, I find peace again. Insights and understandings come, but the main thing is to be there and be open.

Poem about Remembering Childhood Abuse

2011-10-19T13:59:00.000-05:00

To My Sisters and Brothers

Little blue eyes looking up from the oyster shells,

crispy pencils of reeds beached and dried,

my father laboring hotly over the hull of the boat,

all perfectly clear.

What are the details of a fog?

Memories that had to go far away,

stripped down, fragmented.

Unwanted sensations, but no place

no pattern of the wallpaper

no light. No feeling of the rest of my body,

if I have one,

no person doing this to me.

Dizziness pulls my body backward in a spiral.

This fog is my fog

this lack of detail is the tale I must tell.

Others have wandered the same landscape.

At the edge of the downward spiral path

is a hut where pilgrims may rest.

I see their footprints in the dust.

And I know I have built this labyrinth,

I have called back the little girl who leads me there.

I told her, I believe you, I am listening

so she could speak, though her speech had no words.

When these words make our scenery appear,

it is a magic we are doing

writing our life into existence.

It is an offering to the others,

our sisters in the fog.

This poem is from my memoir, The River of Forgetting

Interview with Laurie Smith

2011-10-04T20:41:00.001-05:00

I'm delighted to be talking with Laurie Smith, child abuse activist. Laurie is dynamic and a great resource.I expect we'll talk about Inner Child work, our different paths towards healing, creativity, and many other topics about abuse recovery.

We had a great conversation. Listen now on blogtalk radio.

Caribou's Mom reviews River of Forgetting

2011-09-02T19:17:00.002-05:00

My memoir just received a terrific new review and four stars on Caribou's Mom, one of the top book blogs! Caribou's Mom has won "Best Literary Book Blog" and was short-listed for best-written book blog. Wendy said:

Incredibly personal, the memoir takes the reader deep within Rowan’s thoughts and feelings, exposing her vulnerability and fear.

Reading a book like The River of Forgetting gives insight into what survivors of trauma are experiencing – and thus, provides a path towards empathy.

The River of Forgetting is a deeply personal, often uncomfortable book about psychic healing from trauma. Well-written, brave, and honest, it is a book which leaves the reader with a profound sense of the wrongness of child sexual abuse. Despite the darkness of the subject matter, however, this is a book which ultimately celebrates the strength of the human spirit to overcome the unthinkable and heal from trauma.

Healing is Not All Bliss

2011-08-29T18:20:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago I received an invitation to speak at a conference of abuse survivors and authors. Great idea! I thought. But as I read the materials I was sent, I got a little uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach, a warning from my Inner Child.

I paced and thought, I journaled and tried to figure it out. Surely it would be good to be together with others who are healing. Surely it would be great to network with other authors who write about abuse and healing. I’d meet some fine people. The proposed location was wonderful. Why didn’t it feel right?

There was just one person organizing the conference. The write-up contained a warning that no counselors would be present to help anyone having a hard time. It was pitched to be for people well along in the healing process. That could be all right, I said to my Inner Child, a scared little girl who was huddled at the bottom of a stone labyrinth. Surely it will be fine. I even knew another author I trusted who was intending to go.

No! Said my Inner Child. Doesn’t feel safe! So I wrote to the organizer to say that I thought such a gathering of abuse survivors talking about healing for a whole weekend would bring up a lot of feelings, and I wondered whether there would be moderators to help ease the dynamics, or quiet rooms for people to chill out.

"This conference is only for people at advanced stages of healing," he wrote, "people who have achieved inner peace. If there are any tears, they will be tears of joy. This is all about bliss and moving on."

Well! that made things clear. No one with mixed feelings would be welcome, and anyone whose “negative” feelings were triggered would be treated as if s/he had done something wrong. I immediately wrote back to say I wouldn’t be there, and my other author friend did the same.

I don’t believe healing is about attaining consistent bliss and lack of pain. Certainly I’ve had moments of great joy and connection as I work through the effects of incest, but I’m human. I know where my weak places are. For example, I’m susceptible to the feeling that people don’t believe me and I hate it when people push me around and assume I’m there for their convenience.

