Nothing Bad Between Us: A Mennonite Missionary's Daughter Finds Healing in Her Brokenness

One woman's story of survival from an abusive upbringing in a close-knit Mennonite community and her journey to forgiveness and reconciliation. Marlena's childhood in Paraguay was full of contradictions. Her father was both a heroic doctor treating patients with leprosy, and an abusive parent. Her Mennonite missionary community was both a devoted tribe and a controlling society. And Marlena longed both to be accepted and to escape to somewhere new. Then she was publicly humiliated . . . In Nothing Bad Between Us, follow Marlena as she takes control of her life and learns to be her authentic self, scars and imperfections included. This memoir is a story of brokenness and eventual redemption that taps into our collective yearning for healing and forgiveness. Praise for Nothing Bad Between Us "Riveting and spellbinding . . . A true story of healing, deep reflection, raw emotion, and triumph. Marlena has been able to see through her own pain in order to encourage and help bring healing to others. Highly recommended." --Misty Griffin, author of Tears of the Silenced: An Amish True Crime Memoir of Childhood Sexual Abuse, Brutal Betrayal, and Ultimate Survival "I found enormous inspiration and encouragement in this beautifully written account. This book could have been written only by someone possessed of uncommon love, compassion, and empathy. For anyone who has been broken and is in need of healing, please put Nothing Bad Between Us at the top of your list." --Larry Dossey, MD, New York Times-bestselling author of One Mind: How Our Individual Mind Is Part of a Greater Consciousness and Why It Matters

About the Author :
Marlena Fiol, PhD, is the author of the inspiring memoir Nothing Bad Between Us. Her book is a narrative exploration of her own identity journey from a tortured and rebellious childhood as a Mennonite missionary kid on a leprosy compound to eventual reconciliation with her people and within herself. Marlena has written dozens of articles exploring the themes of loss, suffering, healing, learning, love, redemption, and reconciliation. Before becoming a writer of literary essays and blogs, she received worldwide acclaim for her work on learning and identity. This work examined how people within and around organizations make sense of who they are in relation to others, and how that sense of self can change. Marlena and her husband Ed find both light playfulness and intense joy in their relationships with their grandchildren. They currently spend summers in lush, green Oregon and winters in sunny Arizona. You can learn more about Marlena and her work at marlenafiol.com. Phil Cousineau is an award-winning writer and filmmaker, teacher and editor, lecturer, storyteller and TV host. With more than thirty-five books translated into more than ten languages and 15 scriptwriting credits to his name, Cousineau has also appeared alongside mentors Joseph Campbell and Huston Smith. He is co-writer and host of Global Spirit and has also appeared on CNN, The Discovery Channel, NFL Films, and more. He has been interviewed for stories in Time, Newsweek, and The New York Times. Currently, Cousineau lives with his family in North Beach in San Francisco, California. Learn more about his work at http: //www.philcousineau.net.

Review :
"This is one of the most moving and, ultimately, hopeful books I have ever read. We think we know our academic friends and colleagues. We meet them as adults and learn about their families. Perhaps we hear about their childhoods. But we don't appreciate the complexity of what has made them the people they are, the interweaving of suffering and joy that composes their lives. Marlena Fiol's profound and courageous book is a significant gift to all of us in sharing these sufferings and joys. It is, in many ways, a story of forgiveness and redemption, for others and oneself, as these unfold over a lifetime." --Jean M. Bartunek, PhD, Robert A. and Evelyn J. Ferris chair, professor of management and organization at Boston College and former president of the Academy of Management "In this powerful memoir, Marlena Fiol stays grounded in the reality of life and the imperfect people who are all just doing the best they can. Human love is complicated because it is merely human: not all that wise, not all that enduring, not all that pure. And so it is that we are saved by forgiveness and compassion for self as well as for others. Thus, there is a resurrection in this narrative, and that is where we can be hopeful. In this book, we come in the end to a quiet peace, joy, and even a divine love that moves and heals despite human brokenness." --Stephen G. Post, PhD, director of the Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care and Bioethics, and professor of Family, Population and Preventive Medicine, Stony Brook University. Bestselling author of God and Love on Route 80: The Hidden Mystery of Human Connectedness "Marlena Fiol poignantly explores the multiplicity of relationships as they unfolded through various stages in her life...father-daughter, girl-boy, seeker-religion, lover-beloved, wife-husband, and mother-children. As we witness in her telling, strength, courage, vulnerability, and forgiveness allow the healing movement from judgment to compassion in wounded relationships. Her work is an important reminder to me about how dynamic and ever-changing relationships can be, and yet how crucial to my own pilgrimage." --Daniel