Find out the latest indie author news. For FREE.

ADVERTISEMENT

Formats
Paperback Book Details
  • 02/2015
  • 9781500755539 1500755532
  • 266 pages
  • $10.99
Ebook Details
  • 02/2015
  • B00TMIMMHA
  • 268 pages
  • $2.99
Trauma, Shame, and the Power of Love: The Fall and Rise of a Physician Who Heals Himself

Adult; Memoir; (Market)

Silver Medal Winner of the 2016 Living Now Book Awards.

Bronze Medal Winner of the 2016 Global Ebook Awards.

There is a reason books that recount the regrets and advice of the dying strike so deep a chord: people who have nothing left to lose can tell their stories with a sincerity and unpretentiousness we crave but that is all too rare. In “Trauma, Shame, and the Power of Love,” Christopher Pelloski relates his own downfall from a prominent physician-scientist in the field of radiation oncology in a similarly candid way.

Without fear of losing society’s good opinion—having lost it already—Pelloski has the freedom to be sharply honest in his observations of himself and the world around him. To the question “Why would someone with so much going for him risk, and then lose, everything, by sinking so low?” he offers a gut-wrenching, soul-baring answer that dissects his decades-long downward spiral and examines it from perspectives that range from the historical to the molecular.

Pelloski chronicles the evolution of his devastating legal battle alongside his concurrent journey of recovery from childhood sexual abuse. He shares with us the lessons he learned from these experiences in the hope they can serve as both a warning and an invitation: a warning to abuse survivors not to follow his dark path of silence, and an invitation to society to deal more openly with the multitude of painful issues that have shaped not only his life but also, tragically, the lives of so many others.

Those brave enough to set aside their prejudices and preconceptions will be richly rewarded and challenged by this work.

Reviews
1. Jeorj, GoodReads

This is a book that is so far ahead of its time that it may take years for its significance to be known and its impact to be truly felt. Until then, it will most likely remain buried under our society’s ignorant paranoia that surround this kind of non-violent offense and its continued stigmatization of mental illnesses. 

I have never read anything before that packed so many social issues into just 268 pages. Yet at the same time, the wonderfully-written and compelling narrative also made me feel like I was reading some kind of a suspense-thriller at times. It made me compulsively turn the pages. And if you have the fortitude to go back and read again, or wait for the visceral shock of the first-pass to wear off, you can see just how many different layers there are to this onion that Pelloski has craftily and painstakingly planted.

All legal and social issues aside, this is a very human story and shows how someone can put the pieces of their life together and gain an insight into themselves that few would achieve in a lifetime. Pelloski’s life is ultimately a case study of someone born with a predisposition to develop PTSD, who is then exposed to multiple traumas early in childhood and then goes on to live within the grip of complex PTSD throughout his life, struggling against what he does not know. His description of how traumatic events and the PTSD-susceptibility-trait is passed down from one generation to the next (his grandmother survived the Nazi concentration camps when she was a girl), because of changes in the DNA, was illuminating and technical, yet written within reach of someone without a science background. His childhood behavior problems, possible Attachment Disorder, misdiagnoses with ADD, self-medication with alcohol, and so on… all rattle off like a checklist for someone with chronic, undiagnosed and untreated complex PTSD. 

Knowing that enduring sexual abuses under the age of 16 are the most profound traumatic events that can trigger PTSD, knowing that 1/3 girls and 1/6 boys are sexually abused, and knowing that events like this are under-reported or suppressed by the victims, I shudder to imagine just how many troubled children are out there, struggling, being misdiagnosed and branded and set on a course for self-destruction, all because so many are unaware, including the victims themselves. 

What is disturbing to me is that his “meteoric ascent” in the cancer field and his awful offense were actually 2 sides of the same grotesque coin. From one side, he was exulted and given society’s highest esteem and for the other, he was made a Pariah – yet both were equally toxic to him. It is also sad that it took his personal catastrophe for him to finally admit to himself that he needed help. For those who wonder, ‘how is that seemingly successful people, who have life easily at hand, can’t keep it together, implode and indulge our collective Schadenfreude?’… This book is the blue-print for that type of self-destruction. 