But I actually feel that the sensitivity we survivors often experience, the alertness to our own pain and that of others, is a gift. If you hang out on the survivors’ forums such as Pandora’s Aquarium and isurvive, you see how incredibly caring survivors often are. If we stay in touch with our wounded parts as well as our joyful ones, this is a great gift of life.

Another way of saying it is that I love all my inner children - the wounded silent girl, the eager one who says Let’s go!, the Good Girl, and all. I’m not banishing a single one. We all go forward together into a richer life.

Repressed Memories—How Can They be True?

2011-08-18T08:30:00.000-05:00

Mary Armstrong (author of Confessions of a Trauma Therapist), it’s exciting to begin this dialogue with you about our experiences with incest and our paths to healing. We have much in common, along with many differences. We were both successful professionals getting on with our lives (yours as a therapist, mine as a scientist and college teacher) before our memories of incest surfaced.

Let’s start with topic of repressed memories, which is very controversial in some circles. Why were our memories were hidden and forgotten for so long?

Jane

This was a very thorny question for me, especially in the first two years of my work on healing. How could I have forgotten something so crucial and painful as my father’s incest on me? How could I believe my own memories if they had been gone so long? Was I making it all up? The doubts left me feeling hypersensitive, crazy, and very young. It took time to learn to trust the fragmentary, unclear images and feelings from my childhood.

It was after I read Jennifer Freyd’s wonderful book Betrayal Trauma: The Logic of Forgetting Childhood Abuse, that I began to have sympathy and understanding for my repression. As Freyd explains it, a child who is growing up in a family has to depend on these adults for her every meal and every support. To stay within the family and get whatever stability is offered, she has to forget the abuse. Freyd even cites statistics that show (from reported cases of abuse) that the closer in relationship the perpetrator is to the abused child, the more likely she will sometime forget what happened.

In my memoir, I best expressed the emotional truth of repression in a poem:

The importance of fog.

Where it is dense, things live

that must not be known

on penalty of losing everything.

Their reality my reality.

If they said forget it

who would be my Oprah

put the microphone in my face?

To keep family, I had to break

my reality

into fragments

hide the pieces

under the closet door

at the end of the hallway.

How could I face them in the mornings

eat my corn flakes and milk

if I recalled the nights?

How could I receive the love

that was given

sure as the whiskers

growing on his face,

the tiredness in her eyes

if I remembered?

(TheRiver of Forgetting, p. 60)

Mary, what was it like for you, forgetting and remembering the trauma you’d suffered?

Mary

I too struggled to validate what I was starting to remember. Well-meaning people often caused me to cringe when they said something like, “How can you forget something so awful?” Or: “You couldn’t possible remember being a baby.”

I’ll put on my professional hat to explain their ignorance.

These incredulous bystanders don’t understand the complexity of traumatic memory. They’re thinking of explicit memory, the sort of memory you’ll retain after reading this blog post. Or think of a meeting you attended recently. You’ll recall who was there and what was said. The doubters also know that fear is an aid to memory. We all could learn a lot the night before an exam when we were under pressure. Think of 9/11. You can remember exactly where you were, who you were with, who said what, etc. on that terrible occasion. Up to a point, then, fear improves memory.

Now we come to traumatic memory. When a situation is a too awful to tolerate and there’s no escape, the normal child’s brain stores the memory differently. This becomes an implicit memory. That is, it is no longer held consciously. It is stored in the body. Forgetting is a survival strategy.

On a personal level, I look back at myself as a small child trapped in a black tale of Gothic horror. There I was in my huge house with my old grandfather as my babysitter while my distracted mother ran the family business. Who could I turn to for help in those days? Nobody would have believed me. My mother was enraged about my innocent child’s curiosity when I discovered my little friend’s penis. I certainly couldn’t have told her.

I did what many helpless victims do. I idealized my perpetrators. Night after night, once I left home and was living in a university residence, I impressed my roommate with tales of my wonderful parents and family.

I told her about my perfect family: how my mother was beautiful and clever, my father wise and witty. They were the perfect couple. Sue heard all about my aunts, uncles, nephews, and the characters who peopled my hometown. My idealized family was glamorous and gifted.

(Confessions of a Trauma Therapist, Page 34.)

