Overview

Light in Bandaged Places shows us the harm done when an older man in a position of power convinces a child that sex with him is alright because he loves her. This poignant story takes us through the long-term wounding of such abuse-and the multifaceted path of healing. As a lonely girl coming of age in the 1970s, Liz has every reason to believe her 8th-grade teacher is in love with her. Because the sex isn't physically violent and is wrapped in a message of love, she learns to exchange sex for attention. It feels like love, after all. But years later, as an adult, emotional closeness eludes Liz. Even after marrying a sensitive, caring man, she is walled off. Struggling through confusing years, she believes something is deeply wrong with her. Healing begins when an unexpected event takes Liz back to those formative years, and she sees for the first time that what happened to her was not love but trauma. As she begins to understand how her relationship with her former teacher destroyed her innocence and self-worth, she begins a spiritual and psychological journey that sets her free. Now a meditation teacher and Buddhist practitioner, Liz offers her story in hope of helping others along their own paths of discovery and healing.

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9781647425357

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Reviews

Liz Kinchen has written a compelling and courageous memoir that details the traumatic emotional impact of a relationship beginning at the age of fourteen with her middle school English teacher, a relationship masquerading as love. Kinchen recounts with depth and compassion the effect of what, only years later, she learns to recognize as sexual abuse, and its impact on subsequent relationships in her adult life. Kinchen is a fine writer, eloquently weaving together the emotional and spiritual strands that eventually bring her into wholeness and healing. Light in Bandaged Places is a book that deserves to be read, speaking as it does to the resilience of the human spirit and the healing power of authentic love. -Sarah Rossiter, spiritual director and author of The Human Season, Beyond This Bitter Air, and Natural Life with No Parole This is a beautifully written, must-read memoir for anyone interested in family dynamics, deception, and resilience. It gives an honest, transparent, firsthand view of the emotional reactions that victims of sexual abuse can experience. In her quest for a meaningful life, Liz shows us how the wound can be a doorway to our spiritual essence, where we find inner peace and joy. -Sheida White, author of Connecting with the One Consciousness With kindness, nuance, and generosity of spirit, Liz Kinchen shines light into corners darkened by shame and secrecy. . . . From a childhood of neglect to an inappropriate relationship with a teacher in high school, Kinchen wove a cocoon of disconnection and fear. In Light in Bandaged Places, we watch her emerge, sometimes indelicately, into a life of embodied wholeness in which she is finally not afraid anymore. A gripping, intimate account of a woman's journey to wholeness. -Leslie Rinchen-Wongmo, author of Threads of Awakening

Liz Kinchen has written a compelling and courageous memoir that details the traumatic emotional impact of a relationship beginning at the age of fourteen with her middle school English teacher, a relationship masquerading as love. Kinchen recounts with depth and compassion the effect of what, only years later, she learns to recognize as sexual abuse, and its impact on subsequent relationships in her adult life. Kinchen is a fine writer, eloquently weaving together the emotional and spiritual strands that eventually bring her into wholeness and healing. Light in Bandaged Places is a book that deserves to be read, speaking as it does to the resilience of the human spirit and the healing power of authentic love. -Sarah Rossiter, spiritual director and author of The Human Season, Beyond This Bitter Air, and Natural Life with No Parole

Author Information

Liz Kinchen is a writer, meditation teacher, and Buddhist practitioner. With graduate degrees in computer science and counseling psychology, she worked in software development management for twenty-one years before moving into the non-profit sector for seventeen years as the executive director of a small organization working with underserved children and families in Honduras. Her passions are her family, meditation, teaching mindfulness, writing, talking with close friends, and walking in nature. She is a contributing author to the anthology Art in the Time of Unbearable Crisis, published by She Writes Press in 2022. Liz lives in the greater Boston area with her husband of over thirty years. You can find her blog, and information about her teaching, at www.lizkinchen.com.

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