Who is Dr Pat Wiklund…

And how come she wrote that book?

I’ve often quipped that I am a reluctant expert on the topic of helping other women get past their experiences as the spouse of a child molester.

Although I am psychologist by training, and for many years was a therapist, including couples counseling and sex therapy, when I discovered I was married to a child molester, I found it very hard to continue in clinical practice. I was just too wounded, angry, and upset to be much help for others. I needed helping professionals to support me. I just didn’t have the energy to help others.

But, I needed to work and support myself and my son. So, I shifted focus to corporate consulting, working with organizations where people were having a hard time getting along, where managers needed help being more effective managers, and teaching lots of continuing ed courses for employees not just in the United States, but in Canada, Mexico, England and South Africa.

But, I couldn’t avoid being drawn to helping myself get through the personal morass I had fallen into, and eventually wrote Sleeping With a Stranger Both to help me get my thoughts straight about what I needed to do to move on, but also to help other women who were in the same boat.

The media attention was exhilarating and excruciating at the same time. Some of the hosts were wonderful, Oprah, Phil Donahue, Leeza. Others were not just hostile to me personally, but insisted it was all my fault.

“I could have, should have stopped him. I had to have known. If I wasn’t the kind of woman that I was, he wouldn’t have had to turn to children for his needs to be met.” You wouldn’t believe the nastiness and hostility.

I decided to go back to corporate consulting, where I could be valued for the positive impact I have on people, rather than being criticized, blamed, and shamed.

All about a situation I couldn’t have predicted, didn’t cause, didn’t want, and couldn’t avoid.

So, whatever propelled me to write this course for other women?

I just couldn’t avoid it any longer. Although it has been a long time since I wrote the book, I still get emails and calls…asking some version of “Are you the woman who wrote that book?”

You can’t pick up a newspaper today, or try to watch a little entertaining tv without being aware of how much the problem is still going on.

And, how much so many people still hold women like us responsible for the sexual behavior of our spouses.

I’m retired, with a new love in my life, and I suppose I could just laze around and play.

But, I can’t seem to avoid it..it keeps calling to me. Whenever I see another article, hear another horror story on tv, see another woman in the kind of pain so few people understand, I just can’t let it go.

So, I started updating the information and statistics for a new revision of Sleeping With a Stranger, and thought about making a workbook to accompany it.

Then, the realization came. “Don’t wait for another year at least for the book to be out in the stores. People need help now. Make the work book an online course!

So, here it is. In lots of ways, I am sorry you need to course — but I am feeling really good about coming back and finishing what I couldn’t finish before…personalized help for other women like me.

To read the interview about how and why Pat wrote Sleeping with a Stranger, click here.