From the June 10 issue of OSV Newsweekly, my interview with Dawn Eden, author of the newly released Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints:By Mary DeTurris Poust
Dawn Eden, best-selling author of “The Thrill of the Chaste,” recently spoke to Our Sunday Visitor about her newest book, “My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints” (Ave Maria Press, $16.95) and about her willingness to use her own experiences to help others heal wounds and achieve spiritual transformation.
Our Sunday Visitor: Writing a book about this deeply personal and painful topic requires a real willingness to be vulnerable before your readers. How did you reach that point?
Dawn Eden: Beginning to write “My Peace I Give You” was a challenge. In conversations that I had with friends and pastoral caregivers, it was painful to discuss what it was like to be a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. So how could I begin to share my experience with the whole world?
The approach I ended up taking is, in essence, the approach I recommend for healing. As I write in “My Peace I Give You,” the aim is to act from your wellness, not from your pathology. What is hardest to discuss is the problem of evil. Why does God permit it? As I wrote, I knew from my theological training and from the Catechism that the Lord never positively wills evil. He permits it only to bring forth a greater good (Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 412). But it’s one thing to know that truth of our faith on an intellectual level, and it’s another thing to internalize it. Continue reading HERE.
