More Chapters from Losing the Scarlet Letter

Sam reads "My Father" and "Shame Starts Early"; and we interview one of our super-valuable volunteers.

Here is some content from "Shame Starts Early":

It would be good to be able to say, “The past has lost its power”, but that is easier said than done.  In order to overcome your past, you need to be able to identify your past, to name the abuses, and decide how to stop being a victim of those abuses.

Nobody sexually abused me or held my hand over an open flame until it charred.  The abuse was much more subtle than that.  It would be easy if one could confront an abuser
My father abused me in ways that I believe he will never admit.  It started early and it never stopped.  My father’s jokes were about how fat I was or how loud I was; or he made jokes to make me feel uncomfortable with the opposite sex. 

And the rest of the family just ran with it.  Well, there wasn’t really much of a rest of a family at that time – there was my mother and my sister.  But my family created a mythology for me.  They created a role.  And they were prepared to stick with that role, the story of who I was, and I was supposed to just live with that role, I was supposed to be a fat awkward kid who got spanked a lot, because the rest of the family was generally exasperated with him.