Devils Dancing Inside: Incest Conquered: An Interpretive Memoir

by Susan Montgomery

This is Susan Montgomery's true story - a story of trauma - abuse, an abduction, an affair and suicide - but in the end, she finds that love and understanding are the essential ingredients that start her on the path to healing. The narrative begins with her teenage son's suicide in 1985 because his death was the critical point at which she stopped trying to live on her own terms and began living consciously with the help of the counselor she sought because of her overwhelming grief. The book consists of an extended conversation between Susan and a fictitious counselor who reflects Susan's experiences in over 10 years of treatment as well as advising her of the relevant research. With the counselor Susan addresses the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her father when she was eleven years old. With no resources available she buried the abuse, pretending that it had never happened, which seemed moderately successful in that she attended and finished college, married her childhood sweetheart, and had three children. However, upon closer examination, her behavior had begun to deteriorate in early adulthood when she undertook the seemingly inexplicable action of severely restricting her eating until she was skin and bones. At the time she could give no reason for this and other displays of aberrant behavior, but her 16-year-old son's death was clearly a symptom of the lack of health in her and, thus, in the family. The book is subtitled "an interpretative memoir" as the counselor provides Susan with numerous insights about her life gone awry, citing relevant psychological literature that links her actions with the sexual abuse - and with her awareness comes self-knowledge, causing her to then question her adult behavior. The psychologist Timothy Wilson explains this, noting that one "way of knowing ourselves better is to become more aware of findings from psychological science" (Wilson, 2009). Susan often thinks of her behavior in light of a quote about survivors of sexual abuse who rely heavily on "relatively immature coping strategies, which . . . increase the likelihood of acting impulsively when frustrated, depressed, or anxious (typically by engaging in misconduct, such as sexual acting out, running away, and other self-destructive behaviors"(Cole and Putnam, 1992). The counselor's explanations, derived from over 50 books and journal articles, suddenly give her the key to understand why she has been acting so egregiously for many years; this allows her to begin the process of restoration. Her healing is described in the closing chapters.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1540503259
• ISBN13: 9781540503251
• Release Date: March 2017
• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Length: 292 Pages
• Weight: 0.89 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 0.7" x 5.3"