Authors

The truth about Michele Weldon's life became clear to her only after she was willing to process her experiences on the page. The resulting memoir, I Closed My Eyes: Revelations of a Battered Woman (Hazelden), resonated with many women. The book put a seldom-seen face on the problem of domestic violence: the victim as a bright, upper-middle-class woman determined to save her marriage.

Weldon will be at The Registry Resort in Naples Feb. 13 at the Celebrity Author Luncheon for the Shelter for Abused Women and Children, where she will also discuss her second book, Writing to Save Your Life: How to Honor Your Story through Journaling (Hazelden).

Weldon, an assistant professor of journalism at her alma mater, Northwestern University in Chicago, says that the mere act of writing may help to heal. "I wrote about my marriage because I am a writer," Weldon says. "It helped me understand something that was not logical and not understandable. As an outgrowth of the writing, I felt much more sane." Intrigued, she began researching the therapeutic aspects of directed journaling, what she calls "scribotherapy." Scientists have found all sorts of benefits in the act of writing, she claims, from a pumped-up immune system to lower blood pressure.

The qualities that have made Weldon professionally successful are the same ones that kept her in an abusive marriage, she says-including the idea that all problems are solvable. "He wasn't some lost cause," she says of her ex-husband, a lawyer she describes as good-looking and funny. "He was someone I'd known my whole life."

Weldon and her ex have three sons, and she says they understand her decision to share the family's painful experiences with readers. "The harm is not in the telling, the harm is in what happened," she says. "My goal is to let them know that they own their own lives."