I picked up an old book by Hallie and Whit Burnett, Fiction Writer's Handbook, at the library. It starts with a preface by Norman Mailer and it's been a while since I've read a book on the craft. It is very well done - more about the philosophy behind the writing process than most books with similar titles and goals. The authors take a wide view because as the editors of Story Magazine, they had a large and diverse number of examples to choose from.
One statement matches my process in writing Pastor's Ex-Wife well: "We absorb, we sympathize, we reject, we present, it all comes from our own selective memory in the end."
And so it does in my story of how one woman, Terry Soldan, achieved enough personal courage to return to the church pastored by her ex-husband, incognito, in order to shut the door on that abusive season so that she could step into a new place emotionally.
About Me
- Lesley
- I have discovered that walking a very narrow path leads to broad places of peace, contentment, and provision. After an eclectic career of nonprofit leadership, museums, education and social services, Dr. Lesley Barker is transitioning to retirement devoted to full time writing. Expect surprises to come from her pen.
Showing posts with label clergy sexual abuse. Show all posts
Showing posts with label clergy sexual abuse. Show all posts
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Wounded Women
Leaving the church and leaving her marriage to its pastor did not mean that Terry was choosing to abandon her relationship with God. It just got confusing since she had viewed God through a distorted lens. That is understandable too in that her husband-pastor, God-fraud that he was, still robed himself in the white cassock and pronounced absolution from a whole congregation's week's worth of sins. He even declared the word of the Lord posing as His mouthpiece multiple times each week. Of course, he was endorsed by a whole denomination besides the congregation and he believed in himself and extorted honor and obedience from his wife, so that she, like Vashti in the Book of Esther, would provide a pristine model of submission to her husband for all the women in his kingdom. And, like Vashti, Terry ultimately embarrassed him in public and thus was publicly rejected.
As I have written previously, this is a book of fiction. Yes, my story touches that of Terry but far too many pastor's wives share hers as well. Fortunately for both me and Terry, while God is on record as "hating divorce," he did not reject, abandon, dismiss, or shame either me or Terry - God is faithful in both fact and fiction. It just takes a while for us wounded women to realize it.
You can read Pastor's Ex-Wife by Lesley Barker on the Kindle. If you don't own a kindle, you can download the kindle ap for free to your computer desktop or smart phone and then you can buy the book in the Amazon Kindle Store here.
As I have written previously, this is a book of fiction. Yes, my story touches that of Terry but far too many pastor's wives share hers as well. Fortunately for both me and Terry, while God is on record as "hating divorce," he did not reject, abandon, dismiss, or shame either me or Terry - God is faithful in both fact and fiction. It just takes a while for us wounded women to realize it.
You can read Pastor's Ex-Wife by Lesley Barker on the Kindle. If you don't own a kindle, you can download the kindle ap for free to your computer desktop or smart phone and then you can buy the book in the Amazon Kindle Store here.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Desperate people do desperate things, right?
Many churches are vibrant, healthy, relational communities formed around a mutual faith in a risen Lord. Some churches are unhealthy. Some of the worst unhealthy churches are led by pastors who are abusive to their wives but no one in the congregation has a clue. This is the kind of church that was pastored by Terry's ex-husband, Ed.
What? How could such a situation develop and persist?
Church membership in many American Protestant denominations and congregations is frequently based on a person's ability to subscribe to and publicly articulate a specific set of beliefs. Failure to do this restricts people not only from positions of leadership within the congregation, but also often prevents the development of authentic friendships among members of the congregation that are characterized by mutual respect.
Terry, our fictitious pastor's ex-wife, spent her entire adult life in such a closed church community, isolated. Her loneliness was exacerbated by the denomination's advice that pastors' wives should not seek to have friends within the congregation for fear that the confidences they might share could undermine her husband's leadership.
