The Panacea of Reading Novels

What’s the word for impotent worry activated by reading the morning paper? When your mind swirls with horror at people’s pain and you think of how you can effect, perhaps, if you work very hard, a fingernail’s length of change. Perhaps the word should be horror-fever. Symptoms: choking on overseas flood worry, aching with news … Read more

A Book to Remember: ICE BOUND

In the continuous stream of NPR that is my life, I learned that Jerri Nielson died of breast cancer. Dr. Nielson wrote a book I’ve read more than once, and that has now become the final solidification of my vow not to lend out well-loved books. (Note: since writing this post, I have bought another … Read more

Working With Violent Men

For ten years I co-led groups for violent men. I sat in a circle with a male co-leader and anywhere from 8 to 18 men who’d been violent with their wives, girlfriends, dates, sisters, or another woman in their lives.

Their violence ran the gamut from emotional abuse of the most devastating sort, to smacking, to slapping, to punching, pushing, prodding, to breaking bones to murder (thankfully not many.)

This was a Certified Boston Batterer Intervention Program. Most men were ordered into the program by the Massachusetts courts, some by the Department of Social Services, and a few were volunteers—or as we called them, wife and girlfriend-ordered.

We followed one of the state-approved educational curriculum (this was not counseling)—in this case, the Duluth Model. The men were in the program for over 40 weeks. They ‘checked in’ with their behavior, they did homework, they

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