Bruce Morse

I have heard it said that the only great subject for a book is the story of the hero. At first glance my book "Forgive Myself" is anything but that. I wrote it as my way of facing and forgiving myself for a youth largely misspent on a myriad of addictions, self-destruction's and defeats that are not the result of, but were impacted by the tumultuous cultural revolution of the sixties.

Born in New York City to a family who were wealthy in material comforts but destitute in human caring, I was institutionalized at 13 and diagnosed as schizophrenic in my mid-twenties. After 25 years of in-depth psychoanalysis I married and began a family only to have it destroyed by a car accident that I was responsible for and in which my eldest son was killed.

The sense of personal failure and profound despair this event plunged me into precipitated a journey of healing that gradually depended on a realization of my deepest creativity and an acknowledgment of my fullest humanity.

Today, remarried with four children, a painter, poet, and photographer I look back at my life and see that I have been on a hero's journey. The last stage of that journey is to return to the world and offer what the hero has found.

What I have found is the knowledge that no matter how life threatening it feels to face the pain, sadness, self-hatred and rage that one has buried as a child (which cripples all our adult capacity for a full life) it can be exhumed, embraced and released. As painful as it is, it will not kill you.