‘A Life Worth Waiting For!’ Relates Saga of Family Abuse

Dwight Lee Wolter was the youngest of four children in an alcoholic military household in California. The “very violent” environment he was born into in 1950 had been there for years before his birth.

He had a hip disease that delayed his walking until he was 7. Meanwhile, he was a cripple in a strife-torn, uprooted household. His mother was “emotionally numb” and was being battered by her husband.

The man that emerges from that type of upbringing is an adult with a lot of problems, says Wolter, a 38-year-old recovering alcoholic and single parent of a 7-year-old daughter. He is also a writer and lecturer living in New York.

“My three siblings were subject to hands-on abuse--slapping, shaking, cutting, burning, pushing. But, for the most part, I was spared,” he said in a recent interview. “I was the ‘golden boy.’ I was assigned (by my family to be) the hope . . . My job was to go out there and bring some dignity to the rotten family.

Survivor’s Guilt

“So, while I escaped the physical problems, I developed what I call survivor’s guilt, and the feeling is like almost unworthiness of help. Sometimes you start taking it out on yourself by drinking alcohol, but sometimes by not allowing success, not allowing yourself happiness, pulling away from people who are there to love you.”

He said he has become a victim of covert abuse--denying himself a right to a decent life even though it has been nine years since he abused alcohol or drugs.

“I still to some degree--much, much less so--find it hard to accept that I’m a successful author, that I’m staying in nice hotels, people are showing me respect, are interested in my work and want to get to know me,” he said. “This is startling stuff.

“I keep looking in the mirror and I say: ‘What’s going on? I’m a crippled boy and I’m naughty. And, I shamed my family. I failed to bring the dignity. I did not do what I was raised to do. And, on top of it, I’m talking out against my parents.’ ”

No Death Before Life

At 29, Wolter finally decided that, as afraid as he was of life, he was willing to do whatever it took to get just a taste of it before he died. As scary as it was, he surrendered because he felt that it was a sin for a person to die before he has lived.

“And, I admitted to myself, this isn’t life,” he said. “I looked out the window and I saw people walking by and I said, ‘They’re living and I’m not. I’m a shell of a man and I’m dying. I want to live--even if it’s just for a week.”

For the first time in his life, he said, he went to a self-help group and confessed that he needed help with his drinking.

That was in 1980, when Wolter was living in New York City with his wife of less than a year. On Christmas Day, he recalled, he told her that he was committing himself to changing his life, which he proceeded to do and has been doing ever since.

Years of Sobriety

Five years of sobriety followed, and he had never been richer, healthier, stronger. He and his wife had a beautiful child. He was living on Central Park West. Then, his marriage fell apart.

“I cannot believe it,” he said. “How could this happen? How could this happen? Well, we separate. A year goes by and it’s as if I’ve never been away from my wife. I still crave her attention, I’m totally plugged into her emotionally, and she’s dating other men. I go crazy with jealousy, pining and whining. I knew I didn’t like her anymore, but I still needed her desperately. So, then, I entered another anonymous self-help group.”

And he started writing a diary, never realizing it would become his book, “A Life Worth Waiting For! Messages From a Survivor.” He also joined a third self-help group, this one designed to help adult children from dysfunctional families.

“From this group, I realized the roots of a lot of my problems--where it all started, going back to what dynamics were set up in my family and how I related to my parents. The family is a microcosm of the world. If you are taught madness, you go out and procreate madness.”

In “A Life Worth Waiting For!” (CompCare Publishers), Wolter says that a person who has grown up with alcoholism and abuse finds a new life, “free of past ghosts and present insecurities,” by reaching in and reaching out.

Layers of Denial

That means penetrating layers of denial to what really happened, facing it, releasing it, and then moving beyond all the pain to understanding and, perhaps, forgiveness.

The result is not a “how-to” book, but rather a personal story of release from the cycle of addiction, one that shares his healing process through a series of candidly written essays and poems.

“A Life Worth Waiting For!” is billed as a new kind of book for adult children of alcoholics, but Wolter says that anyone who was raised in a dysfunctional family can identify with it.