In therapy, whenever a client tells me how wonderful her parents were, I’m immediately alerted to childhood trauma. No parents are that ideal. Really good parents also have their human shortcomings.

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Readers, we’d like to hear from you. What is your experience? Did you forget what happened? Or repress only the feelings? Were there fragments, or nothing at all?

When Children Try to Tell About Abuse

2011-08-16T08:45:00.000-05:00

Mary Armstrong (author of Confessions of a Trauma Therapist) and I are collaborating on a series of blog posts. In this post on Mary's blog, we tell our experiences as young girls trying to tell about the abuse:

I’ve asked author Jane Rowan to join me in exploring some issues surrounding child sexual abuse. Jane’s book The River of Forgetting tells her story of painfully accessing her history of child sexual abuse and healing through a therapeutic relationship with a gifted helping professional. Jane chose Authentic Movement, art and journaling to help her heal.

My memoir, Confessions of a Trauma Therapist is, as you know, my account of how my lost memories surfaced and how I healed through yoga, Focusing, psychotherapy and journaling.

Our books are complementary. Two different stories of two women who became outwardly successful in spite of the depression and anxiety they suffered inside.

Telling is a subject that intrigues me. Why is it so terrifying to tell the secret we’ve carried for so long and that we kept secret even from ourselves. Where does all this fear originate? What happened in childhood when we tried to tell?

In her book, Jane describes her attempt to tell her mother that her father was sexually abusing her. She was five or six. In this excerpt from her book, she is telling her psychotherapist about attempting to tell her mother:

“What happened?” Over and over, she says sharply, “What is it?! Tell me!” Read more...

Book Review: Confessions of a Trauma Therapist

2011-07-26T15:34:00.001-05:00

Confessions of a Trauma Therapist is a terrific, insightful memoir.

Let’s begin with the title, a sly slice of irony. Why is the therapist confessing, when it is usually the client who confesses and reveals? Why, because she herself, the brave Mary K. Armstrong, is both the therapist/confessor and the client/revealer.

As Armstrong details in this book, her life unfolded through school, marriage, and an intense yoga training, until she found her life-work as a therapist. When she found the body-centered form that drew her most, the practice known as Focusing, when her life seemed stable, that’s when the memories and flashbacks came. She was in her forties. She was as ready, perhaps, as a person can be. Even so, she doubted herself. Could she throw her concepts of her loving, eccentric family—her caring grandfather and interesting father—out the window? As a survivor who had to do the same dance of refashioning my entire view of my family, I empathize.

Armstrong indeed had the courage to not only face these violent invasive memories, but to document her struggle in her journals, which she excerpts to show us how it felt.

The book begins relatively slowly, telling us in advance that the memories will come, but building up the picture, step by step, of a life that unfolds with reflection and depth. Then when the memories come, the pace quickens and it all becomes very vivid.

The double view of surviving abuse—the perspectives of therapist and of client/survivor—reminds me of a studio with mirrors, where we may witness the dance of discovery from two angles at once.

Armstrong’s life-story is a testimony to human strength and resilience. It’s an inspiring read as we see her vulnerability but we also know she’s a prominent therapist who has helped many others in her lifetime. I recommend this book highly.

I've been in touch with Mary Armstrong and will post more, soon, about our dialogue.

Remember: A Poem on Recovering Innocence After Abuse

2011-07-11T07:31:00.000-05:00

Remember

Remember how it began

you were everywhere

in the trees, the rocks,

running through like a golden thread

seeping like water

no form only soul

delighting in all being,

then in your incarnated being

fingers, toes, belly, spit.

Remember how it began

offspring of the world

infinite, unbounded, confident

in your connection.

Soon enough you learned boundaries

and how it was to be violated.

Schoolbooks, grades, family fights,

starched dresses, silence,

cowboys and Indians,

secrets, rape.

Half a century later

you unlearned, pulling

the barbed strands

from the living flesh

weeping oceans to sail

home on, in the wind of change

to the harbor of arms,

small again, in the lap of acceptance.

Huge waves of love, a tempest.

Quiet now, can you accept the miraculous

ordinariness of being just a part

of it all—branches, chickadees,

laundry on the line, clouds, sleeping cats.

