Stop Child Abuse Now (SCAN) - 2360

Tonight's special guest is Lori Golden from San Diego, California, a survivor and a private psychotherapist working with other trauma and abuse survivors. Lori shares, “I am a survivor of incest. My father sexually abused me from the age of 5 to 16. When the sun went down, I was filled with terror, hypervigilance, and waiting. Everything in my room came alive. I believed a large ape lived under the bannister in the hallway – dissociating my father’s evilness. When I got older it became a man in the attic.  Darkness was awful, filled with lurking shadows, and evilness. Nothing felt safe. My mother lived in denial, I never trusted her and I lived alone behind a wall of secrecy and shame.” Lori started using drugs in college at 18 and covered her worthlessness, aloneness and increasing desperation with bulimic exercising, food addiction and drugs, culminating in a suicide attempt at 27. "I am an incest survivor, an addict in Narcotics Anonymous for 33 years as well as Food Addicts Anonymous for 30", she tells us. "My book, 'My House Of Lies; Awakening from a childhood of sexual abuse', was published in July. I am passionate about telling my story." Today, Lori has a full-time private practice which she considers a gift, since she gets to work with other abuse and trauma survivors. She currently sits on the Board of Directors for the San Diego Society of Addiction Professionals. Lori now thrives, feels free, courageous and passionate. She is willing now “to go to any lengths” on her own behalf.