Little Madhouse on the Prairie: A True-Life Story of Overcoming Abuse and Healing the Spirit Paperback - 2011

From the publisher

"Little Madhouse on the Prairie" is Marion Witte's compelling chronicle of growing up as an abused child on a North Dakota farm in the 1950s. Her story begins, however, two generations earlier, when her immigrant grandparents struggled to eke out a living on the unforgiving Mid-western plains. With clear-eyed compassion, Witte chronicles lives of unimaginable difficulty. Too often, frustration and hopelessness erupted in alcoholism and violence.Little Marion had an older brother and younger sister but she was the preferred target of her mother's wrath. The beatings, punishments and neglect were all but ignored by her family, leading her to believe she must certainly have earned her mother's fury in some unfathomable way. Only after making friends with a schoolmate who invited her into her own warm and supportive home did young Marion begin to sense that a different and better way of life existed outside the Witte family farm. Marion soon realizes that academic success is her ticket to freedom; she works hard to put herself through college in three years and score one career achievement after another.But not even career triumphs, a wonderful husband and a beloved child are not enough to quell the internal demons that prevent her from living a truly authentic life. To heal herself and make peace with her harrowing past, she embarks on a solo journey that embraces many different modalities of therapy - from traditional to spiritual.Although it takes many years, Witte finally reconciles with the wounded child inside and begins to surround herself with the love she that was so painfully denied. From this place of hard-earned harmony, Marion Witte has dedicated herself to work tirelessly for the right of children to be free of emotional and physical abuse. In 2005, she founded the Angel Heart Foundation, whose vision is "All Children Deserve A Safe and Just World." By shedding light on the cultural roots of her own abuse, Witte sets the stage for a way out of the cycle of violence of all children. "Little Madhouse on the Prairie" is an impassioned plea for action to extend human rights to the planet's youngest citizens. Her memoir also offers ways one can heal from the wounds of abuse.