I wrote this poem after about five years of therapy concerning my recovered memories of incest. It is included in my memoir, The River of Forgetting.
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Interview on Spiritual Journey of a Lightworker

2011-07-05T16:47:00.000-05:00

I am honored to be interviewed by Patricia Singleton, a very active writer and advocate who deals with issues of incest and abuse. Her blog is Spiritual Journey of a Lightworker.

Patricia says, in part,
Thank you Jane for consenting to do this written interview with me so that my readers can learn more about you and your book. I just finished reading your book a few days ago. Your book is an amazing tale of recovery from incest through the use of Inner Child work. Your story shows your courage and stamina in dealing with fragmented memories and frightened inner children. I knew a little bit about your story because of our initial contact on Twitter and on your webpage. I was curious to understand how a person with only fragmented memories, at best, could go about healing from the wounds of incest. I have six years of memories of my own incest abuse.

Why I was interested in reading Ms Rowan's book? Because I also have clues that my incest abuse started before the age of three. I have a very definite clue in that at three years old, I labeled myself an adulteress. I have no memories to go with that clue showing that I might have been sexually abused early in my childhood. I was interested to see if Jane ever got her full memories back or had to work on just the clues. I will soon be starting my own inner child work to see what I can recover. I know that the memories are there being held somewhere in my child's mind and in my body-memories. Like for Jane, my memories of this early incest are held by my younger inner children. Inner child work is often the key to healing from abuse.
Read the rest of the interview...
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What is Healing?

2011-07-01T08:07:00.001-05:00

Walk With Me Through the Clouds invited me to write about the nature of healing from abuse.

My memoir, The River of Forgetting, describes how I recovered memories of abuse and then struggled to believe myself and to reconcile my vision of a loving family with the ugly things my father did and my mother did not prevent. At the end of the book, I muse on the question of healing:

What is healing? Have I found it? It is the absence of negative symptoms—the flashbacks gone, the sense of wrongness about myself replaced by a general sense of rightness. I like where I am and who I am. The closed and fearful parts of me take less space.

I know where my weak spots are. I’ll always be susceptible to the fear that people won’t hear me or won’t believe me. I notice when that feeling comes up and I can talk to Little Jane to let her know I hear the feeling and it’s just a feeling. It may or may not be true that the particular person won’t listen. These core issues are so familiar, they are almost like wild animals that have been tamed. Sometimes I can chuckle at them.

But healing is a lot more than the absence of bad feelings and patterns. It is the positive presence in my life of the joy and solidity that was my birthright. I think I am fortunate to be a person of natural enthusiasm and liveliness. Now these qualities are manifest in my many creative activities, my garden, and walks in nature.

Healing is a sense of connection and wholeness. It’s not every moment that I feel connected to the world of people, trees, and clouds. Even the best mystics seem to get there only part of the time. Rumi, the Persian poet, is eloquent on the absence as well as the presence of “the Beloved”—his muse, love, and God. But I know it is possible and I am going in that direction.

Healing is feeling my story as beautiful despite all the pain and struggle.

Healing is watching my son grow into a man so like my father and so different. It is being open with him and letting him know how his actions affect me. It is being glad to see that he has learned to contain his anger and not poison others with it. There’s something inexpressibly healing about having a man in my family line know the truth and support me in my journey, as my son has done.

Healing is choosing friends who celebrate my being. I have said goodbye to several friends who did not seem able to hear me or who took up all the space with their crises. I have moved away from others who are nice but not able to swim in the depths. Many of my same friends are still with me and I’ve added a few close ones from the worlds of writing and dance.

Healing is a continual unfolding. It is not all done. Over time I feel more of my parents’ love inside of me, while not denying their faults. I continue to gain insights into my life and family.

In the end, healing wasn’t so much about finding clear memories as about believing and trusting myself. It wasn’t so much about reconciling with my parents for what they did, but more about reconciling with the many inner selves who lived to tell the tale.

Reader, what do you think healing is?

Review on Reading Frenzy: "Well-written, interesting and brutally honest"

2011-06-29T09:23:00.005-05:00


LouAnn of RF

A new review today on Reading Frenzy:

This memoir is written a little different than many I’ve read in the past. The author doesn’t dwell on the events that led her to the point of needing therapy; she talks about how it helped her and why.