Pelloski is a talented writer, who can articulate very emotional, technical, and complex concepts and make them seem almost morbidly entertaining. This story is incomplete, though, as the book ends prematurely. He has since likely gone through our federal prison system, is living on the Sex Offender Registry, and undoubtedly trying to rebuild his life. He is uniquely positioned, therefore, with his gifts, life experiences, and power of observation to continue pulling back the curtain on the darker parts of humanity that are not often discussed, but are obviously quite common. I hope he does.

2. Allie Sumner, AlliesOpinions

The first thing I ask of anyone who picks up this book is to keep reading. Don’t let the shock factor of the charges against Dr. Pelloski trick you into prejudging and closing the book. Dr. Pelloski has done a bad thing. At no point in time does he ever attempt to downplay his crime. He has done bad but, he is also doing a world of good with this book. I ask that you, dear reader, remember that the world we live in is a series of grey areas. Very few people can be conveniently cornered off as all bad or all good. Good people can do bad things.  

Dr Pelloski has written one of the most intimate books I have ever come across as a reviewer. He carries the reader through each event in a very personal way. A lot of memoirs or books that are written to bring awareness to a cause have a detached like narration. Pelloski dives deep throughout the entire book and shines a light not only on his ramifications but the backlash his family members receive as well. Pelloski combs through all the wretched and spot lights exactly how he has hurt others. His writing is intimate, raw and completely honest.

Pelloski, in my mind, is a great champion for this cause. His knowledge of medicine and his first hand experiences combine to shine a beacon of light on this neglected problem society has swiftly condemned without any real thought on the deeper problems. All issues in society are layered. It’s important to remember this if we want change. Nothing is ever simple.

For men, there is a huge stigma for speaking out on sexual abuse. This is an unacceptable reaction that society must move forward from if we are to find any lasting solutions. The current “war on sex crimes”, like the “war on drugs” does nothing to actually solve the underlying causes of the crimes. An alarming number of these cases are of people who have serious unresolved psychological conditions from the abuse they have suffered. These people need more than just our condemnation. They need our compassion.  They need a resolution.

I want to thank Dr Pelloski for his openness and the risks he has taken to write this book. I hope that it has the intended affect and causes a sweeping dialogue among the medical and justice communities. Like the “war on drugs”, the “war on sex crimes” is not a problem that we can jail away. Let us all learn from Dr. Pelloski’s writing and solve these issues with out minds and not our emotions.

One passage of the book stands out to me the most. Dr Pelloski is explaining to his friends that watching those videos did harm to more than just him. He is right to point out that as long as there is a demand for those videos, there will be a supply of them.

I would also like to interject another point. A person can be prosecuted for watching only one of those videos. Law enforcement is aware that there are millions of these videos online. Yet, they leave them available and convict the watchers and rarely the makers. It’s a net the police use. Where is the public outcry? Police use this net to catch the watchers because it’s easier to catch them than the makers. Those who are doing physical harm to these children continue to go on harming these kids because it’s hard to catch the abusers. Is that the standard of our criminal justice system? We pursue whats easy? How disturbing! I encourage every police officer to garner their resources and work harder on catching the abusers. Get this stuff off the internet. By leaving these videos online, the police are just as guilty of the watchers for using the victims. Childrens suffering shouldn’t be used to trap easy targets. Get it off, now.

Thank you Dr Pelloski for your honestly and bravery in writing this book. Thank you for choosing me to review it. My heart goes out to you for all the pain that you have suffered. I hope that your children and family continue to heal and life is kinder to you all.

3. Ann-Marie Reynolds, Readers' Favorite

Trauma, Shame, and the Power of Love: The Fall and Rise of a Physician Who Heals Himself by Christopher E Pelloski, MD is a powerful story of a man who overcame all the odds. Dr. Pelloski was a leading oncologist, treating children for ravaging diseases. But he has a secret, something he has never fully told anyone before. That secret comes to light while he is away at a conference. Dr Pelloski has been viewing child pornography on the internet and now he’s been found out. Is he a pedophile or is there a deeper reason? This book is Dr Christopher Pelloski’s story of the sexual abuse that he suffered as a child. It is his story of how that abuse spilled over into his daily life, of the legal battle he endured, and of the lessons that he learned so harshly from it all. It is his story, a story that will blast apart any preconceived notions you may have before you open this book.