Martin, cofounder and president of Pension Planners Northwest, a retirement plan consulting firm "I found Marlena's story riveting and spellbinding. Nothing Bad Between Us is a true story of healing, deep reflection, raw emotion and triumph. Marlena has been able to see through her own pain in order to encourage and help bring healing to others. Highly recommended." --Misty Griffin, author of Tears of the Silenced: An Amish True Crime Memoir of Childhood Sexual Abuse, Brutal Betrayal, and Ultimate Survival "Nothing Bad Between Us is a courageous story of both bringing to light family/community secrets and forgiving those who have been emotionally unavailable to us, failed to protect us, or even abused us. Marlena shows us that the path to surviving these kinds of abuses and neglect, while not linear, is achievable. It is through the truth, no matter how painful for all, that we can build a better future for ourselves, those we love, and the larger community." --Dawn Tankersley, EdD, early childhood specialist "Novelist Ernest Hemingway said, 'The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.' Some of the broken individuals emerge not just strong, but triumphant. That's Marlena Fiol's journey in Nothing Bad Between Us: A Mennonite Missionary's Daughter Finds Healing in Her Brokenness. I found enormous inspiration and encouragement in this beautifully written account. This book could have been written only by someone possessed of uncommon love, compassion, and empathy. For anyone who has been broken and is in need of healing, please put Nothing Bad Between Us at the top of your list." --Larry Dossey, MD, New York Times bestselling author of One Mind: How Our Individual Mind Is Part of a Greater Consciousness and Why It Matters "Because Marlena Fiol, in her struggle for freedom, was able to make peace with her father and her faith, she reveals a path toward an accomplished and bitterfree life. Hers is an epic journey of reconciliation." --Phil Cousineau, author of The Art of Pilgrimage "In this beautifully written memoir, Marlena Fiol tells a painful though ultimately inspirational story of difficulty and redemption. In her account of being raised in a sometimes-abusive Mennonite family in rural Paraguay, she shows how the path to family reconciliation can come through compassion and acceptance of others, rather than through insistence on their change. She also illustrates the important ways that connections to family--even to those who have been hurtful--can sometimes provide the greatest sources of strength and meaning." --Joshua Coleman, PhD, author of When Parents Hurt: Compassionate Strategies When You and Your Grown Child Don't Get Along "Of the infinite ways to tell a life story, Marlena has found words to take us deeply into her experience through the lens of her relationship with our broken, amazing and beloved father. She does so with courage and vulnerability. Though I find it impossible to read this story with any kind of objectivity, I am a witness to the pain and the healing that they both experienced as they struggled to find what all our hearts so deeply long for, that safe haven in one another." --Mary Lou Bonham, the sister of Marlena Fiol and a marriage and family therapist and licensed professional counselor "Nothing Bad Between Us is the compelling and deeply moving story of Marlena Fiol's journey to her authentic self. Raised in Paraguay, where her Mennonite parents founded a leprosy colony, Marlena struggled against the strictures and expectations of the church and her father's often brutal ways of trying to control his rebellious child. And as happens with a childhood where expectations overpower the true self, the struggle continues into adulthood, even when the parents are far away. Marlena Fiol is a fierce searcher with a willingness to examine herself and her own frailties and find compassion in others through this. With a pure and honest voice, Marlena invites you on the complicated journey of love." --Jackie Shannon Hollis, author of This Particular Happiness: A Childless Love Story "Reconciliation can't happen unless people commit to entering the brokenness and pain to seek a new way forward. It requires perseverance, honesty, and humility. It is not easy. But, on the other side, a restored relationship emerges--not the same as before, but beautiful and special. In Nothing Bad Between Us, Marlena Fiol bravely describes the process of reconciliation with her father. The pain and brokenness are evident, but so, too, is grace. Her story will inspire others that risking reconciliation can bring new beauty to their families, churches, and communities." --Alan Claassen Thrush, Mennonite Central Committee "My dog hated Marlena Fiol's Nothing Bad Between Us: A Mennonite Missionary's Daughter Finds Healing in Her Brokenness . She is usually quite tolerant of my reading choices because she knows she can easily distract me and I will put down my reading to tend to her every whim. Once I began Nothing Bad Between Us, however, I was a goner. I simply had to finish the story of Marlena's childhood: in Paraguay, in a leper colony, with a brilliant and brutal father amidst a judgmental community of Mennonite missionaries. How many ways could this go wrong for a girl-child who was perhaps more brilliant and stubborn than her pious father? Marlena's story is one of spiritual struggle wrapped in adventure." --Karen Brazeau, former director of Oregon's Juvenile Justice System and associate director of the Oregon Department