Anyone who needs to come to terms with something that happened to them in the past would benefit from this book. Jane Rowan discusses the steps in her therapy, how she learned to express herself and how she reached inside to begin the healing process. I found the movement therapy particularly fascinating. It reminds me of a form of meditation where you block out what’s going on around you and concentrate on your inner emotions. It’s very intriguing and I’m sure others would benefit from it.

The author also includes some poetry she wrote, which opens the window to let the reader see inside her heart.

Well-written, interesting and brutally honest. This is a book that may be difficult for some to read, but it’s also an important story to understand the consequences of sexual assault on the victim. You really must read this one!

"Book and a Chat" Interview on BlogTalk Radio

2011-06-26T19:42:00.002-05:00

A Book and a Chat
Interview with Jane by the charming Barry "Storyheart" is available now: Background on my life, why I wrote the book, how I wrote it, and why! Insights about memoirs on trauma, the creative process, and life in general.

Love, Abuse, and Forgiveness

2011-06-24T08:32:00.001-05:00

I'm pleased to have a Guest Post "Love, Abuse, and Forgiveness" at the blog Coming Out of the Trees (excerpts of my therapy journal) by Marie

It took me a long time to remember that I was abused. In the year after my father died, when I was 53, I finally woke up to a memory that pointed to abuse (see related excerpt). How could those memories be hidden so long? I think there was both a push and a pull towards forgetting. The push was my family’s secrecy and silence. Both when I was a child and later, there was no space for my feelings or disclosures that could threaten my parents’ already shaky marriage.

But in that eccentric leftist family I also received much love and attention. There was never a question in my mind (as there is for too many children) that both my father and my mother loved me deeply and strongly. I tagged along after my father into factories where he fixed equipment. My mother played endless games of Parcheesi with me.

When the memories, many of them vague, began to return, I did daily battle with myself even to begin to believe that my father could have abused me. It made no sense… Read the rest of the post...
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"Incest Survivors will cheer," writes Bookish Dame!

2011-06-23T14:39:00.000-05:00

Here's what Deborah, The Bookish Dame, wrote today. I am so moved by the ways she "got" the essence of The River of Forgetting.

This is a difficult review to write. I want to tell you this book has touched my soul and psyche in ways that nothing else I've read on the subject has ever been able to. That makes it difficult to summarize for me.

Over the years, as all of us probably have, I've read numerous books sharing survival stories of alcohol, drug use, dysfunctional families, incest, child abuse and the like. Not until this book has any one of them had the same impact. I attribute a lot of that to the fact that Jane Rowan is not whining and enlisting the sympathies of the reader...or even asking for the blame to be placed not only on the offending father or mother, but on the opposite parent or guardian.

Jane Rowan's book is not a matter-of-fact story, either, but a real and honest walk with her in discovery. It's as if we're on an excavation, an uncovering of an ancient ruin (an apt word) that has such power to harm that it's a cancer that's virtually inoperable unless it's painstakingly routed out. What a new concept! No crying and subconscious or conscious begging for "poor me" readers--just "here's what I uncovered, it was such a journey to get there!"

Ms Rowan writes her non-fiction book like a novel. It's a book so easy to read that one has nearly finished before it's realized. I had a hard time putting it down. The hours rushed by as I was caught up in her powerful and easy prose.

One of the most intriguing and significant books of its kind I've had the pleasure of reading and reviewing.

The River of Forgetting: an intense, powerful story

2011-06-23T07:44:00.000-05:00

What I love about this new review at The Book Connection is that the reviewer shares her discomforts about the book as well as what she appreciates:

The River of Forgetting is an intense story. It's not one you read and just move onto the next book in your stack. It's impossible for me, as someone who had a less than ideal childhood, not to compare some of Rowan's experiences with my own. Granted, there wasn't the level of abuse that Rowan endured, but there is an amount of neglect that has followed me to this day; something I unsuccessfully attempted to deal with over 10 years ago in therapy. I had tried Inner Child work, but couldn't reach what I needed to get me through.

