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In Posthumous Memoir "Playing Hurt", Sportscaster John Saunders Faces His Demons [wbur.org/hereandnow]

 

Earlier this week, Robin Young of the NPR/WBUR Boston radio program “Here & Now” interviewed Wanda Saunders, widow of the late sportscaster John Saunders. John Saunders’s memoir, “Playing Hurt”, was published posthumously on August 8, 2017. Saunders died in 2016. The book is about Saunders’s struggle with severe depression, in part a result of abuse by his father. The link below includes audio of the interview, the text of interview highlights, and an excerpt from “Playing Hurt”.

I haven’t yet read the book, but it sounds like yet another example of the long-term, devastating effects of ACEs.

[For more of this story, from wbur.org, go to http://www.wbur.org/hereandnow...aunders-playing-hurt]

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This is more from his own writing. It's at the end of the above piece.

Book Excerpt: 'Playing Hurt'

By John Saunders, with John U. Bacon

My father’s death didn’t affect me the way I thought it might. I didn’t feel relief or sadness or even happiness. I felt nothing. Not numbness, but simply nothing at all. But in hindsight I might have been fooling myself, ignoring the pain his death really caused me. Our last chance to make things right had passed, forever, which might have affected me far more than I let on to anyone, including myself.

I continued to blame myself for our dysfunctional relationship—and the one man who might have convinced me otherwise was now gone. As my depression deepened, my long-dormant impulse to cut or burn myself resurfaced. Freud used to say depression was anger turned inward against yourself, and my response to my dad’s death might have been proof.

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