Many pastors and their wives seem convinced that they have to portray a godliness for their parishioners to observe but that they can "be themselves" when they are in private or with other clergy couples. This is why Terry's only friend was Alice, the wife of one of her husband's seminary classmates. Alice, whose own pastor husband was not abusive, lived too far away to really observe the deterioration of her friend's situation. Alice towed the denominational line, backing the pastor over her friend, his wife.
The isolation and the exaggerated spirituality and authority attributed to the pastor husband can serve to provide him with a mental entitlement to exert power- spiritual, emotional, psychological, physical, and sometimes sexual, over his wife- if he is tempted by power and suckered into thinking that he is "God's man of faith and power."
When an entire congregation backed by its denominational superstructure kowtows to the power-mongering egotistic and sometimes hidden socio-pathic personality of an abusive pastor who operates "in the name of God," who displays a spiritually charged pride from the pulpit but a monster's fury in the parsonage, what is the wife supposed to do?
After tolerating years of abuse without hinting that it happens, wives like Terry often lose perspective and start condemning themselves for some sin or lack of love instead of insisting that appropriate behavioral boundaries operate within their marriage. Even worse, they cannot reveal the horror at home to anyone without compromising and betraying their husband's spiritual vocation.
Women like Terry sometimes cannot confront their spouse's intolerable behavior without a triggering a personal faith crisis. After all, doesn't the Bible assert that their husband is supposed to be the "head" of the wife. The wife is commanded to "submit" to the husband, and God HATES divorce. But, since for her entire married life she has been isolated from accepting or befriending people who do not subscribe to the church's tenants, she has few options when she reaches the end of her rope.
Desperate people do desperate things, right?
I am looking for women like Terry to contribute their stories so that, like Terry, they will help other Terry's to find a strategy that starts a process of healing, restoration, and freedom from the lies that made them vulnerable to men like Ed in the first place and then increased with the on-going abuse to keep them stuck as victims in the relationship.
You can read Pastor's Ex-Wife by Lesley Barker on the Kindle. If you don't own a kindle, you can download the kindle ap for free to your computer desktop or smart phone and then you can buy the book in the Amazon Kindle Store here.
What? How could such a situation develop and persist?
Church membership in many American Protestant denominations and congregations is frequently based on a person's ability to subscribe to and publicly articulate a specific set of beliefs. Failure to do this restricts people not only from positions of leadership within the congregation, but also often prevents the development of authentic friendships among members of the congregation that are characterized by mutual respect.
Terry, our fictitious pastor's ex-wife, spent her entire adult life in such a closed church community, isolated. Her loneliness was exacerbated by the denomination's advice that pastors' wives should not seek to have friends within the congregation for fear that the confidences they might share could undermine her husband's leadership.
Many pastors and their wives seem convinced that they have to portray a godliness for their parishioners to observe but that they can "be themselves" when they are in private or with other clergy couples. This is why Terry's only friend was Alice, the wife of one of her husband's seminary classmates. Alice, whose own pastor husband was not abusive, lived too far away to really observe the deterioration of her friend's situation. Alice towed the denominational line, backing the pastor over her friend, his wife.
The isolation and the exaggerated spirituality and authority attributed to the pastor husband can serve to provide him with a mental entitlement to exert power- spiritual, emotional, psychological, physical, and sometimes sexual, over his wife- if he is tempted by power and suckered into thinking that he is "God's man of faith and power."
When an entire congregation backed by its denominational superstructure kowtows to the power-mongering egotistic and sometimes hidden socio-pathic personality of an abusive pastor who operates "in the name of God," who displays a spiritually charged pride from the pulpit but a monster's fury in the parsonage, what is the wife supposed to do?
After tolerating years of abuse without hinting that it happens, wives like Terry often lose perspective and start condemning themselves for some sin or lack of love instead of insisting that appropriate behavioral boundaries operate within their marriage. Even worse, they cannot reveal the horror at home to anyone without compromising and betraying their husband's spiritual vocation.
Women like Terry sometimes cannot confront their spouse's intolerable behavior without a triggering a personal faith crisis. After all, doesn't the Bible assert that their husband is supposed to be the "head" of the wife. The wife is commanded to "submit" to the husband, and God HATES divorce. But, since for her entire married life she has been isolated from accepting or befriending people who do not subscribe to the church's tenants, she has few options when she reaches the end of her rope.
