Melissa Moore - WHOLE: How I Learned to Fill the Fragments of My Life with Forgiveness, Hope, Strength, and Creativity

This book is intended as a reference volume only, not as a medical manual. The information given here is designed to help you make informed decisions about your health. It is not intended as a substitute for any treatment that may have been prescribed by your doctor. If you suspect that you have a medical problem, we urge you to seek competent medical help.

Mention of specific companies, organizations, or authorities in this book does not imply endorsement by the author or publisher, nor does mention of specific companies, organizations, or authorities imply that they endorse this book, its author, or the publisher.

Internet addresses and telephone numbers given in this book were accurate at the time it went to press.

2016 by Melissa Moore and Michele Matrisciani

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any other information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Anthony Scioli, PhD, for permission to reprint his exercises from his unpublished manuscript, New Hope: For Anxiety, Depression, and Mind-Body Healing.

The names of some individuals have been changed in the true stories written for this book in order to protect their privacy and identity. In some cases, composite stories have been created from various encounters of the authors.

Book design by Carol Angstadt

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the publisher

ISBN 9781623367442 hardcover
ISBN 9781623367459 e-book

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From Melissa:

To my familySam, Aspen, and Jake

From Michele:

To my men, big and littleMatthew, Daniel, and Julian

I am the daughter of a serial killer. For all intents and purposes, the first twenty years of my life were nothing but crappy. My suffering and self-inflicted guilt and shame went beyond my fathers name in national news, his creepy smiley faces left on letters to the detectives who were looking for the crazed murderer. They would find out later all of it was unmotivated by money, greed, jealousy, or passion. All murder is senseless, but without any motive, the trail of womens bodies found along wooded paths didnt add up to much of a pattern that could help detectives determine if the murders were linked. My father was eventually caught when the police had the wrong man in custody and my fathers ego just couldnt take it. He wrote letters to authorities begging them to notice him. Who knows what would have happened if his pride hadnt given him away; would he still be driving his truck on long hauls, dropping into my house to ruffle the hair of his grandkids and eat at our table, snapping the bread sticks in the very way he casually snapped womens necks?

At some point in my life, as my children grew and my elders aged, I realized that life is but a blink. What was once a forever moment of holding my newborn has turned into a flash of a teenagers life. What was once me being a little girl has turned into my not remembering how to do childs play.

And in those small spaces where time slips away, I have spent so much of it in self-deprecation: filling voids with food, numbing guilt with isolation, sacrificing good sleep to anxiety, seeking solace in random religious practices, and generally believing that this was pretty much itthe way it goes. But then there came a point in my life; call it midlife or simply the pivotal moment when you realize all it really comes down to is a choice. I can choose to hate, chip away at relationships, and continue living a false identity created by labels, other peoples opinions, fear, hopelessness, blame, and an irrational need to do penance and pay restitution for other peoples sins. Or I can choose something else.

Ive been told by therapists and experts alike that daughter of a notorious serial killer can no longer be my identity. One of the famed researchers I interviewed for this book called this identity dangerous. These people say I must forge a new path and become Melissa. But my past is what got me to my present. Its what empowers me to interview on television other people who have been victims of horrendous crimes against them or their loved ones, and to act as a type of spokesperson for surviving all kinds of painful experiences. So one doctor thinks this is dangerous, while others who dont know me or my work with survivors and families affected by violence assume I am capitalizing on my fathers crimes, using them to become famous myself.

But what if I choose joy? What if I choose to wake up every single day and pursue the good in life rather than wallow in the bad? We have so little time on this earth; to really comprehend the shortness of this process we call life is to receive a gift. I simply decided one day to say yes to receiving the messagethe one that is alerting me that I am squandering my short time hereand to get with the program.

The question then became, what is the program? There are several practices that, while not etched in stone tablets somewhere, are the tenets of life itself. For a long time, I had turned my back on many of the experiences discussed in the following pages out of pure ignorance of the many parts of what it takes to be fully human. I denied the divine medicine that we have been gifted with in biology, psychology, and spiritualityesoteric and complex aspects of living: hope, fear, awareness; plus the day-to-day things that are so front and center, so in our faces that we often cease to see them, things like nature, compassion, forgiveness, and love. Especially love.

When I set out on my journey to say yes to life, I thought it would be about healing and transformation, but it wound up being about becoming one with the deepest version of myself. This meant loving oneself, forgiving oneself, and finding peace within oneself to the point where your highest confidence leads you to follow the path that you think is the right one, and then to have the courage to face the fact that that very road might not be leading you home. And when you have to change course, being aware of yourself gives you the faith and knowledge to make a change without the drama of beating yourself up, sinking into quicksand, or pulling away from others and opportunities.