Trauma, Shame, and the Power of Love: The Fall and Rise of a Physician Who Heals Himself by Christopher E Pelloski, MD was one of those “wow” books. This really is one of the most powerful books I have ever read; it is raw and it is harsh but it is real life and that never runs smoothly. Dr Pelloski has written a very open, honest and deeply revealing book, a book he didn’t have to write. We read stories all the time about this person or that one who has been arrested for looking at child pornography and we all automatically act as judge and jury. We never ask ourselves, “why?”

This book shows that nothing is ever as cut and dried as it may seem from the start, that sometimes there just may be a deeper reason why something has happened. This is a story that is written from the heart. It was easy to read in terms of flow and the way it was written, just a difficult subject to get to grips with. Dr. Pelloski has clearly taken a great deal of time and much effort to write his story; it must have been gut wrenching to relive it all again on paper. I take my hat off to Dr Pelloski for baring his soul and I wish him well on his road to rebuilding his life.

4. Lisa Brown-Gilbert, Ezine Articles

Although sexual abuse and pornography of children is nothing new within this society, each time it is discovered and reported there is an accompanying knee jerk reaction of anger, disgust and distrust that follows so much so that it becomes hard to see the many facets of the whole truth about the situation such was the case with Christopher E. Pelloski M.D. In his book, Trauma, Shame and the Power of Love, which is a biographical work, he bares his soul and shares his experiences from arrest to trial as a non-productive participant of child pornography.

From the outset reading, Dr. Pelloski's stark memoir, created an intense paradox of emotions within me, especially because I am a parent of six children. On the one hand, he was a Pediatric Oncologist whose job and intention was to help children at their most vulnerable moment and he made great strides in doing so. But on the other hand, he also participated in the very vulgar and harmful activity of online viewing of sexual abuse involving children, a sickening activity brought on by his own efforts to come to terms with his own sexual abuse as a child.

Initially, I was infuriated how could a doctor who is also a father, be so crude, so vicious, so sick when it comes to our young? He was supposed to help them not find them sexually alluring. However, once I became more deeply embroiled in the book I began to see more clearly the other side of that scenario that the perpetrators of child pornography, whether producers, actors or vicarious viewers could also be victims of childhood sexual abuse and are sorely in need stringent monitoring and psychological help. Don't get me wrong, while my heart goes out to author Pelloski, in regards to his appalling experiences as a victim of sexual abuse as a child, I am tremendously glad that he got caught and is getting the help that he needs.

Overall, the quality of the book was well done; author Pelloski's narrative was well written, and thoughtfully organized. His inclusion of related sex offense laws, the presiding judge's sentencing statement, medical and psychiatric statements related his particular disorders made this book a cogently expansive read especially when it comes to understanding the punishment of the perpetrators. While reading this book was not a pleasure it was a genuinely illuminating reading experience that I found deeply affecting and stayed with me well after completing the book. However, I did find that at times within his narrative there was a narcissistic bent that I did find somewhat off-putting considering the nature of the book, but ultimately understood as that seems to go along with the mental disorders that he suffers from. It is a shame that Dr. Pelloski's great work in the oncology field, including the many patients he helped are now largely discounted by his criminal actions and ensuing punishment. Unfortunately, the war against cancer is real and he was a warrior in his field albeit, a broken one.

Summarily, Dr. Pelloski's work within this book has forever changed my personal viewpoints about child pornography/child sex abuse the applicable the laws, the punishment, the victims, the perpetrators and their varying levels of participation. This is a tumultuous read, but I do recommend it to adult readers with the intestinal fortitude to handle the strong subject matter.

Formats
Paperback Book Details
  • 02/2015
  • 9781500755539 1500755532
  • 266 pages
  • $10.99
Ebook Details
  • 02/2015
  • B00TMIMMHA
  • 268 pages
  • $2.99
ADVERTISEMENT

Loading...