Desperate people do desperate things, right?
I am looking for women like Terry to contribute their stories so that, like Terry, they will help other Terry's to find a strategy that starts a process of healing, restoration, and freedom from the lies that made them vulnerable to men like Ed in the first place and then increased with the on-going abuse to keep them stuck as victims in the relationship.
You can read Pastor's Ex-Wife by Lesley Barker on the Kindle. If you don't own a kindle, you can download the kindle ap for free to your computer desktop or smart phone and then you can buy the book in the Amazon Kindle Store here.
Monday, March 14, 2011
Three Kinds of Culture Shock
As if taking on the clergy abuse scandal from the American Protestant side wasn't controversial enough, Pastor's Ex-Wife also concerns the issue of race relations in our country's inner cities and churches especially. That theme unfolds via two intertwining avenues.
Terry and William masquerade as people of color when they visit a different church each week so that Terry can write her syndicated anonymous church critique. Many people have heard the saying that the most segregated hour in America today is Sunday morning at church which is sad but too often true - usually not because the congregation is determined to keep it so but mostly, in my opinion, because there have been too few natural ways for people of diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds to become friends.
The second place that Terry encounters diversity and has to learn to function across cultural divides is in her classroom at the inner city public school where William is the principal. He is her mentor, having participated in the same predominantly African American school district where more than 90% of the students qualify to receive free or reduced lunches for a career spanning three decades.
In fact, you could view the entire novel as one woman's culture shock as she finds herself in three new cultural milieus: a secular community that is free from the petty judgments that so many closed (we know the truth better than anyone else and God will get them for not being as informed and convicted as we are) Christian communities express; an inner city community stressed by all the socio-economic inequities you can possibly list exacerbated by an influx of new immigrants from underdeveloped war-torn countries; and a household made up of men who know who they are and understand how to befriend each other in spite of their differences.
You can read Pastor's Ex-Wife by Lesley Barker on the Kindle. If you don't own a kindle, you can download the kindle ap for free to your computer desktop or smart phone and then you can buy the book in the Amazon Kindle Store here.
Terry and William masquerade as people of color when they visit a different church each week so that Terry can write her syndicated anonymous church critique. Many people have heard the saying that the most segregated hour in America today is Sunday morning at church which is sad but too often true - usually not because the congregation is determined to keep it so but mostly, in my opinion, because there have been too few natural ways for people of diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds to become friends.
The second place that Terry encounters diversity and has to learn to function across cultural divides is in her classroom at the inner city public school where William is the principal. He is her mentor, having participated in the same predominantly African American school district where more than 90% of the students qualify to receive free or reduced lunches for a career spanning three decades.
In fact, you could view the entire novel as one woman's culture shock as she finds herself in three new cultural milieus: a secular community that is free from the petty judgments that so many closed (we know the truth better than anyone else and God will get them for not being as informed and convicted as we are) Christian communities express; an inner city community stressed by all the socio-economic inequities you can possibly list exacerbated by an influx of new immigrants from underdeveloped war-torn countries; and a household made up of men who know who they are and understand how to befriend each other in spite of their differences.
You can read Pastor's Ex-Wife by Lesley Barker on the Kindle. If you don't own a kindle, you can download the kindle ap for free to your computer desktop or smart phone and then you can buy the book in the Amazon Kindle Store here.
Friday, March 11, 2011
Typically and Predictably
It took a day to write the first draft of each chapter after planning it out using the rubric I set myself. While I wanted to have Terry speak with an authentic voice, I did not want to trespass by having her emote from places that were under or even un-healed in me. I wanted to be faithful to the friend who started the whole thing. And, I wanted to write a story about a person betrayed by the church who was struggling to differentiate between the church and its God without minimizing the struggle for and against faith in Him that Terry had to suffer. I also wanted to have someone take the responsibility to push me through the book so that I could produce the first draft in a timely manner. So, I involved that same friend and her new husband. Thank God for email- that nearly instant means of transmitting text across long distances and deep oceans. My friend and her husband dutifully read each chapter as it was drafted. More than once her follow-up phone call started with "How did you know about __________? I never told anyone that had happened to me." It goes to show how typically and predictably abusers act.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Now what?
