Through integrative therapy, she started to heal herself after abuse

[Celebration]

http://www.twincities.com/ci_9842623?source=most_emailed

In January 2004, Laureen Peltier's boss sexually harassed her. Peltier, then 37, started having nightmares. She asked his superiors to remove him from his job, but they thought she was overreacting. Recounting the events triggered something she had bottled up for 30 years: sexual abuse by a relative. Peltier, of St. Paul, started seeing a therapist.

"When you bury something and it's forced open, you get overwhelmed. It was a catalyst. I had talked about it (the childhood abuse) before, but I remembered only two snapshots of it — my hand being put on a penis and me rolling away. My mind compartmentalized it and made it not a big story. I was between 8 and 10 years old.

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"I took off that year from work. I dedicated myself. It required commitment. I met with the psychiatrist for a year. Along with therapy, I was starting to understand how energy was working in my body. I did acupuncture, Reiki and massage.


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"At first, you want to understand why (you were abused). I confronted (my relative) in a soft way about what happened. But there is no good answer. He wasn't going to give me the answer that would satisfy me. Nothing he will say will help me. So, I stopped trying to get the 'why.' I have forgiven him.

"We can't undo what has been done. People do the best they can with what they have. He was abused as a child. He abused. Somewhere along the line, we have to heal. I can wish him well, hug him and mean it. That is the power of healing."

It was a little hard to pick the right paragraphs to quote from this. It sounds like she sent her story in to the newspaper as a health success story, or something like that.