The reader spends time with Rowan in the therapist's office, the studio, in group sessions, at home and at family events. This well-written, powerful memoir dives deeply into those years when the past collided with the present. It discusses how during a portion of her journey, problems at work and mysterious threatening postcards and letters pushed her to the edge. At times I was a bit uncomfortable with the intimate relationship between Rowan and her therapist, but then I got to wondering if my own therapy wasn't successful because I couldn't connect with my therapist in such a meaningful way. These women tackled some tough issues together, and it was important for Rowan to feel Sarah's love and support throughout the entire process.

The River of Forgetting inspires with poetry, journal writing, and a poignant narrative. As readers follow Rowan's transformation, they too will be encouraged to find the peace and joy they deserve.

In the Movie Version of My Life...

2011-06-21T07:50:00.001-05:00

Blogcritics interviewer asked:

If your memoir, The River of Forgetting, were to be turned into a movie, who would you love to see play what characters and why?

I’m afraid that a younger Jack Nicholson would do a great job of being my father, because he’s so good at being both charismatic and creepy. His performance in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was so reminiscent of my dad that it was hard for me to watch.

Sally Field might be able to play my mother. She would need to bring out a strange combination of stubbornness and passivity, along with an ability to lie to herself, that Sally could convey brilliantly.

Meryl Streep could be my therapist, any day. Why not? She can easily show compassion and intelligence along with a strong sense of purpose and integrity, and she does it with very subtle changes in her face and body.

Why Do You Write?

2011-06-17T08:15:00.000-05:00

Today I guest blog at Review From Here

What is writing for? Is it about your ambition to sell a million books for money or fame? Is it about reaching certain readers and changing something in their hearts and lives? Is it to express something inside you that is important but unformed, demanding work and attention to bring it to the surface? Is it an expression of spontaneous need like the impulse to splash red paint across a wall when you’re angry?

I came face-to-face with these questions when I started to write The River of Forgetting: A Memoir of Healing from Sexual Abuse. Did I want to write a bestseller, sensationalizing the details to lure publishers and readers? Was I writing for revenge or to display how victimized I was? Read the rest of the interview...

The Story Behind the Book

2011-06-16T06:33:00.000-05:00

The Story Behind the Book is Literarily Speaking’s newest feature. Here we find out either the inspiration behind authors’ books or how they got published. Today’s guest is Jane Rowan, author of the memoir, The River of Forgetting: A Memoir of Healing from Sexual Abuse.

It may seem strange, but my book was inspired by pure gratitude and joy. Yes, The River of Forgetting is a story about childhood abuse and healing, but it’s also a story of deep transformation and the miraculous nature of what happens inside the therapist’s office. I haven’t found many books that speak honestly about this process, which I believe is our modern equivalent of the Iliad and Odyssey. Read the rest of the interview...
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Inner Child Rebellion!

2011-06-14T13:55:00.000-05:00

As you can see from this blog, I’ve been doing I lot of publicity for my memoir, The River of Forgetting. Well, today as I sat to listen to my Inner Children, as I do every morning, they were just furious with me. Too much work, not enough play! they said.

I believe in the power of this memoir, I truly do. I I’ve been getting to amazing emails from others who have read it. They say that it validates their feelings, even if their circumstance of abuse were different. They’ve told me about their own Little Girls inside and the amazing, gutsy, and even funny things these inner children have said. They say the book unlocks access to these feelings.

But today and tomorrow I need just to take care of my own Inner Child and let her do whatever she wants. Maybe some wild abstract painting. Certainly some wandering in the woods and sitting by the pond with the dragonflies buzzing.

It’s time to go play—have a good day, you out there!

Why Write? and Listening for Words

2011-06-14T07:27:00.000-05:00

Today I am delighted to be interviewed by Hot Author, who asked these questions and more.

Q: What compelled you to write your first book?

A: Sheer gratitude for the way that my personal crisis opened up into opportunity. I was driving down the highway in Connecticut on the way to see my son in New York, feeling an upwelling of love and thankfulness, and it just came clear that I needed to write The River of Forgetting.

Q: How did you feel the day you held the copy of your first book in your hands?

A: Holding the book in my hands was nothing compared to the thrill of seeing it on Amazon! At that point I knew I had truly launched it into the world for everyone to see.

Q: What type of music, if any, do you listen to while you write? Do you need the noise or the silence?