Remember that none of this would have happened if:
1) I did not NEED stories to survive;
2) My friend had not made me promise to pray about writing her story of fleeing from an abusive pastor;
3) I did not care about keeping my word; and
4) If I had not decided to write a short story on a day when there did not seem much else better to do.
But all of this had happened and now I was convinced that here was an important story.
Now what?
Should I create a story board or a file folder for each character and plot the whole story out before I started writing or should I wing it?
No matter what anybody tells you, writing is as individual as dreaming or planting a garden - there are some things everyone has to do but then there are also the successful ecclectic Virginia Wolfs and e.e. cummings among us who manage to break the rules and still achieve fame.
I don't have any trouble breaking rules here and there. I am pretty organized AND/but I am not a linear thinker really.
So, how should I develop the story, keep track of all the details, move it forward, communicate this huge social issue in a way that would make an impact like Oprah Winfrey did today when 200 men stood up together on her show to break free of the shame and baggage they have carried after having been the childhood victims of sexual abuse including a pair of twins whose abuser was a priest? How would I insert humor, add dialogue, use metaphors and similes, and make the writing compelling? How would I make the story appeal to all the women whose hearts have been scarred and whose lives diminished because they have not been able to push into a new season with freedom and courage and at the same time not write something maudlin and depressing?
I created a basic time-line of events that would culminate in the first chapter which is really the end of the story so there is no need to start reading at the back of the book to find out what happens. The story is about how Terry gained the courage to be in the first chapter at all.
Next I made myself a basic plan sheet for each chapter. Each chapter concerned one of the main events in the timeline but also revolved around its own metaphor. So I had a basic plot outlined from the beginning of the writing process but I only worked one chapter at a time.
But there were more issues to weave into the story....like what really happens every day in an inner city public elementary school and how racial and ethnic issues effect us everyday no matter what we look like and where we come from....and of course, the story had to make us laugh too...
You can read Pastor's Ex-Wife by Lesley Barker on the Kindle. If you don't own a kindle, you can download the kindle ap for free to your computer desktop or smart phone and then you can buy the book in the Amazon Kindle Store here.
1) I did not NEED stories to survive;
2) My friend had not made me promise to pray about writing her story of fleeing from an abusive pastor;
3) I did not care about keeping my word; and
4) If I had not decided to write a short story on a day when there did not seem much else better to do.
But all of this had happened and now I was convinced that here was an important story.
Now what?
Should I create a story board or a file folder for each character and plot the whole story out before I started writing or should I wing it?
No matter what anybody tells you, writing is as individual as dreaming or planting a garden - there are some things everyone has to do but then there are also the successful ecclectic Virginia Wolfs and e.e. cummings among us who manage to break the rules and still achieve fame.
I don't have any trouble breaking rules here and there. I am pretty organized AND/but I am not a linear thinker really.
So, how should I develop the story, keep track of all the details, move it forward, communicate this huge social issue in a way that would make an impact like Oprah Winfrey did today when 200 men stood up together on her show to break free of the shame and baggage they have carried after having been the childhood victims of sexual abuse including a pair of twins whose abuser was a priest? How would I insert humor, add dialogue, use metaphors and similes, and make the writing compelling? How would I make the story appeal to all the women whose hearts have been scarred and whose lives diminished because they have not been able to push into a new season with freedom and courage and at the same time not write something maudlin and depressing?
I created a basic time-line of events that would culminate in the first chapter which is really the end of the story so there is no need to start reading at the back of the book to find out what happens. The story is about how Terry gained the courage to be in the first chapter at all.
