We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Merle Yost. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Merle below.

Hi Merle, thanks for joining us today. What was your school or training experience like? Share an anecdote or two that you feel illustrate important aspects or the overall nature of your schooling/training experience.

In the second or third year of my graduate program I took the required class in Marriage and Family Counseling. One assignment was writing a three generation autobiography from the opposite sex parent’s perspective.

Outside of my parent, I had shared with very few people the truth of my childhood. Writing my mother’s story was a profound turning point in my life. I was essentially raised in a family cult organized around my mother’s delusion of sitting on the right hand of God and ruling the world. It was the real beginning of my healing. Once i wrote it, I was free to be me, tell my truth. My therapist suddenly had a much better idea of who I was and why I was so strange, and I was strange. Though, I did not really know it until then.

Mother’s Story
At least part of it

MERLE YOST
FEB 06, 2024
This was a writing assignment in my Marriage & Family Therapy class in Graduate School in 1990. We were instructed to write a three-generation autobiography from the opposite-sex parents’ perspective.

MOTHER’S STORY 4-22-90

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Merle Yost

Marriage & Family B
Michael Searle, Instructor

A note from Merle:

I realize that this will read and sound like fiction. This fantasy world is the world of my childhood and the reality of my family today. It was and is a daily and major part of my family interactions. It has been a focus in my therapy. The story goes on and on and has an endless amount of detail. Someday, I may write a great American fantasy novel. I have plenty of material. There are many holes and pieces that do not seem to make sense. I chose to tell the story this way because to have more detail would have taken a substantial increase in pages, gone into much and I have already almost doubled the length of the assignment.

Writing this has helped me to get a better handle on some of the grains of truth and maybe given me some insight as to why she made up all these stories. I wonder if her childhood was so awful that she had to create a fantasy from the things she heard on the radio to survive. Also, to the best of my memory, the stories began after Mother packed up us kids one night and moved to St. Louis, a hundred miles away, to save her marriage. I think that was the most frightened I have ever seen her. I wonder if this was the method she used to exclude the rest of the world and keep us all within her power, especially my father.

In high school, I began to suspect that all of this was made up. It was not until college, when I moved out of the house, that I was able to admit to myself that it was all a lie. I am beginning to accept emotionally that it was all a lie and the impact on me. This assignment has been very difficult, but I believe I have benefited from it.

If you have any questions, I will do my best to answer them. For a few minutes, suspend your logical mind and welcome to my family.

Mother’s Story

My name is Mary Jane Yost. My legal maiden name was Weaver. My father, Merle, was a cripple. As a child, he broke his back. However, he did not allow that to be an obstacle in his getting on with his life. He became a Marshall for the State of Illinois. That is how he supported our family in the difficult years following the depression. It also gave him the opportunity to travel around the country. That is how he met my real mother.

He was married to a woman named Flava. They did not have a happy marriage, but they did not divorce because it simply was not done on that day. While traveling, he met a woman named Betty Cook. She was a rich woman, heir to the Cook Paint fortune. She was the love of his life. They spent as much time together as possible. Betty became pregnant at about the same time as Flava. For whatever reason, I suspect that when Flava’s baby died shortly after childbirth, they substituted me for her dead child. I was raised as Flava’s and Merle’s second child. I had an older brother who was really the child of my father and Flava’s sister, Jane. Jane had a wild youth and gave up her child so that he would not have the stigma of being a bastard.

We were a very poor family that did not even have indoor plumbing. Hubert, my brother, and I worked in the fields to help support the family. Neither one of us got much of an education. I had to drop out in the eighth grade, and it was not until my late twenties that I was able to get my GED. I have worked very hard to educate myself, taken many college classes, and have several certificates to my credit.

Mother (Flava) did not work. She was always too frail. She did seem to be angry all the time. My childhood was like living two separate lives. At home with Flava, it was terrible. Mostly, I tried to stay out of her way. Either she suspected I was not her daughter, or she did not like girls. For whatever reason, I felt she hated me. She loved my brother. He could do no wrong. He was lazy, arrogant, and stupid. Whenever he did something wrong, I got punished for it. Nothing I ever did was good enough or right.

The only person in this world who really cared for me was my grandmother, Willis. She was Flava’s mother. She always had time to answer my questions and teach me new things. I remember her giving me my first chance to bake a lemon pie. I added lots of lemons and not much else. She ate the pie and complimented me on how she could really taste the lemon. She was the bright light that saved me when I spent time with Flava.

