Jean Hargadon Wehner Of Walking with Aletheia: How Journaling Helped Me Be More Calm, Mindful And Resilient

An Interview With Heidi Sander

If I am angry with someone, I have found journaling a dialogue with that person helps me feel calmer, more grounded in myself, and mindful of what the issue really is. I work at it until I have a letter ready to mail, or not.

Journaling is a powerful tool to gain clarity and insight especially during challenging times of loss and uncertainty. Writing can cultivate a deeper connection with yourself and provide an outlet for calmness, resilience and mindfulness. When my mom passed on, I found writing to be cathartic. When I read through my journal years later, there were thoughts that I developed into poems, and others that simply provided a deeper insight into myself. In this series I’m speaking with people who use journaling to become more mindful and resilient.

As a part of this series, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Jean Hargadon Wehner

Jean Hargadon Wehner, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, is an advocate for sexual abuse survivors, their families and the people who work with them. Jean has experience working, educating, and communicating with diverse populations, including faith groups, student groups, and professional associations. She is also a contributor to the Emmy-nominated Netflix documentary series The Keepers. In addition to her advocacy work, Jean, originally trained as a Spiritual Director, is now a Nationally Certified Reflexologist, Certified Life Coach and Reiki Practitioner.

We really appreciate the courage it takes to publicly share your story of healing. Can you tell us a bit about your background and your childhood backstory?

My childhood was in many ways happy and rather normal. I was born in Baltimore in 1953, the first of three girls in a family of ten children. We were Irish Catholic. My father was a policeman and my mother a homemaker.

Raising such a large family on a modest salary was challenging for my parents, but we as children were oblivious to any financial hardship. We always had enough to eat, but there were no frills. My parents had three priorities: family, church, and school.

Our family was structured. Every child had chores and we were expected to be home when we were told, especially at dinnertime. There was discipline, essentially enforced by my mother; but there was love. We had friends within the family and in the neighborhood. We had fun.

My parents instilled in us a faith in God and Jesus. My mother was the bedrock of our faith; she and my father made sure we were raised as observant Catholics. We prayed daily at home and attended church every Sunday at St. Benedict’s Church.

All of us attended the elementary school affiliated with our church. We prayed daily and attended Mass on a weekly basis. It was important to my parents to provide a quality, spiritual education, which they felt St. Benedict’s School provided.

While our family life was happy in most respects, I did experience a darker side. As a child from the ages of 3 through 12, I was sexually abused two to three weekends a year by a great uncle, and by adults who were strangers to me, but with whom my uncle forced me to engage in inappropriate sexual activity.

During my high school years, I was raped and otherwise forced to have sexual relations with clergy members, police officers, and other adults at the school, Archbishop Keough High School.

In 1969, when I was 16, Sister Cathy Cesnik, one of my teachers at Keough, discovered the sexual abuse being perpetrated on me and other girls by the school chaplain, Fr. Joseph Maskell, and other adults. She assured me on the last day of school before summer that she would “take care of” the situation. Five months later she went missing, and two months after that she was found murdered. Before Sister Cathy’s body was discovered, Maskell took me to see her body, effectively terrorizing me into silence. For the next year and a half, I was brainwashed, and fearing for my life, did as I was told by Maskell.

Just before I graduated in 1971, I received a conditional absolution for the “sins” I had committed and advised that if I forgot all that happened at Keough during my four years there, and went down a path of goodness, God would forgive me. Having sought forgiveness for the previous four years, I remember there being no thought given to this condition. I wanted to be forgiven, I wanted to be good, and I wanted to get out of that school. It was not difficult to forget what happened the previous four years since through a variety of psychological and terroristic actions, my soul and my psyche were traumatized and bludgeoned into an amnesia-like state regarding my years at the school. So when I left Keough, I sealed those four years into a ‘coffin’.

After graduating in 1971, marrying my husband Mike, and losing my first son shortly after birth, I became a devout Catholic. I centered my life, and my family’s life, around that spiritual base.

One of the ways I got in touch with my wounded child within, and still do, is through a form of contemplative prayer called Centering Prayer; some may refer to it as meditation. I learned this method of contemplative prayer, which I call ‘my quiet’, from the Catholic community, including clergy, both before and while I was learning to be a spiritual director. I have also been able to access some of the emotions and memories of what happened to me through journaling, a form of dialoguing with one’s inner self, which was introduced to me by a priest.