Next I made myself a basic plan sheet for each chapter. Each chapter concerned one of the main events in the timeline but also revolved around its own metaphor. So I had a basic plot outlined from the beginning of the writing process but I only worked one chapter at a time.
But there were more issues to weave into the story....like what really happens every day in an inner city public elementary school and how racial and ethnic issues effect us everyday no matter what we look like and where we come from....and of course, the story had to make us laugh too...
You can read Pastor's Ex-Wife by Lesley Barker on the Kindle. If you don't own a kindle, you can download the kindle ap for free to your computer desktop or smart phone and then you can buy the book in the Amazon Kindle Store here.
Monday, March 07, 2011
What about William? Who's he?
So I decided to write my short story - to explore what might happen if the pastor's ex-wife became the author of the anonymous church critique column. It would be set in the ex-husband's church on a Sunday morning on the day that Terry (the ex-wife) summoned up enough courage to return to the congregation she had left three years earlier. I planned to show her observing the service incognito as well as the column she would write about it.
But I didn't want Terry to be having an internal monologue and, for sure, she could not engage anyone at her ex-husband's church in conversation and hope to remain anonymous so...
There had to be another character traveling with her, also incognito, another person of color so...
I invented William, the man (following my friend's template) to whom she refuged after running away from Ed, the abusive pastor ex-husband.
William is really a composite character based on three men - a principal I once worked for, my father, and a man whose real name is William - my childhood best friend who now is an ob-gyn doctor in a major metropolitan area. By the way, he read the first chapter of Pastor's Ex-Wife and thinks it is a lot of fun...He also said I could use his name. I won't tell you his last name but if you were in our class you will recognize some of the anecdotes and also the ceiling tile in the church basement pierced during confirmation class by the sharp nose of a paper airplane which should expose the ability of that pastor to keep his class engaged.....
William threw up on my desk in first grade and then went home sick with German measles. How we managed to become best friends is still a mystery to me....
Some readers of Pastor's Ex-Wife find it inconceivable that Terry and William could live together in the same house, in separate bedrooms, for three years without becoming romantically or physically involved. Let me just say that other people find it more than plausible when you consider how wounding Terry's marriage really had been....
....which is not to say there isn't sexual tension between them... That will probably develop in the sequel...
In the story it was really William's idea to create an anonymous church critic but that gets ahead of this back story blog. Remember, I was just writing a short story to get the whole thing OUT of my system on a day when I didn't have anything better to do. But that did not work out as planned.
But I didn't want Terry to be having an internal monologue and, for sure, she could not engage anyone at her ex-husband's church in conversation and hope to remain anonymous so...
There had to be another character traveling with her, also incognito, another person of color so...
I invented William, the man (following my friend's template) to whom she refuged after running away from Ed, the abusive pastor ex-husband.
William is really a composite character based on three men - a principal I once worked for, my father, and a man whose real name is William - my childhood best friend who now is an ob-gyn doctor in a major metropolitan area. By the way, he read the first chapter of Pastor's Ex-Wife and thinks it is a lot of fun...He also said I could use his name. I won't tell you his last name but if you were in our class you will recognize some of the anecdotes and also the ceiling tile in the church basement pierced during confirmation class by the sharp nose of a paper airplane which should expose the ability of that pastor to keep his class engaged.....
William threw up on my desk in first grade and then went home sick with German measles. How we managed to become best friends is still a mystery to me....
Some readers of Pastor's Ex-Wife find it inconceivable that Terry and William could live together in the same house, in separate bedrooms, for three years without becoming romantically or physically involved. Let me just say that other people find it more than plausible when you consider how wounding Terry's marriage really had been....
....which is not to say there isn't sexual tension between them... That will probably develop in the sequel...
In the story it was really William's idea to create an anonymous church critic but that gets ahead of this back story blog. Remember, I was just writing a short story to get the whole thing OUT of my system on a day when I didn't have anything better to do. But that did not work out as planned.
