Tea At The Kitchen Table
Dear Priscilla Bennett Friends,
It’s Friday, and I hope you will have some time to relax this weekend. Fall seemed to have arrived today, and I so enjoyed the crisp dry air instead of the heat and humidity.
Yesterday Tommy gave me a computer lesson, and after a posting, blogging, tweeting lesson, we sat in the kitchen, and I made a pot of tea and brought out the homemade chocolate chip cookies. “How’s school, Tommy?” “Fine,” he answered, his head down. “I guess you wish summer wasn’t over.” “No, not really. I like school—I’d rather be in school than at home. My parents fight all the time, and I hate it.” Over the last couple of years, Tommy and I had become friends, and this was the first time he had opened up to me about his home life. “My dad hurts my mom, and I want to kill him. I feel so helpless—like it’s my fault.”
So many children of domestic violence feel that they have caused the abuse. In my novel, Katie feels responsible for her mother’s suffering at the hands of her father, and it impacts her thought process and decision making in her own life. If she didn’t have inappropriate guilt and unconsciously feel she deserved to be punished, maybe she never would have married Claude or maybe the time it took for her to realize her situation would have been shorter.
Take good care of yourselves,
PRISCILLA BENNETT XOXO