Carol Dine's 'Places In The Bones: A Memoir'

Imagine a woman who keeps a secret that she was often abused by her father as a child and it continued to make an impact throughout her life. In her book “Places in the Bones: A Memoir”, Carol Dine writes a detailed journal revealing parts of her life under influence of her bizarre relationship with her father and her journey suffering through cancer. Dine never understood why her father physically abused her, but she did understand that cancer was passed down from both sides of her families’ genetics. She used writing poetry as a gateway, to ventilate her emotions throughout the events. The Dine family was very privileged. Dine’s father was a doctor, having served in the military, and her mother was a stay-at-home mother. Dine had only one younger sister. Often, her father let out his anger, being violent and hitting Dine. Until she reached her middle age, she had never spoken out to anyone about the abuse. There were many times when she doubted whether she should tell anyone. The first instance was when her mother sent her to a social worker for her “behavior” and the second was when she thought about telling her grandpa. In spite of how much it bothered her, she realizes it was difficult to make them believe her words because they could see not him in …show more content…
She was not able to have a stable relationship with anyone with whom she could genuinely speak to. In chapter 6 of “Working with People”, we learned about the characteristics of different helping relationships. One of the characteristics strongly not present in Dine’s was an honest, realistic, responsible, and safe relationship. In her life crisis of being abused by her father, she did not have someone in her life where she felt close enough to connect with. She may have not genuinely been open towards others because they did not give her the security to do so.Therefore a give and take relationship was not