Repair Your Life : A Program for Recovery from Incest and Childhood Sexual Abuse

Marjorie McKinnon has been writing since the age of thirteen, when she wrote poetry to hide her pain. Despite her father's confession in her mid-thirties about an incestuous relationship he'd had with her that began when she was thirteen, she had buried all memories of the childhood trauma. She had run away from home when she was eighteen and spent the next 27 years going from one abuser to another. During that time she was hospitalized twice for suicide attempts, spent time in a women's shelter and raised four children as a single mother. During recovery she wrote about her experience and what it was like to emerge on the other side of "the Bridge of Recovery." It is a chronicle of growing up in small Midwestern towns in a Catholic family and of hiding her anguish behind words, poetry that she termed her inner voices. It is also a detailed account of the journey one takes in going from a place of despair to one of joy. That book, titled "I Never Heard A Robin Sing" became her first attempt to publish. When Marjorie was half way through recovery she found out that her two older daughters had been sexually abused by her second husband. Her youngest daughter had been raped at gunpoint while working at a fast food place when she was 17. This so totally accents the reality that child sexual abuse is a multi-generational problem. Children of an untreated incest victim stand a five times greater chance of being sexually abused themselves. Unable to sell her memoir, she spent several years writing other books: a fiction trilogy, two other novels, four volumes of poetry, and two non-fiction works; all are currently available as Kindles on amazon.com and will be available in paperback in 2017. Marjorie re-read her own first person account to re-walk the path she had taken. She never realized at the time how blessed she was,for that path, though rugged, was straight, and in retrospect provided her with invaluable help to spend three years creating the REPAIR program. Loving Healing Press has published six of her recovery books: REPAIR Your Life: A Program for Recovery from Incest & Childhood Sexual Abuse, REPAIR For Kids, REPAIR For Toddlers, REPAIR For Teens, REPAIR Your Life Workbook and a post recovery book, It's Your Choice! Decisions That Will Change Your Life. She met her current husband, Tom McKinnon, on the Internet while doing genealogy research on McKinnons (her name was also McKinnon). They were married in 2000 at Melrose, Scotland. Tom illustrated the two children's versions of her REPAIR books. They now live in the Sedona, AZ area. Marjorie is also the founder of The Lamplighter Movement, a rapidly growing international movement for recovery from child sexual abuse that emphasizes the importance of REPAIRing the damage. Most of her chapters are using her REPAIR program as a model for recovery. Currently there are 76 Lamplighter Movement chapters in ten countries including 18 in Africa. Marjorie is trying to get Lamplighter chapters in all of the women's prisons. So far they have one in Chino, CA. She is also trying to get chapters started in women's shelters and domestic violence centers. The Lamplighter's website is at www.thelamplighters.org

A renowned physician and researcher, Dr. Vincent J. Felitti is one of the world's foremost experts on childhood trauma. Leading the charge in research into how adverse childhood experiences affect adults, he is co-principal investigator of the internationally recognized Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study, a long-term, in-depth, analysis of over 17,000 adults. Defying conventional belief, this study famously revealed a powerful relationship between our emotional experiences as children and our physical and mental health as adults. In fact, the ACE study shows that humans convert childhood traumatic emotional experiences into organic disease later in life. Revolutionary at its inception, Felitti's groundbreaking research remains extremely relevant to today's healthcare models. Founder of the Department of Preventive Medicine for Kaiser Permanente, Felitti served as the chief of preventive medicine for over 25 years. Under Dr. Felitti's leadership, his department provided comprehensive medical evaluations to 1.1 million individuals, becoming the largest single-site medical evaluation facility in the western world. During this time, Felitti's revolutionary health risk abatement programs incorporated weight loss, smoking cessation, stress management, and a wide range of cutting-edge efforts to reduce patient risk factors. Dr. Felitti also has served on advisory committees at the Institute of Medicine and the American Psychiatric Association. A noted expert on the genetic disease hemochromatosis, as well as obesity, he educates audiences around the country on these two very common, deadly maladies.. An engaging speaker, Felitti has traveled the world speaking with audiences and various policy leaders about his research. A well versed medical expert, Felitti also uses his knowledge to speak out against domestic violence and other forms of childhood trauma. Drawing on his years of experience, he has become an important voice advocating for the wellbeing of children everywhere. While time may not heal all wounds, Felitti helps show audiences how we can understand these physical and mental traumas, and ultimately, prevent them.