Thursday, March 03, 2011
The Back Story- Part One
It was not my idea at all to write Pastor's Ex-Wife. In fact, I tried to run away as fast as I could from the concept because of all the conflict and controversy I knew would ensue. After a difficult divorce from an ordained man who was not in full time ministry at the time but who had been, I had enough trouble single parenting but.... my friend had also been married to a clergyman - one whose name you might actually recognize if you run in the right non-denominational circles. He was so abusive to her "in the name of God" that she ran to another man, and intentionally had an affair, believing that only to sully herself so abominably and unforgivably (at least that would be how he would take her unfaithfulness, she predicted correctly) could she free herself from him. Both of our divorces were more than five years old in around 2005 when she, now married to her lover and living abroad in his country, called me. "Lesley," she insisted. "You have to write my story. There are too many pastor's wives like me who don't know what to do or how to change the situation they live in every day." I balked. "There is no way I am going to touch that story - not with a 10 foot poll!" I replied. "Well," she didn't let me get away with that for more than about five seconds. "Will you at least promise me that you will pray about writing it?" she continued. "Yes," I agreed, to exit the conversation. "I'll promise to pray about it." I always keep my promises.
Wednesday, March 02, 2011
The story
Virginia has been picking my brain all evening about how to connect with the Pastor's Ex-Wife audience. I told her that I can't wait for people to write in their stories because they will form the fabric of the sequel where Terry's column in the paper will expand from weekly church reviews to an "Ask/tell Terry" feature as in the old "Dear Abbie." Virginia also talked about a writer friend who habitually envisioned three women reading what she wrote as she wrote. Then she asked who my audience is. You are. As we connect story to story you will learn that my heart is to provoke honest faith through fiction - as in Pastor's Ex-Wife - that typically portrays authentic faith in the context of difficult, meaning really, abusive, marriages. When knowing God is too hard, the story becomes the most poignant. There are no authentically honest pat answers - just stories that unfold until they reach the start of the next story. Do you agree with me? What is your story?
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Now Available for Sale as a Kindle e-book
This has been posted for almost three years on Authonomy.com where it received many interesting comments from the readers there. Most of them are aspiring authors who compete for ratings in the hope that they will interest an editor in their books. I appreciate the feedback and have made some changes to the book itself based on it. I removed it recently from Authonomy because my goal is to sell this book.
Even more than that, my goal is to attract a readership of women whose stories resonate with Terry's. Hers is fictitious but it takes the reader on a romp through the spectrum of the contemporary American Protestant church scene. My hope is to provide a catalyst for a cultural conversation about authentic faith, abusive religiously empowered authorities, and wounded families. My fiction revolves around themes of authentic faith in abusive marriages. My goal is to provoke healing and honesty. Full disclosure may indicate that I admit to being a serious believer in the resurrection and Lordship of Jesus Christ - but the reader of Pastor's Ex-Wife won't be beat up by my doctrine. Hopefully, the readers will laugh while the tears flow because of the interconnecting truth and pathos of the book sprinkled with frequent dashes of humor. At least that is my hope.
If I ever write a sequel to Pastor's Ex-Wife, it will be based on the letters and emails from the readers recrafted as "Dear Terry" letters in her weekly religion column. Hence this blog. Pass it on. Thanks for reading.
Lesley Barker
Friday, February 20, 2009
Pastor's Ex-Wife gets comments from online readers
The complete manuscript of Pastor's Ex-Wife, by Lesley Barker, is posted online at www.authonomy.com. Anyone can read it there - if you want to post a comment on that site you have to create a free profile. If you want to post a comment or a question here, just go right ahead. My goal is to start a conversation about authentic faith and dysfunctional marriages. It is to confront an issue that the Protestant church has as much of a problem with as its Catholic cousin - clergy who abuse their positions and their flock - here, their wives. While some readers find the story too heavy, others find it filled with humor. Here is a sampling of what some readers are saying about it:
One reader found it amusing and true to church life:
"Church with a little wry humor? Can life get any better than that?...Lesley, you've got a great sense of humor and know the inner-workings of the church!"
