MY RECORD IS TRUE

I sing a song for the abused child, a song no one wants to hear.

As a child psychiatrist, the song I sing is one learned from a lifetime of listening, of discerning fact from fiction, emotions from thoughts and actions. It tells of the tears of a child who will never learn to trust, a child who suffered so much before birth that when she was born into her life of abuse, she had little chance. It’s the song of so many who never had a childhood.

It’s also my song and my story – the story of someone who happened into a career as medical director of a child welfare agency, a career she never envisioned, one that threatened to sweep her away with the intensity of feelings that come from healing traumatized patients.

Peter Makuck praises My Record Is True

“At a time when child abuse and its horrific effects are much in the news, My Record Is True, by Julia W. Burns, MD, resonates, illuminates, and deeply moves us with its sharp particulars.  After reading about disturbing case histories detailed in this memoir, you understand why, after 35 years of listening to the agonizing stories of patients, a doctor would suffer from a kind of PTSD and need to seek therapy herself.  Dr. Burns writes about the impact of parental heroin and crack addiction on children, about rape, pedophilia, suicide, and institutional caregiver abuse of the mentally ill—all of which challenge her religious faith and put her in a “wrestling match with God.” But there is redemptive love and a hope for healing.  Many of these wide-ranging narratives find you where you live.  The stories in her memoir read us as we read them; they locate the kinds of experience we are responsive to, find certain areas of educated feeling, and touch upon our blind spots in a way that opens our eyes.”

Peter Makuck, Distinguished Professor emeritus at East Carolina University, Founder of Tar River Poetry and Fulbright lecturer. His poems and stories, essays and reviews have appeared in The Georgia Review, North American Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Hudson Review, Poetry, Cimmaron Review, Yale Review, The Best of Southern Review and others.  He won honorable mention three times in Best American Short Stories. He was also winner of the Monroe Spears Award. He was nominated for the Pen/Faulkner award and the Pulitzer Prize. Most notably, he is a compassionate and learned friend of God and humanity.

Russ Parker praises My Record Is True

“You manage to combine engagement with the trauma and clarity of issue and longed for response for the healing and help of others.  Naturally I am drawn to your focus on listening amongst other things and the discernment that you now listen with the heart of Christ instead of just your own ears.   You almost echo Dietrich Bonhoeffer who once wrote that we need to listen with the ears of Christ to gain the right to speak the word of God.  I also like your reference to singing the songs of the wounded and the thought of celebrating their humanity so bent out of shape by abuse and by not being believed.

I truly look forward to reading the completed book and pray it gets published.

Love and blessings,

Rev Dr Russ Parker M.Th., Founder and Director of 2Restore: Healing Church Wounds, Author of Healing Wounded History.”

Laura Dallas endorses My Record is True