Date: Fri 24-Nov-1995

Publication: Bee

Author: KAAREN

Illustration: C

Location: A-8

Quick Words:

Bosco-Peace-Through-Pain-book

Full Text:

(book review, feature abt Toni Bosco)

Antoinette Bosco: A Journey From Pain to Joy

(with photo, book cover)

By Kaaren Valenta

Antoinette Bosco knows about pain. A prize-winning journalist, she has had

more than her share of personal tragedies.

Within a three-year period in the early 1990s her youngest son committed

suicide, two grandchildren nearly died in an automobile accident, and another

son and his wife were murdered by an intruder. An adopted son suffered three

nearly fatal heart attacks.

But from her experiences has come Finding Peace Through Pain: The True Story

of a Journey Into Joy, an extraordinary book which is a testament to the

strength of the human spirit. The book has a message about living for everyone

who has suffered the loss of a loved one, a marriage, a job or good health:

Despite causing intense and enduring pain, life's unexpected blows can be a

catalyst for personal and spiritual growth.

The former executive editor of The Litchfield Journal, a syndicated columnist,

author of six books and more than 200 magazine articles, Toni Bosco will be at

The Book Review in Newtown on Sunday for a reading and book signing.

"Life has its own agenda," she said in a recent interview at her Brookfield

home. "The worst thing you can do, when terrible things happen, is to shrivel

up and die."

Toni Bosco knows this well. Growing up in a family of ten in upstate New York,

she and an elder sister took charge of their younger siblings when their

mother suffered a series of nervous breakdowns. History repeated itself when

Toni married at 19 and was left to raise her own six children and an adopted

teenager after her troubled marriage to a mentally unstable spouse collapsed

in the 1960s.

Working long hours as the sole support of her family, she often battled

depression and despair. But through it all she persevered, coming to an

appreciation of life and finding an inner peace. During the early years, it

helped that she was busy in her career.

"I was fortunate to be on the cutting edge of three ventures," she said. "I

was the first person hired in 1962 as a reporter/editor for The Long Island

Catholic . Eleven years later, in 1973, I became an assistant professor of

clinical health sciences at the State University of New York at Stony Brook

when the new health sciences center opened, and nine years later I joined the

staff of a brand new newspaper in Connecticut."

She also spent years as a volunteer human rights commissioner for Suffolk

County, New York, dealing with the injustices many others suffered during

their lives.

Entering her sixties, life looked good. Her youngest son, Peter, had battled

back from the edge of suicide at age 17 to graduate from college and write

three books, all of which would be published. Posthumously. On March 18, 1991,

Peter Bosco, 27, left his mother a note, then walked to a pond where he used

to go to meditate and put a bullet through his head.

"At first I thought I would die, too. His death devastated me but when I

reread his notes and listened to the long tape he left, I understood even more

the depth of his pain," Toni said. "Psychiatrists who deal with suicide call

this `psychache' and it is so wrenching that it often, as in Peter's case,

becomes terminal. He wrote, `Be happy for your son...My pain is gone.' That's

the only consolation I have."

In the months that followed, she began working on a small book on faith. But

in August 1993, she was interrupted by the news her son, John, and his wife

had been found murdered in their beds in Montana, the victims of a

psychopathic killer.

Toni Bosco struggled to deal with her anger about the murders and her pain

over the loss of her children. Her book examines this process and how she

managed to become "unstuck" from her pain. She turned to God for the strength

to go on.

The book that resulted, The Pummeled Heart, was published by Twenty-Third

Publications of Mystic. This month, retitled Finding Peace Through Pain: The

True Story of a Journey Into Joy, it was published in paperback by the

Ballantine Publishing Group.

"This isn't a glossy book, it's a hopeful book," Toni Bosco said. "I

understand now that faith is accepting the fact that life is a mystery. Hope

means you don't give up. Love is what keeps you going.

"Once life has been given, it is permanent. It is always there," she said.

"Words like happy and comfortable are earthbound. Joy is being in touch with

something much bigger. Pain prepares us for this vision."

Anger, bitterness and the desire for revenge, on the other hand, only serve to

make you a victim, she said. "You can do better things with your life than be

angry. In letting go of the anger, you heal yourself."

In her book, Toni Bosco takes the reader step by step through the intense

anger a victim of unjust happenings feels to a plateau of making sense of pain

as one searches for meaning. She discusses the healing process and the 12

steps used to get "unstuck in pain." Through it all, she provides a richly

spiritual and profoundly inspirational guide for those confronting life's

challenges.

"I know now, thanks to my faith, that life may break us, but God is there to

put us back together," she said. "What I have learned is that so often when we

feel we are in the depth, losing our luster and life...we are really at the

end of a dark night, with a new redemptive day dawning. To see this, of

course, requires an action on our part, but a simple one really: the

willingness to open our hearts."

Toni Bosco will be at The Book Review in the Sand Hill Plaza from 1 to 3 pm on

Sunday for the book signing. She will also be featured in radio interview on

WKZE Danbury, 98.1 FM, at noon.