of Education. "Revolving around the relationship between daughter and father, Nothing Bad Between Us is at once a brave, vulnerable, unflinching, warm, disturbing, tragic, and ultimately inspirational story that deftly dismantles our often-simplistic cultural accounts about what love is and what it 'should' be. If you've ever struggled to live up to your own and others' often unrealistic expectations of what it means to be a loving child, friend, coworker, parent, partner, or other role in an important relationship, this book can help you find the insights and strength to accept and forgive yourself and those you are trying to love. If you can do that, you are not promised a perfect relationship, but one where you can honestly say, 'doa ess nuscht tweschen ons.' ('There's nothing bad between us.')" --Michael G. Pratt, PhD, O'Connor Family Professor, PhD Director, Management & Organization Department, Affiliated Faculty, Department of Psychology, Carroll School of Management, Boston College "Dreams, principles, and values deeply inform our personal narratives, the stories of our life that shapes how we live. Marlena Fiol's fearless recollection of life with her father reminds us that no matter how complete and noble the narrative, we need to remember to say Thank you, What do you think?, I'm sorry, and I love you. If not, even the noblest narrative will cast an overbearing shadow on others, especially our children. Thankfully, Marlena's sometimes self-destructive struggle with her father's shadow ends in recovery and reconciliation. In time, she was able to author her own life. And yes, even her father came to see that life is better when he freed those he loved to be themselves. This is a sometimes tough but always inspiring read." --Jim Walsh, PhD, Arthur F. Thurnau professor at the University of Michigan and former president of the Academy of Management "Dr. Marlena Fiol shares her personal story of navigating her life journey to embrace authentic love, forgiveness and healing in her latest book, Nothing Bad Between Us. But it is not just her story, for her book touches on everyone's longing to understand and experience authentic love. Much like Joseph Campbell's Hero's Story is everyone's story, Dr. Fiol helps each reader feel the touch points to their own journey toward forgiveness and healing." --Steven Gurgevich, PhD, licensed psychologist specializing in psychotherapy and hypnotherapy "Nothing Bad Between Us, by Marlena Fiol, is a deeply personal reflection on an evolving life. It is a story in three parts--the one she suffered as a child, the one she escaped to, and the one she chose. Fiol reflects on events and their meaning in intimate detail, especially the complicated relationship with her heroic and sometimes abusive father. Anyone struggling with the complexities of relationships with significant others will benefit from reading this book. It is everyone's story at some level, but a story that only few can sort out and resolve in a way that leads to joy for having had those experiences." --Larry Peters, PhD, Emeritus Faculty at The Neeley School of Business, TCU, and author of The Simple Truths About Leadership "Promise. Failure. Redemption. Forgiveness. Love. Marlena takes us to very dark places--places that most people fear to go, even in the sheltered security of their own minds. The rawness of her revelations makes us ache for her, hoping that she will find her way out of the darkness and pain. Triumphantly, she discovers the power of love and forgiveness. This is not a 'love conquers all' story, but rather a story of dogged persistence through her refusal to let herself be defined by others' perceptions. In the end, she preserves the fierce autonomy she displayed as a child but tempers it as an adult with an awareness of human fallibility. We may want to be good, but goodness often lies beyond our grasp. It's ok to settle for 'nothing bad.' " --Howard E. Aldrich, PhD, Kenan Professor of Sociology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill "In Nothing Bad Between Us, Marlena takes readers to her secret safe place in the forest, through intimate heartbreak and the love and pain of one family's journey, ending with hard-earned forgiveness and reconciliation. The work she has done to evolve physically, emotionally, cognitively, and spiritually will inspire you to face difficult challenges in your own life with courage and vulnerability." --Rita Berglund, psychotherapist, retreat leader, and author of An Alphabet about Kids with Cancer "Marlena Fiol offers us inroads to our own reflection, redemption and growth by describing her incredible story in Nothing Bad Between Us: A Mennonite Missionary's Daughter Finds Healing in Her Brokenness. Fiol grew up in a Low-German Mennonite community in Paraguay. Her missionary parents were known as experts in the treatment of leprosy. This backdrop offers an additional layer of richness to what would be a powerful story in any setting. From my perspective, with a focus on innovation and change, I learned new ways of seeing the behavior and beliefs of others and then being able to create new approaches built on those foundations. This is a personal and powerful story, and I find myself returning to the ideas often when struggling to blend my perspective with others." --Terri Griffith, Keith Beedie Chaired Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Simon Fraser University, and author of The Plugged-In Manager: Get in Tune With Your People, Technology, and Organization