That was one world; however, as I said, I lived in two different worlds. My father traveled a lot. As a little girl, he took me with him sometimes. That’s when I got to see my real mother, Betty. You see, I did not know then that she was my mother. But I felt so special around her. I had my own room in her house in Hyannis Port, next door to the Kennedys. She bought me these pretty clothes that I could only wear there. The only bridge between my two worlds was my father. He was not around much, but I loved him so much. He died when I was thirteen. I really felt my world come to an end. Betty died shortly after Dad. While grieving, she took some sleeping pills and fell out of her high-rise apartment in New York. Betty’s mother, Evaline, tried to make it a suicide, but I don’t believe it.

A family named the John’s had a house next to my mother, Betty’s house. They were a large family with several sons. One of the sons, James Joseph John, took me under his wing whenever I was around. He was a bodybuilder, a doctor, and a friend of my father’s. When my father died, he looked me up at Flava’s to see if he could help. He substituted a look-a-like in my place so that I would not be missed, and he took me off to see the world. He was involved in the Korean War and was the Surgeon General of the United States. Naturally, we went to the front lines.

I was involved in several missions and was captured a few times. I am not in good health today because of some of the things that were done to me then. While I was in Korea, I met a pilot who was an Indian from the Cherokee Nation Reservation in Oklahoma. He was to be the next chief. He was one mission away from finishing his tour of duty when we were married. He went on a mission and was killed. I found out later that he was really my cousin. Betty’s mother was a full-blooded Cherokee and a member of the Cherokee Nation Reservation royal family in Oklahoma.

James John was there to comfort me. We practically lived together. We weren’t having sex or anything, but everyone assumed that we were. His mother, Myrtle, eventually insisted that we get married because it looked improper. James died of cancer less than a year later.

Betty and James were very wealthy and left their fortune to me. Each of their mothers was determined to see that I would never see a dime of it. After 37 years, it is still tied up in court. I was called the poor little rich girl by the people who knew me. I returned to my life on the farm, determined that I would escape and make a life for myself. Before he died, James told me the truth about my birthright and put most of the pieces together for me. To this day, I still have questions about why things were done as they were. I can only trust that God has a reason, and maybe someday I will be told why.

Shortly after returning to Flava’s farm, I met the third man I would marry. He was a farm boy from Salem, Illinois, named Gerald Gale Yost. His background was like my world with Flava. He only made it through the sixth grade. I don’t think we were in love as much as we were both looking to escape from our home life. Both of our families were against our getting married, and that is the thing that sealed it. If our mothers had kept their mouths shut, we would probably never have married.

I was determined that when my children started to date and were thinking about marriage, I would keep my mouth shut. It was probably the most difficult thing I have ever done in my life. I do feel, for the most part, that I succeeded. I also wanted my children to feel wanted. Having children was my most important goal in life. We had moved to Seattle, Washington, to get away from our families, but the weather did not agree with me. We then moved to the desert, Tempe, Arizona, where our first child, Terry Gale Yost, was born nine months after we were married.

Unfortunately, my health did not improve there, and we moved to Missouri. We tried for six more years to have another child. I got pregnant several times but always miscarried. Finally, I was able to carry twins to term. A boy named Merle James Yost and a girl named Neata Jane Yost. Sadly, though, I was pregnant with four children. Two had miscarried during the pregnancy. The doctors wanted to take the other two, but I was determined to have more children.

My marriage to Gerald has never been wonderful. Probably the best time was when the kids were small and Gerald worked construction. He was gone a week or two at a time. The house and kids were mine, and I was enjoying life a lot. I knew that he was sleeping around when he was gone, but I tried to ignore it if it was not serious. One time, it did get serious, and I had to pack up and move almost overnight to save my marriage.

Around this time, I decided to let the kids and Gerald in on my childhood and the other life I was leading. When James John died, he did not go to heaven. His work was not yet finished. Instead, his spirit went to a cave deep in the earth called Mother. This was the headquarters of an organization called NATO. We later changed the name to THE ROCK to avoid confusion with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. This organization was created by God, the Father, to rule the earth. Known only to the most powerful world leaders, when the time is right, THE ROCK will come out of hiding and take control of the world.

