The Author's Inn

Jeanne G. Miller, MSW, LCSW, has been a psychotherapist for over 20 years. She was awarded her BSW and MSW from Our Lady of the Lake University, San Antonio Texas. She received her training in Spiritual Direction and Pastoral Care from The Anglican School of Theology, Dallas, Texas. She has worked with individuals, families, and groups in a wide variety of agencies and hospital settings as well as having been in private practice.

She has provided supervision to other MSW graduates who are preparing to sit for their clinical license exam. She has been a mental health consultant for nursing homes, adoption agencies and for pain management clinics.

She is involved in an active ministry offering Spiritual Direction, Pastoral Care and is a Dream Leader of several groups in her local Episcopal church. She is a speaker at workshops and at personal retreat weekends.

A native Texan, she continues to make Texas her home. She and her husband live on a small lake in East Texas.

After a long career as a psychotherapist, she has written her life's story, "Hidden in Pain," as a way to share the mystery of transformation found in the claiming of one’s life through story. Jeanne skillfully draws the reader into the sorrows, agonies, abuses, challenges, and triumphs of her struggles with educational, physical, psychological, and spiritual pain over her lifespan. She guides the reader through her determined and yet painful quest for spiritual and emotional wholeness, culminating with finding profound peace. Her ability to story-tell in "Hidden in Pain" will keep the reader enticed.

As a practicing psychotherapist, Spiritual Director, Pastoral Care assistant, and a Dream group facilitator for the interpretation of dreams, she shares her unique insight into her own struggles, as well as the stories of others as told to her. She ends by encouraging others to consider their story and to share the wisdom found with others through writing, poetry, song, dance or any expression that feels natural.

It is Jeanne’s hope that the reader will be inspired to face the issues and challenges that life presents at any given time.

This book is about hope, love and courage.


Hidden In Pain
By Jeanne G. Miller, MSW, LCSW
Tate Publishing and Enterprises
ISBN: 1-5988645-7-2
188 Pages

 An unexamined life is a barren wasteland.
 There is much to be discovered
 when one risks looking within… (p. 183)

Jeanne G. Miller’s Hidden in Pain chronicles a personal journey with an invitation to step into the future by truthfully, and painfully, examining the past. Much more than a collection of memories, the book is a servant’s offering, giving the reader an opportunity to explore the depth of what it means to walk by faith not by sight.

From the day she protected her sister and herself from a raging bull, Miller became a leader and herald, but while initially she understood this appointment to be the hero, as she refers to herself, life’s challenges told her otherwise, or so she thought.

A chain of physical, psychological and spiritual hurdles would influence her entire life. At first she sees these events as hindrances but later discovers them to be keys to finding the meaning and ministry she was always intended to lead and bravely herald to all who would hear and read.

From birth, Miller is challenged. The primary relationship in any human being’s life is severed as she is given away by her birth mother. This sets up a series of perceived rejections and disappointments that the author personalized. She became defined by all that made her life seem less than desirable.

While she notes that her mother made sure she understood that being adopted meant she was chosen, chosen for what remains the long term question as she continues to face soul wrenching challenges. Rejection from birth seems like a lifelong burden in and of itself, but this is only the beginning of her journey. At four years old, she has an accident requiring a traumatic plastic surgery procedure.

Illness alone is a trial to endure. Jeanne makes this quite clear. Yet, she takes the extra step in telling her story. She takes us by the hand, like she would have liked so many others to have done, and walks us through the before, during and after of what it means to suffer with pain and illness. All the difficulties of begin judged, humiliated, taken advantage of, being misunderstood, and the frustration that comes with illness is explored in such honest detail that part of the hidden pain is what can only be found by reading what is "hidden" between the covers of Miller’s book.

Nothing is held back. Jeanne candidly shares all the Job-like events of her life that, like a doomed house of cards, fall one by one until, like the pile of cards, she is left in shambles. From Dyslexia, rape, alcoholism, divorce, losing her mother, struggles with her sister, emotional traumas at the hands of those who are suppose to be allies and guardians, the betrayal of her own body against itself, Miller gives us the spiritual dilemma that everyone faces at one time or another in their lifetime. To hang on to faith when it seems that no one is there, not even God, is the real question and answer, according to Miller.

Miller writes with humble wisdom, sharing her story in enough detail that helps her readers begin to feel on levels that perhaps they had not considered before. The pain we all disguise in casual smiles and the costumes we wear to hide the broken pieces within are spread before the reader in words that inspire hope and healing. The physical, spiritual and emotional hurdles are unfolded and revealed as steps rather than stumbling blocks, and by the end, readers find that this is only the beginning, not only for Miller but for themselves, if they not only read the message but take up the challenge she presents as well at the end of the book.

If you are ready to openly explore another’s life, to be open to the possibility that hidden within pain is the potential for healing, then Jeanne Miller’s Hidden in Pain is ready for you. Take the literary hand she has extended to you, and begin your first steps towards a new way of looking at, and living, your life.

Jacqueline Aguilera
AuthorsDen.com Reviewer
* * * * *

Jeanne Miller is a clinical social worker living and working in East Texas. I am one of the Episcopal priests that she mentions in her book, and so perhaps I know more than some others of her struggle to "overcome adversity and fulfill God’s purpose," to paraphrase The Book of Common Prayer. To me, Jeanne is a real embodiment of the archetype of the "wounded healer."

The author was adopted into an upper middle class Texas family soon after the ending of World War II. It was a family that gradually became dysfunctional during the years of her childhood. Early on, Jeanne began to exhibit what have often been termed, unfortunately, as "birth defects," among which were dyslexia and a serious hip displacement. Her increasing disability and pain seemed to defy the physicians.

This book is not just a narrative about a faith journey into a condition of being physically, emotionally, and spiritually made whole, (which it is, of course). Rather, it is a kind of love letter to the reader, a love letter teaching us about life, itself. It would be unfortunate, therefore, if the reader were to see the intent of this book as only an ordinary commentary on herself, and that she simply learned how to live properly by means of her sufferings. Facing her suffering, stoically, is certainly present in the author’s life story. What comes through so effectively is the redemptive power of her suffering, and how this power is available to everyone.

Jeanne will draw the reader into deep places of his or her own afflictions through the details of the terrible pain of repeated treatments that often seemed to fail. How would you or I respond if we were in her place? She was tempted on many occasions to lose her faith in God. Would you or I cave in and curse the creator? Those questions followed me as I read her manuscript, and its joyful conclusion enabled me to share, as well, in the forgiveness that she had so deeply needed and wished for.

May you, dear reader, find the steps of your own pathway through life made lighter as you enter into what can only be termed a true healing of the human spirit.