The Healing Sessions

This story is based on actual events. The trauma. turmoil, and family dynamics experienced by the characters of Jude Bartolomeo and his family were experienced by real people who wish to remain anonymous.

Jude was a man in his late 50s who was suffering from sleep deprivation from caring for his elderly mother who had Alzheimer's / dementia, when one day, out of the blue, the police arrived at his door after receiving a false report of a dead body at the residence. They mistook the situation to be an elderly woman being abused by a drug addict and blew up Jude’s life.

As the possibility of criminal charges hangs over him, following the advice of his attorney, Jude agrees to see Dr. Johnson, a local therapist and pastor in preparation for possible criminal and civil litigation as well as to help him make sense out of what happened and to help him understand how his life led him to this point.

In therapy, Jude recounts stories from the different stages of his life dealing with his abusive alcoholic narcissistic father, his clinging, naive, immature mother and his enmeshed maternal grandparents’ family. It soon comes out that in one way or another, Jude had been caring for his mother for decades and that this encounter with the police was just the final act in a drama of family dysfunction that spanned generations. The sessions also lead to the revelation that a terrible event that took place almost 100 years ago was a major source of the dysfunction that plagued Jude’s family for generations.

This is a story of how the effects of an evil event can flow through the generations and affect so many lives but also of how God is always there. He is present to bring good out of the evil.