The Tiger in the Yard

Barbara Weber is traumatized by childhood physical and sexual abuse resulting in PTSD. She successfully completes therapy in the early 1980’s and assumes she’s healed from the traumas of her childhood.

It isn't until she is 66 that she is told she has PTSD

I greatly admire Barbara for how she has learned to overcome what happened to her.

Barbara Weber has has a successful life as a therapist,a mother and PHD graduate. She was also sexually abused as a child.

Thinking she had resolved these issues earlier on in her own therapy, she is to find that further closure of her problems is required of her, as she discovers that her severe nightmares are symptomatic of PDST, as well as complex post traumatic syndrome. Her demons are back with a vengeance.

This account tends to go backwardsand forwards in a somewhat disjointed way, as presumably flashbacks might also jumble past and present somewhat. She is encouraged by her new therapist to explore her inner world through Art Therapy and accordingly, her paintings and interpretations of these can be found in this book.

It is clear that abuse of this nature casts a massively long shadow: Weber reminds us that her physical health problems consisting of severe allergies, are surely consequences of what had happened to her as a child. So is the unfortunate tendency to marry unhappily, as the vicious circle of abuse means she attracted a new abuser for her first husband. She also warns the reader that unresolved issues of the parent will certainly be passed onto the children as a kind of curse within the House of Atreus.

If the victim of this kind of abuse does not move beyond the inevitable consequences of abuse.

This is the story of how one woman did confront and face her demons. The fact that a whole life is permanently shadowed by abuse of this kind is surely reason enough to hope for a world where such horrors might be less likely to happen in the first place.

The author wrote a memoir that perfectly captured the triumphs and setbacks of her life. It was easy to empathize with the author due to the raw writing.