Because of my bloodline, the Cherokee royal family, and a distant relative of Queen Elizabeth of England, God the Father chose me to lead the organization. I am assisted by angels and robots from other planets. I am in constant communication with them, and they guide me when I have problems in my everyday life. I needed to tell Gerald and the kids because the robot that substitutes for me when I am away on the Father’s business has some slight differences. I did not want them to be frightened, and it was hard to keep this double life secret from the ones I love.

The Archangel Sesame is my personal guardian, and each of the kids has their own protector. I worried a lot less about them, knowing that their guardians were with them always. I slowly broke the pieces to them so they would not be overwhelmed. In general, they have taken it all well. It helped when I started telling them about the roles God, the Father, had chosen for each of us. Merle has been chosen to succeed me, and he will be brilliant. I have raised him with this very purpose in mind.

The twins have been the joy of my life. I learned a lot from raising Terry six years before the twins came along. Many of the mistakes I made with Terry I was able to correct with the twins. Terry is my first, and there will always be a special place in my heart for him. Even though I don’t like the way that he turned out, the memory of him as a little boy will live in me forever. Someday, after I die, he will understand all the things that I tried to give him. It breaks my heart that he has turned out to be such a spoiled, lazy man. I am afraid that I must take some of the responsibility for it, but I will not take it all. He is a man now with children of his own, and someday he may grow up.

Merle has been the one most like me. He is honest, straightforward, determined, and has a mind of his own. I really wanted him to be a doctor like James John. He has such a beautiful voice; I had hoped that he would become a professional gospel singer. I had so many dreams for my children. Most of all I wanted them to have an easier life than I have had.

We have been a very tight family and, out of necessity, have kept the world out. No one would believe all of this without proof, so it is easier to say nothing. I have to say that I am getting impatient after all these years. Merle is becoming more distant all the time. He has moved over a thousand miles away. I pray all the time that he will come to his senses, find a girl, and settle down. James John warned me while the twins were still in the womb that I should be thankful that it was twins because Flava was praying for a boy, and Gerald was praying for a girl. He said that if there were not one of each, their sexual identity might be confused. I still wonder what went wrong.

Merle seems to be happy with that boy he has lived with for several years. God, the Father, has not said anything. I wonder if he is unhappy about Merle’s lifestyle. I still have not told Gerald. He is not very open-minded. I am afraid that he will try to hurt Merle or throw him out of the family. Merle and his dad were so angry at each other for so long. It is really good to see them get along so well together. Gerald has grown to be so proud of Merle’s accomplishments that I would hate to spoil that.

Neata has never really left home. I guess that I am guilty of that also. I so did not want her to feel the rejection that I did that I may have overdone it. Her husband is a carbon copy of Gerald. She has tried to tell her husband and step-kids about THE ROCK, but they seem somewhat resistant. It must be hard for her to maintain this double life. Fortunately, she can always talk to me.

I must close now. I want my children to be proud of themselves and hold their heads high. I worry about them constantly, but I trust that God, the Father, and their guardian angels will take care of them. I know that Merle’s education will serve him well as the Supreme Commander of THE ROCK after I am gone. He is so much like me, and I love him so much.

PostScript

When I wrote this, I had not shared any of this with my therapists or anyone else. I remember giving this to my psychotherapist at the time, and each subsequent one and seeing the expression on their face was revealing and healing. I think that my weirdness made so much more sense. They were kind and supportive and helped me heal. I can never thank them enough.

We were isolated from the world and told that if we shared who we really were, we would be killed. It was functionally a cult, isolated to the family members.

I had few social skills and was very odd. There was much more going on, which I will reveal in subsequent posts. It is not surprising I had ulcers at 6 and 12. It was not a fun childhood, and repairing the damage has taken me decades.

Curiously, my brother and I were never close and have never discussed any of this.

I did share a lot of this with my partner. My family loved him. He was much nicer than me. He was the perfect Southern Gentleman. I teased him a lot, and one of my favorite teases was that I would tell the family he knew everything, and they could talk openly around him. He would turn red and insist that I not. I remember sharing this with his mother, and her only response was she was nuts or some other similar euphemism. It was a relief to have him around them because they did not talk about all of this stuff, and it almost seemed normal.

By the way, I got an A on the assignment.

Merle, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I did not grow up thinking I wanted to be a psychotherapist. My mother had other plans for me. She wanted me to be a doctor and professional singer. I spent the first 20 years of my life singing at weddings, funerals, Masonic events, church, etc. I majored in music in College and mostly in High School as well.

