Love's stability—a foster child's story

Robert A. Johnson with contributions from Jerry Cook

How can the effects of an abused childhood be healed? In the following interview, contributing editor Robert A. Johnson talks with Jerry Cook, who spent the first ten years of his life being bounced back and forth between a foster home and his birth mother. Here, Mr. Cook shares how the light of Christian Science and the example of one person's life brought him through his difficult childhood and completely healed him of any aftereffects. Mr. Cook went on to a successful career that has included military service, fatherhood, and teaching.

Jerry , from what you've told me, there was very little stability in your younger years. Can you tell us something of what you remember from those years?

My first years were spent in and out of different houses. But at age three I was placed in a foster home with a very loving family. For the next eight years I was in and out of that same foster home. This home was very orderly and yet very loving —a very stable environment. During the interims when I was living with my birth mother, it was a time of just pretty much running free on the streets, doing whatever I wanted to do. There were eight of us children in the family; very few of us had the same father. I remember once when I was with my natural mother on my sixth birthday, she allowed me to drink an entire six-pack of beer. Afterward I got up and immediately passed out. I was told that three days later I was coherent again.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

Rising higher in thought heals