Twenty-one years after leaving Keough, and after becoming a dedicated Catholic, the cascade of memories of Keough came crashing down. Over a matter of months in 1992 and 1993, my mind was barraged with the horrific abuse inflicted upon me. I almost killed myself.

Since remembering the abuse by my uncle and at Keough, I have been working on connecting with the wounded child within me and feeling compassion for myself. The greatest gift of my ongoing work on a body, mind, spirit, and emotional level is that I have found my voice as an adult.

Have you been writing in your journal for a long time or was there a challenging situation that prompted you to start journal writing? If you feel comfortable sharing the situation with us, it could help other readers.

I have been writing in my journal since 1982 which I consider a long time. It was prompted by the death of our first son, Matthew. Sometime later I began going to a Catholic church and joined a prayer group. Still grieving, I was seeking peace and found myself spiritually awakening. Around this time in my life, I went through a period of spiritual confusion.

With time and support I was able to navigate my way through that challenging situation. I was left unable to discern what I could trust spiritually. I met with a priest from my prayer group to discuss the experience I had just gone through and how it left me feeling lost and confused. As we talked, I told him I had the sense of a little girl standing nearby. He asked me a few questions about the girl, and I was surprised to find her becoming clearer as we spoke. Her name was Beth. He suggested I take time to write out how Beth looked and what she was wearing. Then I could dialogue with her to see what she wanted. I did as he suggested and it was very helpful. This was my introduction to journal writing.

It was not until 1981, when I met Brother Richard Breese at a retreat, that I really began the practice of journaling. After we talked about the death of my son and the period of spiritual confusion I went through, he agreed to be my spiritual director. He taught me not only how to journal, but how to allow my journal to become an extension of myself. I feel like my journals become vessels for all the words I sift through, until unexpectedly I uncover a precious jewel. This may appear as insight, sudden clarity, or direction along my health path. Richard’s encouragement to practice journal writing was monumental in my life. Because of him, I experience journaling as a part of my healing process, which along with my meditation and prayer I call ‘my quiet’.

How did journaling help you heal, mentally, emotionally and spiritually?

I am an experiential individual who takes in everything around me with my senses. I believe that what happened to me as a child intensified my ability to absorb experiences through my ears, eyes, and spirit. It also strengthened my intuitive nature.

Because of this I believe that when I journal during my quiet time it is more effective, since I am using my hand/eye/heart coordination. Also, I have had to keep aspects of myself and what they held at a distance, away from my conscious mind. Therefore, free flow writing has been ideal while journaling about current issues to access that which was locked away, along with the deeper spiritual wisdom within myself.

I see journaling as one part of my practice. Sometimes I use my journal as a form of record keeping of important meetings, interactions with others, or a day-to-day account of something I am involved in like a conference or a retreat. Other times I may journal what I experienced within my quiet, or in a dream, which helps me hold on to what occurred in the experience. Or I may sit, feeling anxious of the unknown beaconing me, and my hand writes as my heart reveals that which my mind cannot see. Light is shown on the fearful unknown, providing insight and direction. I feel calmer knowing what I am working with, and I continue reflecting.

I found that the many forms of journaling that I have practiced over the years have been an important part of my personal healing on a body, mind, and spirit level within my being.

Did journaling help you find more self-compassion and gratitude? Can you share a story about that?

Absolutely. Journaling continues to help me find compassion for my young self. For so long, my memories of what I had to do to survive as a teenager repulsed me. I was ashamed and humiliated by what I saw myself “doing” with various adults, and the thought that those things were not my fault took many years to understand. But as an adult, I could not avoid judging my younger teenaged self, even though she had to do what she was forced to do for she/I to survive — literally.

From 1992 to the present, memories continued to surface. After The Keepers aired in 2017, I continued on my quest to connect more fully with ‘Jeannie’, my teen self, especially in my senior year at Keough High School. Once the bigger story of what went on at Keough came out in the documentary I began to hear from a few survivors who shared the diabolical acts this group of criminals perpetrated on them. I found myself feeling angry! That anger for another survivor surprisingly allowed me to feel a stronger sense of compassion for ‘Jeannie’. I knew she had something to tell me and journaling was one way I could let her speak. I was aware that I had to be still and let the next part of my process flow.

