You're Not Finished Yet

Karen E. Herrick was a daughter of an often violent alcoholic. She married and later divorced her high school sweetheart, with whome she had two children; then married a former boss, moving with him to New Jersey after a job transfer from California. The promise of an idyllic life ultimately fell apart as her husband's alcoholism took its toll on the family. Herrick took her three children and left the marriage for good. With no self-confidence and no particular sense of direction, she began taking courses at a local college. After earning an associate's degree, she transferring to a university where she graduated magna cum laude the year her divorce became final. She then entered the graduate program at the Rutgers School of Socil Work with a minor in Alcohol Studies. Despite her academic success and like other adults raised in addictive homes, she struggled with a deep sense of inadequacy, believing that everyone else was smarter than she and that her admission to graduate school was "a fluke." It was while taking a class at Rutgers that she recognized the pattern of dysfunction the instructor was talking about was the one she had followed in her life. Upon graduation with a specialization in addiction, she worked in a school system installing a drug and alcohol curriculum K-8 and worked as a crises counselor there. She also had a part-time private practice and began teaching a course she designed at a local college entitled "Alcohol, Drugs and Human Behavior" in order that other adults from dysfunctional homes could identify the same patterns in their lives without having to acquire a master's degree. She was a founding member of the NJ Coalition for Children of Alcoholics; a volunteer group that sponsored education conferences. In February of 1998, she appeared on the McLaughlin Group, a weekend discussion program centered on the current event - the characteristics of adult children of alcoholics as they related to the then President of the US, Willim Clinton. She has worked with thousands of individuals and families affected by addiction creating a series of therapeutic goals that have aided clients in their growth, development and maturation. This is a spiritual experience of an "ordinary kind." By blending those efforts with the use of Jungian Psychology she explored spiritual and near-death experiences by obtaining a PhD. She has been very interested in the statistic that two-thirds of widow's experience having their husbands appear to them after their death. Her book "You're Not Finished Yet" ends with two chapters on developing spiritual language by naming different spiritual experiences.