Cast Out: Holding On To God

Cast Out: Holding On To God, is an account of the struggle for self-realization and for reaching inner peace after a mother is ravaged by the agony of estrangement from her two children, ages 15 and 17, because of infidelity and subsequent divorce. It is a tale of childhood traumas resulting from unintended parental neglect, from phantom love and civil wars, culminating in a love affair and the alienation of children perpetrated by the other parent. It is a journey that started in war-torn Lebanon and carried on over to the U.S., bringing with it stories of loss, of abandonment, and of cultural transitions that could not be bridged within the fierce loyalty of the family she had left behind. Guided by her faith, and her unwavering love and resilience, she carried through thirteen years of suffering in order to reconnect with her children--a journey of hope and never-ending grief.

Futoun Haddad was five when her father abruptly disappeared from her life, emigrating to another country in order to earn a living for the family. She never fully recovered from the trauma. In 1975, when she was eleven, a bloody civil war broke out in her home country, Lebanon, which further aggravated her sense of insecurity and danger. Shortly after, her mother joined her father overseas in order to assist him in the business, leaving the family behind and visiting only intermittently. Haddad was left to be cared for by her then nineteen-year-old sister while enduring the fallouts of many more wars, foreign invasions and never-ending skirmishes, fighting, brutal killings, and bombings. At twenty, Haddad left for the U.S. in order to pursue a BA in Journalism. Upon graduation, she married her childhood Lebanese boyfriend and became a naturalized citizen. Her struggles that had begun when she was a child became manifest throughout her adult life: marriage, divorce and the ultimate alienation of her two children twenty-one years later. In 2010, she received her MA in Political Science/International Relations, and she married the love of her life, the subject of the alienation five years later. They live happily in California now. Cast Out: Holding On To God is her first book.