So, on July 11, 2018, I went to my porch with journal in hand, sat down and began to write, ‘Now I want to listen. If you have anything to share, please find a way to tell me. I am really afraid of what happened in that last year after Cathy’s death, but that was me and I need to accept and connect to it. What do you think?’

Then I let the experience unfold within me, overflowing on to the paper. I did this free of thought or judgment, almost like stepping into another dimension of myself where Jeannie and I literally sat together and talked. While we talked, we watched the actual experience Jeannie/I had endured unfold before my very eyes. I jotted things down, no thought for spelling or punctuation, as a part of the whole process.

Much of what went on within that meditation would take time to digest and process. However, what surprisingly did happen within those moments was I went from condemning my teenage self for wanting the disgusting situation I saw myself participating in, to seeing me as a prostituted child sex slave caught in the experience. I sat on my porch, seemingly alone, touched to the point of tears by the amazing shift that was occurring within my being. I was beginning to understand that the compassion and love that was growing for my teen self was being felt within me. Once again it was a moment of clarity, I am that teenager, and that compassion is for me!

How much did journaling inform and inspire your book Walking with Aletheia? What kind of content goes into your journal? For example, do you free-write, write poems, doodle?

I didn’t start out with my journals in mind when I decided that it was time to write about my healing process. I thought journaling was one of the tools that helped me get to where I am today and I knew I would talk about it. As I moved forward with my writing, I found myself pulling out the basket that I keep my journals to find a particular entry in a sea of entries. I began using the journals for my research. Similar to going online to correctly footnote something I was referencing, I went to my journals to confirm something I was remembering. I found by doing this I might discover clearer information, which allowed me to flesh out the issue I was writing about.

I was surprised to find my journals to be another source for support, inspiration and understanding so many years after the original writing. I was allowing the entries to speak to me in a way that I could never have heard when first written.

I found all forms of my journal’s content to be helpful as I wrote my memoir. I am in a transitional period with my journaling. I have mandalas drawn in my journal or slipped in on loose paper. “Mandala” is a Sanskrit term that means circle and in various spiritual traditions, mandalas may be employed for a variety of reasons, one being to establish a sacred space. Right now, I would say my strongest form of journaling is free flow writing intermingled with inner dialoguing.

I consider my journals to be sacred. They are not for others to see unless I choose to share. In 1995, I brought suit against Joseph Maskell, the Archdiocese, and other defendants. During the course of the suit, I was required to hand over my journals. I felt my sacred space was invaded and I could not write for years. I am still working at feeling safe when I journal.

When I started to journal again, I turned to a form of poetry, which you can find throughout my memoir or in my book, Conversations with My Self. I would freely jot down lines with the hope that if somebody were to take my journal to read, they would not understand it. I also stopped noting the dates. But I am proud to say I didn’t stop journaling!

How did you gain a different perspective in life and your emotions while writing in your journal? Can you please share a story about what you mean?

One form of journal writing I have done is to dialogue with someone I am frustrated with, angry at, and or disappointed in. First, I sit with my journal and write whatever comes to mind as if I’m writing them a letter, but without structure. Once I have exhausted my feelings and thoughts, I put it aside so I can process what I just poured into my journal. When it feels like the right time, I will sit down and write a letter to that individual keeping what I wrote in my journal nearby. By then I feel as if some of the emotion has been dispersed and the direction of my issue is clearer. My writing is more condensed and to the point.

When I am done writing my letter, I have a decision to think about. I can either put the letter in my tin can, letting it sit with my other papers for a while, burn the letter since I feel the situation has been rectified by getting it outside of myself and working with it, or mail it.

Twenty some years ago I used this form of journaling to work out my response to something a friend had said to me. At that time, I had remembered being sexually abused by two priests at Keough. My friend called to tell me a Catholic church official had invited any survivor who felt they had been abused or hurt by a cleric and wanted an apology from the Church, to come down to the Basilica and he would apologize. I was furious! I could not believe what she just said. That man should have come around to every survivor of clergy sexual abuse, knocked on their door, and knelt before them seeking forgiveness for being a part of a system that harbors pedophiles. Why was it the survivor who had to seek him out? I was feeling a boat load of emotions and could not understand why my friend did not get that it was so much bigger than the gesture he was offering.

