I Closed My Eyes: Revelations of a Battered Woman - Softcover

An award-winning journalist for more than two decades, Michele Weldon writes regularly for the Chicago Tribune and her work has appeared in hundreds of major newspapers and national magazines. Her first book, I Closed My Eyes, has been translated into French, Spanish, and Dutch. In 2000, Weldon earned the International Women's Peacepower Media Award for nonfiction as well as the Individual Courage Award from Rainbow House in Chicago.Her work has appeared in two anthologies, Joyce Carol Oates: Conversations with Joyce Carol Oates in 1989 and Belly Laughs and Babies in 1997. Weldon has appeared as a guest on TV shows on NBC, ABC, and BBC as well as on several local network and national cable stations. She has been a featured guest on more than ninety radio stations across the country and in Canada.She is a lecturer at her alma mater, the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she has taught at the graduate and under-graduate levels since 1996. Weldon gives Writing to Save Your Life workshops in Chicago and around the country and is a frequent keynote speaker to local and national groups.Living in the Chicago area with her three sons, Weldon serves on the board of directors of Sarah's Inn, a domestic violence services agency in Oak Park, Illinois, and is a member of Children's Memorial Guild, a fund-raising arm of the medical center. She is a member of the Journalism and Women Symposium as well as the Association for Women Journalists.

In a memoir that powerfully discredits the stereotype that spousal battering is limited to a particular economic or social class and is drug- or alcohol-related, Weldon, a successful journalist, also belies the notion that someone who has had a happy childhood cannot be brutalized. Weldon's unnamed husband grew up, as did she, in an Irish-Catholic middle-class environment. He became an attractive, charming and well-paid Chicago attorney, a catch who elicited the envy of Weldon's female friends. In part because the marriage looked so good from the outside, and because she loved her husband and did not want to deprive her three sons of their father, Weldon could not accept that he would not stop beating her, despite years of joint counseling and his eloquent apologies. She finally broke her silence nine years into their marriage by screaming aloud one night when her husband attacked her at her in-laws' house. Her account of how she obtained an emergency order of protection, sought therapy for her sons and underwent the expensive and lengthy process of obtaining a divorce conveys how difficult it is for a woman to leave an abusive relationship, even when she has a supportive family and significant economic resources. Unable to truly forgive her ex-husband for his abuse and the legal battles that he subsequently instigated, Weldon has finally forgiven herself for staying in a terrible marriage. This gripping personal story will be helpful to anyone who wishes to understand domestic abuse; Weldon's most important message to battered women is to bring the violence out of the closet. (Oct.)
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