Friday Fun Client Stories

From time to time, we are able to scrape together enough survivors to host a support group. Being that we are in a rural community - that is pretty spread out - and there is high poverty, lots of single parent households, and a seeming preference for medications over counseling, it's difficult to pull off a successful support group. I find if we have a couple of women who have done the AA or NA thing, it's much more successful.

That being said, we have had a few really good groups. We do a combination of written and art projects to give women a variety of ways to express themselves and explore their histories and feelings. One memorable group loved that we had several years ago laughed at me because I routinely would make them all go outside to appreciate the beauty of the sunset.

Another thing we would do at each meeting was go around the room and everyone needed to say one good thing that happened to them or they had done in the previous week. The fun thing to observe was that at the beginning of the group sessions, the women pretty much all would mention good events that they had nothing to do with . . . the ex actually paid his child support on time, the landlord fixed the sink that had been malfunctioning for weeks, and the like. By the end of our sessions, the women were commenting more and more about good things they had done themselves.

So, the fun story today is about a woman from that group. I seem to remember her as an older woman - but it could have also have been because she'd had a pretty hard life - including a run in a federal prison. She had been molested by a local doctor who molested quite a few of his patients. He eventually pleaded guilty to the charges and surrendered his medical license. The molestation and subsequent trial brought up issues from her childhood, past abusive relationships, and her current abusive relationship.

After the trial - which ended when the doctor's wife heard the testimony of several patients (she also worked in the same clinic and knew these patients) and demanded that he take a plea, this woman agreed to attend our group. She actually did really well in the group.

A couple years after the group ended, I ran into this woman in the parking lot of the local grocery store - and she ran up to me and the first things out her mouth were "oh, let me tell you all the good things that have happened . . . "

I knew that even if she didn't get anything else out of our group - she did learn to act on her own behalf to make good things happen, to not let the bad things define her, and to appreciate what was around her.