That was early along my path of recovering memories, so I was still a ‘good little girl’ who did not want to make waves. I began writing my feelings, and thoughts about this upsetting situation in my journal. As I got to the final copy of my letter to my friend, I could tell that something had shifted. I could admit I was angry at the ignorance on the church’s part, but I was also disappointed in my friend’s inability to understand what I was really going through. I realized I was scared to face the truth that our relationship had been changing and this was just an example of that. I needed to let it happen and stop trying to keep it the way it once was. I began working on not letting her opinion and that of others affect me as if it were a personal attack.

After processing that situation, I felt clearer about my feelings toward my friend, even though I still had a lot of other emotions to work out. I decided not to mail my letter to her. It is in a sealed envelope, resting in one of my journals. I definitely think journal writing helped me gain a different perspective in this particular life experience and the emotions attached.

Do you have other and future plans with your journal content?

I had to chuckle when you asked if I had other and future plans with my journal content. I never thought I would be using my journal content for anything other than filling space in the basket under my bed.

I remember in the early 1980’s being instructed to periodically read over my journals to see how far I had come — in order to celebrate my growth. Generally though, when I write in my journal it is for the moment and I very seldom go back to read it over.

Journaling at a particular time and in a particular moment helps me move through many a painful, amazing, confusing, uplifting and surprising experience. When I am writing it is not about the words on paper, it is about letting go into the whole process using my body, mind and spirit. The essence of what is happening unfolds and the words are just words on paper.

That all changed when I began writing Walking with Aletheia. This project threw me into three and a half years of reviewing, then choosing certain excerpts from my journal, in order to clarify my process, my experiences, my feelings and emotions. It was very helpful in explaining my relationships both with the different personas or parts of myself as a child, and with my spirit guides who showed up during my meditation. As I became more engrossed in the process of writing about my inner journey along my health path and sharing my personal experiences, I discovered that I was in fact writing a master journal and that the entries in those daily journals were extremely important.

Honestly, I had no idea that my journals would play such an important role when I started writing my book. And who knows if they will be important in any future project that may call to me. I do find myself thinking about a children’s book. Time will tell!

In my journaling program, I have found that journaling can help people to become more calm, mindful and resilient. Based on your experience and research, can you please share with our readers “five ways that journaling can help you to be more calm, mindful and resilient”?

I think journaling can be a pathway to the deeper wisdom. At times it seems to allow that wisdom to come through despite blocks, fears, flaws, etc.

1. If I am angry with someone, I have found journaling a dialogue with that person helps me feel calmer, more grounded in myself, and mindful of what the issue really is. I work at it until I have a letter ready to mail, or not.
2. I find free flow journaling very effective when faced with a feeling of dread that there is something in my subconscious about to reveal itself to me. My fear has made “the thing” out to be a monster on the other side of the veil into the unknown. I try my best to prepare by leaning into my fear, sitting down with journal close by, and allowing that deeper wisdom to guide me. Journal writing is very much a tool I use to help me use my hand and eyes to participate in the active imaging unfolding within my mind and spirit. Often after sitting in the breakthrough, whatever it is, writing it down helps solidify it for me, helping me focus on how different I feel…calmer, clearer, amazed there were no monsters to defeat and a bit proud of the fact that I could face that fear.
3. Journaling is a way to record periods of my inner journey, especially when a certain vision/experience unfolds over time. Some of my inner experiences I write about in my book took months or even years, and my journal is the vessel that holds my experience while it percolates. It is the container I can trust will hold my spot until I feel moved to reengage in that particular experience. This helps me feel calm as I work on what the vision is about, aware that this experience is ongoing, and mindful of my process knowing to stay alert to meditations that find me standing in that experience.
4. Journaling is a great way for me to dialogue with the Divine Oneness. Call this what you want — God, Mother, Wisdom, or give it no name. I start by writing all thoughts and feelings on paper, without judgment. My intention is to be relieved of a heaviness, sadness, confusion, or fear. I trust my experience of past dialogues, even those when seemingly nothing specific happened; but what does happen is I feel lighter and less burdened. It seems my hand and arm are a pathway for that deeper wisdom to come from my heart, bypassing the brain, and straight to the paper. I let the words and images continue until I feel there is no more to say. I have learned this isn’t something to be afraid of because it’s a part of me. Many times my journaling is seemingly just lots of words, but even that experience leaves me feeling calmer, lighter, more at peace and grounded. Sometimes, I discover the release of feelings, words, and images, with the words creating an Ah Ha moment for me. Regardless, when I take time to sit quietly and dialogue in this manner I feel connected to a deeper wisdom. This gives me greater insight and clarity, which brings about feelings of being grounded and more compassionate for myself and others.
5. Journaling has been a positive vehicle to help remember past events. Before a memory surfaces, I experience an uncomfortable feeling which I now recognize as the stirring of an emerging repressed memory. When the time feels right, I sit quietly and let my inner movement continue, bringing with it whatever is ready to be revealed to me. At times, a memory may flow freely through my spirit as I sit quietly, and at other times it flows through my journaling. If the memory does not surface while journaling, then once I feel the memory has come to some type of conclusion for now, I will take time and journal what just happened and/or dialogue with parts of the memory. Writing the prayer experience down on paper has a way of defusing the fear and other emotions that may surface with the actual memory. This of course is one step in an ongoing journey.