A: Silence! I need to hear the music of the words (I’m a poet as well as prose writer), and I need to listen inside for the exact emotional resonances of the scenes and the words. Music has its own propulsive power, not what I need. ...Read the rest of the interview at Hot Author

Why memoir? and what about doubts?

2011-06-13T07:40:00.000-05:00

In today's interview, The Examiner asked, "Why did you choose your particular genre?"

A: That’s a great question! When I was working on this book, some of my friends advised me to fictionalize my story. They saw how I was sweating blood over getting the truth onto paper, and they thought it might be easier if I distanced myself and put the story “out there” away from me, as a fiction.

But I knew it had to be memoir. When I read a good memoir, I find there’s a certain thrill in knowing the story is real, as well as a certain solidity and trust in the author that I develop as I go along. There’s the sense of getting to know a real human being, with their vulnerability and their defenses. I needed to put forth that truthfulness, no matter how difficult it was.

"Do you ever experience self-doubts with your work?"

A: I encountered several kinds of doubt. First I wondered if I’d have the nerve to write the truth about the degree of pain I endured as I uncovered fragments of abuse that shattered my notions about my family. Then I didn’t know how to find a form and tone that felt correct: dead honest, intimate, and yet crafted solidly to hold the story. I had to experiment for months to find the form, which now is a linear story, but with pieces from my journals and with poems as well.

I didn’t know how much to include about my family’s history and where to put it. Finally, I saw that a dozen or so family snapshots would do the job, and that these should enter after I had introduced the reader to the basic problem and asked the question, “Was this a family that could support abuse?”... Read the rest of the interview.
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Review of Memoir on One Day At A Time

2011-06-10T10:17:00.000-05:00

Jennifer writes:

The River Of Forgetting is a non-fiction memoir of one woman's journey to the truth surrounding her childhood sexual abuse...

Without sharing too much more, I shall say that this memoir is poignant, heart-wrenching and almost poetic in its prose. Sharing with us the story through poetry, dreams and narration, we are taken upon a journey with a family that loves even though the horrors are long forgotten. As we all know, the truth always prevails and the strength and courage Jane Rowan shares with the reader will leave you heartbroken at times. [Read the entire review]
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Therapy: The Modern Hero’s Journey

2011-06-09T08:09:00.000-05:00

Excerpt from Jane's guest post at Lori's Reading Corner:

Mighty Odysseus undertook his journeys through stormy seas, past seductive Sirens and fearful monsters, on and on through the trials that marked him as a heroic figure. In the end he came home to a faithful wife, whose loyalty he tested before he believed her.

Joseph Campbell, the beloved author of The Hero of a Thousand Faces and presenter of “The Power of Myth,” made it very clear that the real hero’s journeys of our times are internal ones. They are the battles with the storms, temptations, and calls to faithfulness that take place inside our own psyches. Our protagonist is as likely to be a woman as a man.

The essence of a heroic journey is that we feel a call to change something in our lives, that we are willing to meet this call and take risks for it, that we encounter frightening forces that seem to threaten our very existence, that we receive help (in the old days, from supernatural forces; in these days, often from a therapist or mentor or teacher), and finally that we return home in some sense, to a place both new and old.

Every week, many millions of people enter their therapist’s offices and bravely undertake this inner voyage, returning to the daunting waves and rocks, the monsters from their childhoods and the ghosts of their families... [Read the rest of the post...]

In my book, TheRiver of Forgetting: A Memoir of Healing from Sexual Abuse, I wanted to celebrate this process... [Read the rest of the post...]
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Interview at Paperback Writer - A Typical Writing Day

2011-06-08T20:35:00.000-05:00

Interview at Paperback Writer

Give us an example of a typical writing day.

I have no typical writing day! For The River of Forgetting, it was such a personal and intense project that I had to work on it when I could and how I could. I’d haul out my journals from the relevant time and cull them for useful passages, get back into the feelings of the time, and then try to craft a story that would show just what I was going through. It was important both to capture the intensity of what I went through – recovering old, traumatic memories from childhood – and also to make a narrative that readers could relate to.

Do you write on a computer or with pen/pencil and paper?

The computer is my best friend.[Read the rest of the interview...]