But as I went out into the world, I ended up managing stores for Southland Corporation and it turned out I was really good at it. College did not last long. Music as it turned out was my path. I did finish my Bachelor’s in Management.

Having grown up in a religious cult, I had an allergy to religion but fortunately there was a New Age movement happening and I had friends and a therapist that introduced me to it. I found a home with others that were trying to make sense of the world.

The work in my therapy was building a person that was not dependent on being who my mother wanted me to be. My partner and I moved from Tucson, AZ to Oakland, CA. We had wandered around the northwest a bit, but the SF Bay was where I found schools that called to me, and I went to John F Kennedy University.

Buddhism taught me that I had planned everything that was happening to me in this lifetime. That truth resonated very deeply in me. And I enjoyed my therapy with all the different therapists that I worked with. It was clear to me that this was where I wanted to be. Helping others find their truth and heal their pain so that they could be a complete person.

I just knew where I was supposed to be.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

My Sexual Abuse
This is graphic and painful.

MERLE YOST
FEB 15, 2024
I was nine years old. I remember little about that night: the sound of footsteps on the staircase to my bedroom and then a man standing over me in my bed. I only remember leaving my body, rushing up to the ceiling, out the window, and then blackness. Every part of me said, “Leave!” I did.

The next day was fuzzy. I was experiencing all these feelings — sexual feelings that only later I would come to understand. But while I was not yet sexual and was innocent of sexual feelings and of the ways a parent could try to destroy a child, that morning after, I was frozen. Something inside of me broke; some part of me was gone. When I thought about getting on the school bus the next day, I got sick to my stomach. Some part of me knew I was no longer like my peers. I was different. Indeed, my innocence was lost, but even more, a part of me was buried that would take over 25 years to begin reclaiming. The terrified little boy left, never expecting to return.

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Not being able to remember the actual violence of the force of my father’s cock thrust deep into my throat made returning to my body and into myself more difficult, but leaving was the only way I could’ve survived that night and the nights like it to follow.

We lived in a two-story log cabin 20 miles from town in the middle of the forest. The 20-acre farm had pigs, chickens, a pack of dogs, and my twin sister as my only playmate. Since we were isolated, with very little interaction with the outside world, those years of having best friends and learning crucial social skills were mostly missed. The price we paid was enormous.

My primary memory from the time after this happened was that I never wanted to go back to school, and I had been a kid who loved school. I was smart; it got me out of the isolation of the house, and I was visible. Overwhelmed by feelings of erotic energy that I could neither identify nor knew how to discharge, I recall walking naked outside in the backyard, flooded with those feelings, wishing I could throw them up and out of me. The chickens and dogs wandering around were oblivious to the pain and confusion of this strange little boy.

The only way Dad could assert his dominance over me was through sexual violence. It was the genesis of the combination of sex and power that came to define my sexuality. It became not who I was attracted to but how I was attracted to them.

I was forced to return to school two weeks after that first night. Each time the school bus came by to take my sister and me to school, I was sick to my stomach. I was overwhelmed with shame, though I had no word for it then. After the bus left with my sister, I would wander around listlessly, but I felt safe being alone and invisible. Consciously, I had no idea what it was that was making going to school so unsafe. My parents blackmailed me by withholding my favorite TV show, Marcus Welby M.D. until I got back on the bus. I went back, but being at school was never the same after that, nor was I.

My sister was my father’s favorite, and my older brother was my mother’s favorite. My brother’s endless conflict with our father and his view of being the ultimate victim in the world led him to a place where he faced a choice of jail or the army. After my brother’s long, painful fall from grace, I became my mother’s favorite. I went from the lost child to the center of attention. I was always smarter and more verbal than my dad, and after he had vanquished my brother. He expected to return to the center of my mother’s universe, and then I came out of nowhere.

Mother would talk openly in the living room about sex. I distinctly recall her saying something about the way to avoid getting a girl pregnant was to “use the other hole.” Over 30 years later, as I was driving one day, I suddenly recalled what she was saying. I was in amused shock as the pieces fell into place. It was like waking up from a long sleep and suddenly understanding what had happened.

