Growing Up with Family Secrets (Blood, Sex and Tears)

Listen to the interview with the author here

Author: Evelyn M. Leite MHR, LPC (USA)

About the author:  Evelyn Leite, MHR, LPC, is an author, counselor, and trainer with 28 years of experience in the addictions and mental health fields. Highly regarded for her seminars in multicultural counseling and education, she gives special attention to issues with people from varying cultural and ethnic backgrounds. She has designed and implemented many family programs and is proficient in spiritual and grief counseling. A family systems therapist since 1980, Evelyn incorporates feelings and compassion in the therapeutic relationship with a wide range of experience in chemical dependency, addictions, codependency, and domestic abuse, sexual and spiritual abuse. She is noted for having attained success in trauma resolution, anxiety and depression, utilizing EMDR.

As an author, she has published works by Hazelden Education Center, Johnson Institute, and Community Intervention. She has a total of 8 books and a multitude of articles that have been published on the topics of addiction, codependency, grief, abuse, trauma, recovery and more. A full list of her publications is available on her website at www.LivingWithSolutions.biz.

In 2008 she was installed in the South Dakota Hall of Fame for her humanitarian work. Evelyn is part of Author's Guild, America's oldest and largest professional organization.

About the book:   Born in South Dakota at a time when America was reeling from a dust bowl, depression and a second world war, Evelyn Jones Leite lived with Mamma, Edith Jones, a socialite who marries her Daddy, a broke but charming southerner, Lon Jones.  Unbeknown to her the Daddy she adores drinks a little too much, And his Jekyll and Hyde behavior breaks her heart often.

At the age of 5, she moves from a log cabin on a hilltop deep in the woods where she hears mountain lions, to a small town where she lives by a Morgue and encounters her first sexual pervert there.

The second world war has a huge impact on her family as they experience blackouts, poverty and rations.

An often bedridden Mama, is a special challenge that forces Evelyn to help tend her younger brothers. She completely adores her older brother Ted even though he is often mean, she begs for attention in both subtle and overt ways.

When she is 6 years old her Daddy gives away her precious dog and moves his family to a farm on orders from her mother’s wealthy father.

On the farm, she experiences, neglect, a pedophiliac hired man, mind rape and, yet-there are big family happy times when relatives swarm the farm and bring mountains of food.

Evelyn Leite’s true story of growing up in a turbulent family during the 40s and 50s compellingly captures the reader who is captivated by feeling the gamut of confusion and despair, sorrow and tears, then unexplainable hope and optimism.