I grew up during the strange and turbulent 1960s and 70s in Erie, Pennsylvania. Though we were not dirt poor, my childhood family experience did not include the privileges and extravagances that I saw in the wider world. My three sisters and I were wealthy in perhaps a more important way: we had two spiritual, gentle, and firm parents in our home that was filled with love and care for each other. My education, life experience, and vocational sense have always straddled the precarious space between secular and spiritual worlds. Having one foot planted in both worlds has allowed me to be in a unique place to meld the technical aspects of therapy with spiritual sensibilities like gentleness and compassion. My life journey has both gifted and burdened me with extensive experience in secular human services and spiritual ministry to adults, families, teens, and children. This book was written with a passion to relieve the immense pain of children who have not had the idyllic and gentle upbringing that I had. My spirituality compels that when I see pain, I seek to heal it. If others who have similar callings read my work, perhaps more children will be healed. If others who have not yet recognized a similar calling read it, perhaps it will awaken in them at least a new awareness of the need for greater attention to these inured children. When I begin to feel the pain of the work a bit too sharply, I try hard to be gentle with myself, and turn to my garden, or my watercolors, or to the deep woods to refresh myself. Anne, the love of my life for over thirty years, and my two fine sons, Andy and Tyler, continue to support me in my many ventures. Each completion of a vocational task conceives and births the next... my curiosity about how to help a sexually abused child to heal their sexuality while they are still a child has grown from a passing thought in the midst of writing Gentling to my current