Mother had long bitterly complained out loud about Dad wanting her to suck his dick and how disgusted she was by that idea. This was just an ordinary family conversation in the evening after dinner as we sat and watched TV. For Dad, sexually abusing me was a win-win. It meant he could assert his domination over me and get a blow job at the same time. After that first late night in my bed, he began playing sexual domination games with me in the living room in front of the family. Dad spent most of his time naked. His favorite game was to trap me between his legs while he was watching TV with the family and hold me there until I submitted and acknowledged his power. He was determined that I was going to be submissive to him on all levels.

These living room games went on until I entered adolescence. I was being groomed and shaped into experiencing sex as a power dynamic above all. Later, as I entered puberty, I was genuinely confused about my relationships and attraction to men. I was never sexually attracted to women, but my desire for a dominant male figure, sexually speaking, was predominant in my fantasies. Part of the irony of my childhood and these experiences is that my twin and I were kept incredibly naïve regarding actual knowledge about the mechanics of sex. I was a senior in high school before I understood how girls got pregnant. Even though I had a twin sister, I did not understand the anatomical differences between males and females other than breasts. Nudity was a common thing in our house, but I was never really interested in the female form. I just never paid that much attention.

I believe Mother knew what was happening in my bed. In her twisted reality, she felt that by staying with Dad and running some degree of interference to protect us from his violence, rather than leaving, all the kids owed her. This was just something I could do to reduce the sexual pressure on her.

Our brother, who was six years older, was, in retrospect, hypersexual. While it is doubtful, there was overt sexual abuse of him, the covert sexual satisfaction my father got from his physical conflict with my brother was sexual abuse. In the ongoing war between Dad and Terry for Mother’s attention, there were frequent altercations and battles that I was too young to understand, nor could I really sympathize with my brother. He was this distant being, bigger, older, and in constant conflict throughout his life. I was invisible and kept my distance. Being invisible was what kept me safe.

Mother’s emotional incest started with Terry then I became the recipient of her attention. While married to dad, it was Terry that was the center of her heart. That intrusion into him was devastating and prevented him from being the person he might have been. That would explain the hypersexuality of my brother as well. He became somewhat narcissistic. The only positive attention he got was from being very attractive. 6’2”, with dark hair, blue eyes, and an all-American beefcake, he got lots of attention from girls.

My parents probably assumed that our older brother had educated my sister and me about sex. Terry had little to do with me, and not overtly that much to do with my sister.

We had three rooms in the attic with walls in between but no doors. The stairwell to my room was the only entrance and exit to the rooms. There was no insulation or carpeting. It was stark, and everyone could hear everything. My room was at the top of the stairs. My sister’s room was next to me, and my brother’s room was at the end.

In my early twenties, after I had come out to my family, my brother put a note on the windshield of my dad’s truck, telling him that he had made me gay. Dad, with his brilliant ability to ignore what was in front of him, did not pay any attention. It would be many years and years after I was in a relationship that he finally put the pieces together. Mother was sure he could not handle it. The irony of my family’s relationship to reality never ceased to amaze me.

I did not speak to my father for years. I was so angry at him. Even without remembering the sexual abuse, there was plenty of other abuse to justify my silence. Frankly, I was not even sure why I was so angry, but since I spent most of my childhood in anger, it just seemed normal.

Oddly, my father wanted a relationship with me as an adult. I was the successful son. I went to college, and I had jobs, I supported myself, I did not have children, I wasn’t supporting. I was not my brother. So, Dad attempted to have some relationship with me by showing up at my workplace, a deli, and asking me to make a sandwich for him. As he aged, he mellowed. That did not undo his unowned or unapologized for behavior from my childhood.

The emotional incest from my mother and the sexual incest from my father both had a profound impact on my own ability to develop sexually. Dad was sadistic to my brother, our animals, and me. I saw family pets slaughtered out of his rage. To this day, I haven’t wanted a pet. I would get attached, and the pain of prematurely losing so many animals made me unwilling to put myself through that again.

The sexual abuse awakened my sexual feelings too soon, but they came with neither a roadmap nor an explanation. It was all thrust upon me and forced me to feel things I was not yet ready for, neither emotionally nor physically. I had no education to understand what was happening. I was this naïve little gay boy who had no idea what “gay” even was. I liked to draw, read tons of books, and I could sing. I used to design and make clothes for my twin sister’s Barbie dolls. My mother was determined to turn me into a doctor. I had plenty of trucks, which I enjoyed, and a chemistry set, which made no sense to me.