to Thrive "Marlena Fiol's story rings so true to me, starting with the characteristics and history we share: Mennonite childhoods, academic careers, mothers of two children, daughters of strong fathers, and memoirists. I was never beaten by my father nor shamed by the church the way Fiol was. Nor did I grow up in a multi-lingual household with a recent history of religious persecution. However, we readers love stories not because they are so much like our own but because they contain universal truths in concrete form. If they are especially deep and powerful stories, they bloom like native plants in the home soil. This book finally arrives in the place where it began, reaching a hard-won level of forgiveness that not only will move readers but cause them to search their own souls, looking for the place where they too can locate the love and peace they have craved all their lives." --Shirley H. Showalter, PhD, former professor and president, Goshen College, and former foundation executive, The Fetzer Institute. Author of Blush: A Mennonite Girl Meets a Glittering World "Marlena's story is a modern odyssey: a life's journey punctuated with significant obstacles--some imposed and some self-inflicted, but all tests in finding a way to her personal and spiritual home. These are life-defining tests: public humiliation and exclusion from the faith of her missionary family, a life-threating medical condition that left her with virtually no chance of creating the family she viewed as life-fulfilling, and her most enduring personal test--the humiliation of being physically abused and publicly disowned by her beloved but stern and uncompromising father. She passes all these tests with storied victories. She is triumphant in her life-odyssey, not by intervention from the gods, but by a more relatable, mortal means--a life well lived." --Robert J. Meeker, EdD, president of SOI Systems Inc. and developer of Educational Systems "With unflinching honesty, Marlena Fiol traces her journey from a rebellious childhood, rejected by both her Mennonite church and her devout father, to healing and reconciliation. As a physician and worldwide tai chi teacher, I find it especially remarkable that the healing did not arise out of finding logical points of agreement. Instead, it was grounded in one of the most fundamental principles of tai chi, that through receiving and redirecting the energy beneath harmful words and actions, it is possible to neutralize conflicts and move toward peaceful resolution. I highly recommend this book for anyone wishing to end negative cycles of reactivity in a relationship." --Paul Lam, MD, founder of the Tai Chi for Health Institute, and author of Born Strong: From Surviving the Great Famine to Teaching Tai Chi to Millions "It's rare to read a book with such intimate and personal details of a rebellious young woman growing up and maturing into motherhood. When it is set against the backdrop of a Mennonite community in Paraguay and her strained relationship with her father who's a respected elder, it is especially daring. Memorable!" --Kerry Cannon, bronze sculptor, creator of Ceramic Break Sculpture Park, Australia "Otherness comes in a variety of forms and legacies. Marlena Fiol's account of growing up a German American girl raised by Mennonite missionary parents in a leper colony in Paraguay poignantly captures the familial struggles and existential angst of growing up Other. In a time of unprecedented migration and mobility, her journey of alienation, self-awareness, and ultimate self-healing offers hope and guidance for all who fall outside the mainstream." --Mary Yoko Brannen, MBA, PhD, Dr. Merc. H.C. Honorary Professor of International Business, Copenhagen Business School, Professor Emerita, San Jose State University "For all of us on the journey of life and love, Marlena Fiol reminds us that the bonds between us and our parents is perhaps life's strongest. And may require the most work. And a large dose of forgiveness. At times poignant and pained, Nothing Bad Between Us reminds us, as the author says, how important it is to 'feel the salve of compassionate memory.' " --Doug Bradley, author of Who'll Stop the Rain: Respect, Remembrance, and Reconciliation in Post-Vietnam America and coauthor of We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War "Marlena Fiol, PhD, has masterfully blended her professional expertise in identity and learning with her own raw identity-changing experiences to bring us this vulnerable and inspirational story of personal transformation. Honest and brave in its detail, Nothing Bad Between Us begins as a heartrending account of a young girl escaping the confines of her strict and often abusive Mennonite community in Paraguay and ultimately offers a stirring testament to the power of authenticity and forgiveness." --Elaine Romanelli, PhD, Emeritus Faculty and Senior Associate Dean, McDonough School of Business, Georgetown University "In deeply personal stories, Marlena Fiol explores the opposing pulls of belonging and identity, approval and authority. Family vignettes spanning a lifetime peel away layers of complexity as father and daughter negotiate absolute belief and fragile reality. Yet brutal judgement gives way to deep love as the author finds resolution of these same internal contradictions just in time for--and perhaps through--full reconciliation. A thoroughly engaging and spiritually challenging read!" --Tom Bellamy, PhD, professor emeritus of education, University of Washington Bothell