Last week I had the pleasure of attending Day 1 of the CAMFT "Advancing the Art and Science of Psychotherapy" conference in Orange County, where I got to hear Gabor Mate and Vincent Felitti weigh in on the impact of ACEs. What a singular experience to hear this dynamic duo on stage together! (My husband remarked that I was "lit up like a Christmas tree" when I got home that night.)

While discussing the meaning of "resilience," Dr. Felitti recommended the book Judging Me, by Mary Elizabeth Bullock. This memoir details the extreme physical and sexual abuse the author endured as a child and how she was able to rise above it to become an attorney and civil rights judge. While Bullock's story is surely one of a highly accomplished and courageous woman who demonstrated resiliency on many levels, Dr. Felitti pointed out that she also developed several cancers and two autoimmune diseases--illustrating, perhaps, one more tragic example of how "the body keeps the score."

Although I haven't read it yet, this memoir sounds like a real page-turner. From Amazon: This inspiring memoir describes a hard-won life of achievement. In the face of overwhelming adversity, Mary Elizabeth Bullock makes her name as an experienced trial litigator, a respected business law professor, and a federal civil rights judge. She finds brilliant success in spite of being blind, and being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and systemic lupus, and despite having enduring a childhood poisoned by unspeakable abuse. Her book offers hope and motivation to others who have been cruelly betrayed by those who should have been their protectors. It holds knowledge that can help heal adults damaged by sexually abusive childhoods, and it offers understanding and support to those who love them. When she was a helpless child, Bullock's father sexually abused her for ten plus years,, She was beaten, tortured, sold into sex slavery and molested in physically and psychologically unbearable ways. Perhaps worst of all, he taught her to believe that the evil he did to her was her own fault. Bullock chose to finally tell her story in the hope that others might see that they are not alone, that their stories of abuse do not have the last word. Child sexual abuse is frighteningly common. Nevertheless, the realities of child abuse are often denied by people who cannot bear to believe that it exists. Some of those abused as children grow up to disbelieve their own stories, or to minimize the damage their brutal past has done them. As a child, Bullock suffered horrific abuse, alone and without support. As a young woman, she was drive to succeed, in spite of what was done to her. She invented a different public personality for herself, once she was able to escape. Outwardly, she donned the armor of achievement and success by garnering high academic honors and rising to a position of power and influence. Taking full advantage of the scholarships she won, in spite of her chaotic home life, she earned the necessary education to advance her out of the degrading life she grew up in. As an adult, she began a legal career that allowed her to help the disenfranchised, disillusioned and dispossessed. But even after achieving a life that would make anyone proud, under her polished and professional exterior, Bullock was always uncertain, and aware of the past that relentlessly pursued her. Time after time she found herself in negative relationships, never understanding why she was continuously drawn to shattered men, childishly selfish men, and men who hated women as they tried to love them. Through years of seeking, she gained understanding of herself and of others like her. At last, finding her own peace, she made truce with her unforgotten past and gained the necessary self-esteem needed to build genuine relationships. Mary Elizabeth Bullock thanks God for saving her from a life of despair. She hopes, with this heartfelt memoir, to share her experience and hard-won knowledge that healing is possible, and that a life worth living is attainable. In this memoir, she proves that the human spirit can triumph over the longest odds.

For more information [https://www.amazon.com/Judging-Me-Mary-Elizabeth-Bullock/]