I was suddenly aware of my father in a new way. There was an energy that I did not have words to describe, combined with the fear. He was a ladies’ man. He had several affairs. My mother was long-suffering, putting up with his antics because she was convinced, she could not survive on her own. While their sex life was living room conversation, I did not understand it. They talked to us as if we were adults. My brother seemed to understand, but I was oblivious to him. Six years older, he was like an adult with no power. Brooding, withdrawn, a committed victim with a leather jacket emblazoned with “The Born Loser” on the reverse, he was a million miles away from me, both intellectually and emotionally. Sexually, he was not of much interest to me. The sexuality Dad forced on me got my attention. He was already the bad, scary guy in the house, but the addition of the sexual energy changed everything. There was some mystery that I needed to solve. I saw him differently, but I did not understand what that was. I recall showering whenever he would shower. I was trying to find intimate time with him. I was compelled to get closer. What I wanted; I had no idea.

The sexual abuse took place from when I was in the 3rd to the 7th grade. When my family moved from the backwoods of the Missouri Ozarks to the slums of Tucson, Arizona, during the year I was in the 7th grade, everything shifted. I had no idea why. Again, I blocked out the memories of the activities in my bed that had happened for years. I had memories of the footsteps many times on the stairs, the figure over my bed in the dark, and my leaving my body. I don’t know how many times it happened. It was more than three. I suspect over time that hearing the footsteps conditioned me to leave. The family story about the footsteps was that it was a ghost. The house was haunted, and this just became part of the family story.

I started graduate school in psychology on my 30th birthday. It was the beginning of a long journey to become a licensed therapist. Several years later, I decided to train in a new, promising psychotherapy technique called EMDR, or Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing. As is common when learning a new therapy, you practice on each other in the training. EMDR involves directly targeting a particular trauma to help clear it so that we can understand the healing from the inside out.

During the training, the instructors asked us to pick small ‘t’ traumas rather than big ‘T’ traumas, not wanting to open a can of worms in a training situation. We were encouraged to pick something small. I chose a lifelong fear of tall buildings. When I looked up at a tall building, I felt like I would pass out. We did the setup and began the reprocessing. Within about 30 seconds, my head went back, a cock went down my throat, and I dissociated. It took me weeks to come fully back. That was the beginning of the memories and a significant step in my healing journey.

Close to 30 years later. I would train in an energy healing modality called Pranic Healing. It is Buddhism based healing method. I found it interesting, but it did not appeal to me. At a dinner party with friends, I was introduced to a woman that was a Pranic Healer and had been doing it for many years. We hit it off and she agreed to do some work on me. That work lasted over a year. Eventually, we targeted the occluded memory, as I never got back most of the memories. This disturbed deep layers of buried feelings. We decided the actual memories were less important than the clearing of whatever trauma was left in my body. The work profoundly changed me. I had to go through adolescents again. It was one of the most curious experiences of my life. I am so grateful for this work, and it has changed me. The invisible wall around me went away. People would hug me and come toward me. I was softer and more chill. My intensity was available but not front and center as usual.

That year of Pranic Healing completely changed my experience of me and being in the world. Guys are suddenly coming toward me.

PS: We now know that phobias can be a cover for trauma. I am certainly living proof of that. Also, I have seen it in my clinical experience, and I have heard this from other therapists: sexual abuse victims find each other. This happens in gay and straight couples.

There is a growing feeling that boys are more often sexually abused than girls. Neither should ever be sexually abused, but it is a reality that children should never have to face, but they do.

If you could go back, would you choose the same profession, specialty, etc.?

Being 65, I have spent a lot of time the past few years reviewing my life and choices. I have no regrets about my work choices. Each has been very beneficial to me. My Management degree led to my first three books, the first being a best seller, Reflections for Managers. My 6th book was a result of my healing journey and being a therapist. I have a wonderful community of people that are committed to their growth as well as mine. Psychotherapists are a different breed. You have to be able to set your stuff to the side and just be a witness to other peoples stories and pain. It is a profound and humbling gift that they share their pain and joy with us everyday.

While I had no biological children, I have had many clients I parented and even more young men that I mentored. I am proud of all of them.

I have had many therapists and people tell me it is amazing that I am still alive after my going through my childhood. Neither parent was safe. But each of them were graphic lessons in how not to be in the world. I could either be a victim or own my journey. I owned it and I am a better person because of it.

Contact Info:

• Website: Merleyost.com, unspokenboundaries.com, Merlism.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/loveyost/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/loveyost
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/merle-james-yost-lmft-182116/