"The Journey to My Book"
By Beth Fehlbaum, Author of Courage in Patience, a story of hope for those who have endured abuse
I first wrote about what's it like to be sexually abused at the age of nine years old, when I confided in my diary about a family member fondling my just-developing breasts. I had to tell someone, but I was too filled with shame and embarrassment to speak it aloud. Instead, I wrote the words in my diary and hid the book deep within a box in the back of my closet. I remember coming upon the diary when I was a teenager, and, horrified at seeing what seemed to me to be a confession of my guilt written in my childish handwriting, I burned the diary in our brick fireplace when no one else was home. Terrified that a family member would return home and question why I used the fireplace in the middle of a sizzling Texas summer, I opened all the windows and rolled our sliding-glass door back-and-forth, back-and-forth on its track, telling myself that I was somehow hastening the clearing away of the evidence. I scooped the ashes out while they were still hot and dumped them in the flower bed, then swept the dust out of the hearth. Just recalling the memory makes my heart race; I remember a deep sense of relief that the shame-filled words were destroyed. I had moved the diary, deep within that cardboard box, from the house I lived in when the abuse began, to the house I spent my teenage years in, always keeping it hidden in the back of my closet, out of view, as if that made what was happening to me less real.I didn't write about the abuse again for nearly thirty years, when I entered therapy for recovery from that same family member sexually abusing me for the majority of my childhood, into my teen years. Then, like the Thompson River Flood in Estes Park, Colorado, an historic, notorious flood of such wide-ranging devastation that songs have been written about it-- the grief, pain, shame, and rage came pouring forth from the young child I had been when that flood occurred, in 1976. There was just no stopping it, any more than turning my diary to ashes could cause what had happened to me to NOT affect me for a lifetime. During a therapy session one day, my psychologist suggested that I try writing a novel. It took me about four months of stopping-and-starting. Inevitably, it seemed, what started as a promising beginning kept dissolving into "Why did this happen to me?"-- and there is no satisfying answer to that question. I realized that if I was going to be able to write my way through the experience of being sexually abused, I needed to do it from the perspective of being an observer of someone else's experience.When I gave myself permission to do that, Ashley Nicole Asher, age fifteen, came into being. Abused by her stepfather since the age of nine, Ashley is driven by rage to tell her mother what he has been doing to her. To her horror, Ashley's mother turns her back on her, and does not act on Ashley's report. Ashley then confides in the only adult she can trust, a beloved teacher, who reports the abuse to Child Protective Services. CPS contacts her biological father, David, whom Ashley has had no contact with throughout her childhood. It is when David takes Ashley home with him to the tiny East Texas town of Patience that Ashley's life begins anew. Courage in Patience is a story of hope. Initially, I wrote it for myself, to prove to myself that I was going to make it through the darkest days of recovery and come out stronger on the other side. I gave Ashley a circle of friends in her stepmother's summer school English class, and through knowing them, Ashley discovers that, as a good friend of mine says, "Nobody gets out of this life without a scratch." With the publication of Courage in Patience, I hope that those who read it will find a story of what it means to face one's greatest fears and find out what one is made of. 
Original composition by Margi Harrell ©2001
Used with permission
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Courage in Patience
by
Beth Fehlbaum
A Review
Courage in Patience. Not wanting to think about sexual abuse -- let alone another child suffering through rape -- I stalled by focusing on the title. How clever it had been for the author to
set most of the action in a town called Patience. At least read the rest of this summary, I thought. It quickly became clear that although the book is a novel, Beth Fehlbaum did not write it from the perspective of a person standing outside looking in. She, too, was sexually assaulted as a child. Not only has she faced what happened, she has worked through her pain so she can help others see that they are not alone. Instead of letting stress burn her up inside, she braved smoke and flames in order to throw open a window. That is her holding out a flag that says in large, bold letters, You are not a victim, you are you. No one is more valuable. Fear and anger must not be allowed to consume you. There is a rainbow at the end of the long, storm-prone road to recovery, and that road leads to a smoother one.
Knowing all this did not keep me from stalling again. Child abuse -- particularly sexual abuse -- is not academic to me. The very idea makes scars that Time has not healed throb. I became a writer in the hope that shedding light will eventually dry the sludge poisoning my psyche enough that some will blow away. What doesn't can be channeled to some far-off sea, where it will immediately sink to the bottom, never to surface again. Pouring hurt onto paper has helped Ink fades, after all. You can burn paper if you have to. But no matter what you do, a certain amount of residue is going to cling. What you need to do is season it with love and understanding, then make a healing poultice of the mixture and spread it around. I am so glad I quite stalling. Because Courage in Patience does just that.
Beth Fehlbaum has written a story that I guarantee will stay with you. Her characters are fully developed, not Joan of Arcs and Darth Vaders. She was so smart not to make a goodie-goodie of the girl who is the target of the abuse. Not only do you empathize, you end up aching for her to find a way out of
the dark! The man who abuses her acts despicably, but he is human. Only a stone would not hurt when reading about the rapes, but what stabbed me the deepest was the mother's betrayal. It brought memories to the surface that I do my best to keep in the graves I worked hard and long to dig and fill. The only time I unearth them is when I am writing. When I write about them, it is in the hope of killing them. (Know I can't, but it would be dishonest to pretend I don't try.) Like Beth Fehlbaum, I harbor the hope that my ordeal will ring enough bells to ease others' pain and and make at least a few abusers seek help.
One reservation that I had in the beginning was that the novel was really two, and should
be split. I was wrong. The book is not "about sexual abuse." It is not "about racial discrimination." It is about accepting who we are. It is about accepting each other. It is about faith. It is about gut-level courage and dogged patience and the value -- no, the absolute necessity -- of a free, well-rounded, genuinely enlightened education. It is about the worst in us and the best in us. I love to read books that somehow manage to entertain while teaching important lessons. That teach without teaching down! Courage in Patience is all this and more. Were there medals for fortitude and compassion, she would surely qualify.
I am convinced that one of the mega-publishers will pick up the novel. I am hoping that the editions they print will be in standard, single-spaced format. Double-spacing makes the book look longer than it is. This is a very minor drawback. I only mention it because I would like to see Courage in Patience reach millions. If you haven't read it, you are missing out.
Author/Editor Phyllis Jean D. Green
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