347-Karin Thompson: They Counted Coffee Granules to Keep Him Calm

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A listener note before you press play. This conversation is about childhood abuse and a home ruled by fear.

Karin's book available on amazon: My Journey to Enjoying My Life.

Some stories are not for scrolling past. This one belongs to Karin Thomson.

Her father came out of the Second World War in Holland carrying things nobody had words for yet. What her family knew was that anything could set him off. Coffee too weak. Coffee too strong. Not enough sugar.

They started counting the granules. Twenty seemed to be safe. Twenty one was not.

There was no way to get ahead of it, because the problem was never the coffee.

She says she never got a childhood. She grew up as an adult. Four sisters in a house with no friends over, no socializing, and one rule that held it all together. Do not tell anyone what happens in this home.

When one of them set him off, all of them paid. So they learned not to like each other either.

She met the Lord at twelve and held on with everything she had. She has been walking with Him for over fifty years now.

But this was the eighties. No Google. A set of encyclopedias that had nothing useful under anxiety and nothing at all under abuse. Counseling was expensive and carried a stigma. So she prayed, and God answered her slowly, one thing at a time.

One of the first things He said was that she had to deal with her temper. She pushed back. Doesn't everybody have a temper? Isn't everyone angry like this?

No.

He told her to count to ten. She says ten did nothing. She had to count to about five thousand before she came back to herself. Then she would look at the situation and realize there was nothing there.

What she hated most was seeing her father in herself. She did not want any part of him in her. But that house was the only place she had ever learned anything, so that is what came out.

Her book is My Journey to Enjoying My Life. It is her testimony, and it has twelve steps in it that she still does today. She wrote it because plenty of books describe the abuse and stop there. Hers is about how you get out. She is direct about it. If you want to do the work, it is the book for you. If you want sympathy, it is not.

She is honest that the questions may never get answered. Daddy, why couldn't you love me. Mommy, why couldn't you take care of me. What she found instead is a different Father, and a different identity to stand in.

She has been married forty nine years to a man she calls amazing, and she says the odds against two people with their histories making it even a year were slim.

Her last word in this episode is the one to keep. If you want answers, get close to Him. And if you cannot manage anything else, say help me.

Find Karin at her website, and on Instagram and Facebook under her author handle. Her book is linked in the show notes.

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