Survival, pain, resilience and healing: Kitchener author finds peace in writing memoir
Matthew Greg says he always felt unwanted and unloved until he met his husband and moved to Canada
For Matthew Greg, growing up and living in Ireland was a traumatic experience.
From emotional to physical and sexual abuse, he felt unwanted and unloved. That changed when he met his husband and they moved to Canada, settling in Kitchener.
After some encouragement from his husband, Greg decided to write his life story, which is now a two-volume book called Love Shouldn't Hurt.
He joined CBC K-W's The Morning Edition host Craig Norris to talk about the book and what it took to write it.
Warning: The following interview details about sexual and physical abuse as well as suicide.
The following has been edited for length and clarity.
Craig Norris: This memoir details all the trials and tribulations you've gone through. Let's go back a bit. Tell me about growing up in Ireland?
Matthew Greg: I'm the middle of 10 children and at the age of three weeks I had very, very severe asthma and my whole body was turning yellow. We call it yellow jaundice at home and my doctor had told my parents to rush me to the hospital, but there was no guarantee that I'd still be alive by the time I got there.
At the age of 5, I had been sexually abused by a neighbour. He used to tie my hands to the back of his bed, onto the steel frame and he used to whip me, but he never left marks … that went on for a few years and he had threatened me if I had said anything to my parents, he would kill my dad. And I didn't want my parents to know anything.
Craig Norris: In the ensuing years, then, when did you come to realize what that experience did to you?
Matthew Greg: At the age of 12, I knew that I had been kind of into guys by then, but that's the time that the abuse with the neighbour had stopped because he had passed away. And that was when a new friend came into my life … His name was Peter … we spoke about everything and anything you could speak at, you know, as best mates would.
[The book details how Peter killed himself.]
Craig Norris: Did it start as, you had the idea that you were going to write a book or was this sort of a way for you to document what had happened to you and maybe sort of use it as a healing process?
Matthew Greg: My husband had actually inspired me. He said to write it down on the computer, you know, get it out of my system because it was bottled up inside me.
Every time I'd see a child being abused, I used to bawl my eyes out. And my husband said, you know, put it down on … And then he said we'll try and see if if it's possible to get it published in all which is done.
Craig Norris: And was it healing for you?
Matthew Greg: It is now knowing that it's out there because I know there's lots of other people going through with it.
Craig Norris: What do you hope readers take away from Love Shouldn't Hurt?
Matthew Greg: Hope. I hope it heals somebody. That if somebody is going through what I've been going through, that it, it helps ease the pain, you know, might make it easier for them to be able to put their own story down on paper.
LISTEN | Kitchener author's new memoir details traumatic experience growing up:
Warning: The following interview details about sexual and physical abuse as well as suicide.
