SPITZ: Sharing Her ‘cry’

By Julia Spitz
MetroWest Daily News
January 21, 2012

http://www.milforddailynews.com/news/x58614953/SPITZ-Sharing-her-Cry

Barbara Hansen of Milford\

The people Barbara Hansen seeks are the ones most would shun.

“This is my purpose in life, to reach out to the underdogs and addicts,’’ she said, sitting in her living room in a Milford neighborhood that’s “a completely opposite world’’ from the crack houses and prisons she has visited.

While she hasn’t traveled the road of alcohol or drug abuse personally, she feels a kinship with “that part of society people don’t want to deal with,’’ and sees a common thread in many of their stories: abuse.

Oftentimes it’s the kind of abuse she knew as a young girl growing up in upstate New York and Texas.

“Listen to the Cry of the Child: The Deafening Silence of Sexual Abuse,’’ her book about the pain of being molested by her grandfather, and later a pastor at a religious camp, and her path to healing, was published in 2003.

That led her to new revelations about helping others.

And the revelation that she had more work to do in healing herself.

She had confronted the man who molested her at a youth camp and forgave him. She had told her family about her grandfather’s inappropriate behavior and learned she was not his only victim.

“To forgive is to set the prisoner free and realize the prisoner is you. … When I forgave, I had to let go and concentrate on me.’’

But there were still painful issues to face, including her husband’s past infidelity and her own “addiction,’’ she said

Hansen and her husband “are over the mountain now. He’s my soulmate. We love each other dearly,’’ and remain together after 46 years.

She has also come to terms with the unhealthy side of being “a rescuer.’’

“I rescued stray cats, stray dogs and brought them home.’’

She did her best to rescue people, too, she said, but learned “you can’t fix anybody else. You can’t rescue anybody else.

“God is the only one who can restore our soul.’’

And though she has learned she can’t rescue others, she aims to help others find their way by sharing her story.

“I share my faith with everybody.’’

She’s in her eighth year leading Beauty Out of Ashes, a support group for women with addictions, at a Framingham church.

She works with the Coalition of Prison Evangelists and speaks once a month to Massachusetts inmates, particularly those incarcerated for sex crimes.

“I give them the victim’s side. I weave testimony into my sermons.’’

She has also talked to prisoners in other parts of the country as well as in Canada and Scotland.

“I’m not an ordained minister,’’ she said, and “I’m not Wonder Woman.’’ But “through the ‘School of Hard Knocks,’ I understand what they’re going through. … I have answers.’’

Next month, Hansen will be among the speakers at the national Prisoner’s Family Conference in Albuquerque, N.M.

She plans to talk about her first experience trying to help a heroin addict. It was “a bad link. I was just as fractured as he was. I was in a prison of my own. What I did was enable,’’ she said. The experience helped her come to “understand my boundaries,’’ she said, and “God brought it around to good.’’

From the lows of childhood trauma to the highs of helping others, “I want my story told to help set other captives free.’’

More information about her story is available on her website, listentothecry.org.

(Julia Spitz can be reached at 508-626-3968 or jspitz@wickedlocal.com. Read the Spitz Bits blog at metrowestdailynews.com/blogs/spitzbits.)