One reader identified too much to keep reading:
"I think this book could generate some powerful conversations, and perhaps even help some people. Please excuse me for not reading any further-- at least for now. I have some old demons locked away, and I banished them by writing an autobio a few years ago, just to purge them from my system and let me move forward with my "second chance" in a healthier way. As tightly as I think I've closed that door, however, it only takes something like your story to push it open again."
One reader thanked me for telling Her story:
How can I thank you for writing this book? As a 17+ year, abused wife of a world-known, well-respected minister, I'd felt as if I, and others like me have been 'in the closet'. I hope Christians and Church Leaders alike will recognize the relevance and validity of your book. It had me bouncing between laughter and tears! Mostly, it amazed me because I felt as if you were telling my own personal story!! Please know that there are many of 'us' out here, and we all thank you for bringing our plight out into the open. God Bless You!!!
Since what I really want to do is start a conversation, I hope this smattering of responses helps lure new readers to take a peek. Thanks - in advance. ~ Lesley
One reader found it amusing and true to church life:
"Church with a little wry humor? Can life get any better than that?...Lesley, you've got a great sense of humor and know the inner-workings of the church!"
One reader identified too much to keep reading:
"I think this book could generate some powerful conversations, and perhaps even help some people. Please excuse me for not reading any further-- at least for now. I have some old demons locked away, and I banished them by writing an autobio a few years ago, just to purge them from my system and let me move forward with my "second chance" in a healthier way. As tightly as I think I've closed that door, however, it only takes something like your story to push it open again."
One reader thanked me for telling Her story:
How can I thank you for writing this book? As a 17+ year, abused wife of a world-known, well-respected minister, I'd felt as if I, and others like me have been 'in the closet'. I hope Christians and Church Leaders alike will recognize the relevance and validity of your book. It had me bouncing between laughter and tears! Mostly, it amazed me because I felt as if you were telling my own personal story!! Please know that there are many of 'us' out here, and we all thank you for bringing our plight out into the open. God Bless You!!!
Since what I really want to do is start a conversation, I hope this smattering of responses helps lure new readers to take a peek. Thanks - in advance. ~ Lesley
Friday, January 02, 2009
Clergy Sexual Abuse - the Protestant Side
My biggest goal in writing Pastor's Ex-Wife, the fictional account of Terry Soldan who for 24 years was the wife of an abusive pastor until she escaped by having an affair- not exactly..., was to confront the issue. I wanted to engage a conversation about and among women who have wrestled with issues of faith and authenticity because one lens (their abusive pastor husbands) through which they view God has returned a very distorted image. Now, I am hoping to engage enough readers to interest a publisher. You can help by going to www.authonomy.com. Create a free profile. Then search for Pastor's Ex-Wife by Lesley Barker. Click on View the book. Then BACK the book. Read as much or as little of it as you'd like. Leave comments- be critical and honest about how you find the story. Then pass the link on to others who would be interested. This issue is too big and too important to leave unchronicled. Thanks.
Thursday, April 20, 2006
Share your story anonymously
A lot of women have been the victims of abusive clergymen. Some of them are the pastors' wives. The story of Terry Soldan is 100% fiction. She is a construct that author, Lesley Barker, created using the stories of many women. But her story is all too common according to Donna Garland, Dean of Social Work of Baylor University, in her article, "When Wolves Wear Shepherd's Clothing: Helping Women Survive Clergy Sexual Abuse," in the Spring 2006 edition of Social Work and Christianity.
Are you the ex-wife of a pastor? Are you a survivor of clergy sexual abuse? Let's help tell this hidden story to break the power of the shame and confusion that such a betrayal produces! Add your story by posting a comment. Click on the pencil below this message. You don't have to put any identifying information if you select to post anonymously.
Are you the ex-wife of a pastor? Are you a survivor of clergy sexual abuse? Let's help tell this hidden story to break the power of the shame and confusion that such a betrayal produces! Add your story by posting a comment. Click on the pencil below this message. You don't have to put any identifying information if you select to post anonymously.
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