description: "My mother boat my body and beat my body and beat my body. Finally, when she had worn herself out, she stopped..." Young Krystal fared much better from the male membors of the family. Anxious to put her home behind her, she started work at 14. quit at 16, Joined the Air Force at 18 and married a year after. It was just like being at home. "The way he expressed it, the message was clear: since I was not a virgin when we met, I was obviously a slut and not worthy of respect. The one thing that he would never know was that he could never loathe me nearly as much as I loathed myself. Perhaps that was part of the attraction: I hated myself so much that I projected my self-loathing by choosing a man who would go on to abuse me in the way that I subliminally wanted. Maltreatment was the only kind of attention that i had ever known, so I subconsciously chose a man who would treat me badly." The cycle of abuse culminated in a broken nose and dislocated law, but the pain from which the author never recovered was the loss of her baby son, hence the title. Stolen from My Bosom, is a violent and graphic autobiography, made clearer by subsequent study, reflection and the author's experience as a social worker. It describes patterns and cycles of abuse and protective reactions such as dissociation, selective amnesia, multiple personality disorder and Munchausen's syndrome. It will be of compelling interest to social workers, legal practitioners, medics, police officers or anyone concerned with domestic violence or child abuse.
language: English
title: Stolen from My Bosom
titlecomplete: Stolen from My Bosom
publisher: Janus