You are a person committed to helping others in need of healing. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of peace to the greatest amount of people, what would that be?

As I thought about my inspiring a movement that would make the most impact to bring about peace, I was reminded of movements that have been extremely positive and effective, like the Civil Rights movements including the current Black Lives Matter, the Women’s movements including the Women’s March and the Me Too Movement. In that respect, I cannot think of a strictly external movement that I could create.

However, as a survivor of child sexual abuse, I am very much a part of an external and internal movement that started after Teresa Lancaster and I lost our civil suit in 1997. As a survivor I slowly entered into a greater movement to stop child sexual abuse with the intention to connect more with my wounded child within, and to help other survivors know they are not alone. And the more I sit quietly in my quiet to find, work with, and heal the wounded parts of myself, the more love, peace, and gratitude I feel for me which ripples out to family, friends, and the community around.

I have found by taking time to move inward and follow my health path, I surprisingly find ways around, over or under old internal obstacles, causing me to shift and move forward in my everyday life. That forward movement may show up as participating in a documentary, writing a book on my healing journey, or giving an interview on journaling. I hope people might be touched by the integrity and sincerity I am attempting to share in my personal journey. I am aware that the more I learn to love myself the more I send love to others.

As an advocate for ending child sexual abuse, I am focused on finding my truth and exploring ways to use my voice most effectively. The important key I discovered over the past few years is to do this ‘heart to heart’. I find this happens when I speak truthfully from my heart, somehow touching people with my sincerity. So often this is an unexpected, in the moment, occurrence bearing sweet juicy fruits of compassion.

As a survivor of child sexual abuse, I know the peace I feel is due to my journey on a body, mind, and spirit level to wholeness. As an advocate, I hope by sharing that journey I might inspire others to sit quietly, reflect, journal, and meditate in order to be at peace with themselves and others.

We are very blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them. :-)

There are quite a few people I thought of when asked who I would love to have breakfast with. Unfortunately, they are not with us any longer. I would love to have a chat with: Cathy Cesnik, knowing what I know now about our relationship; Harriet Tubman, whom I believe is a heart friend and mentor; or my Grandmother, Mary Tarun, who had an adventuresome nature, in spite of her own personal struggles.

Since they are not here to invite, I would love to have breakfast with Michelle Obama or Meryl Streep. These two women have always impressed me. Each of them carries herself with an air of integrity, self-confidence, sincerity, and light-heartedness. They really seem very approachable and down to earth, as Grandmom would say. I know they understand what it is like for a woman to work with her own struggles, flaws, and obstacles within their personal and professional lives. They also understand, as mothers of daughters like me, how hard yet necessary it is to let our daughters face their own obstacles in life so they can somehow find the strength within to move beyond those roadblocks.

I especially would love to chat with either of these women about how they made it through the personal and professional barriers that arose in their lives. I believe Michelle Obama and Meryl Streep, like myself and other women, have their own stories of what it was like as a woman growing up in a “man’s” world, being belittled, embarrassed or degraded because of their race or gender. Yet here they are, strong women who we admire and aspire to be like in some way. They make me feel good, and a visit would be lovely!

How can our readers further follow your work online?

Your readers can follow me on my Walking with Aletheia Facebook page, my Instagram page @walkingwithaletheia, my walkingwithaletheia.com website and they may reach me at walkingwithaletheia@gmail.com.

Thank you so much for sharing these important insights. We wish you continued fulfillment and success with your writing!