About Leona
She fit bucking bales into God’s plan, but bucking fear left this Mennonite farm teen begging and now, after 35 years as a professional psychotherapist, Dr. Leona Stucky narrates her unflinching faith-and-violence dilemma in a riveting memoir, The Fog of Faith: Surviving My Impotent God, which spares neither God nor violence against women and has been recommended by MS Magazine.
Dr. Stucky first received a degree in psychology and philosophy from Boston College, graduating summa cum laude, before plunging into seminary, first at Andover Newton Theological School and then at Eden Theological Seminary. She earned a doctorate from Southern Methodist University with honors, and a Diplomate certificate from the American Association of Pastoral Counselors—their highest credential—for teaching, supervising, and offering therapy services. She currently has standing as a Unitarian Universalist community minister. These professional explorations might have quieted her mind, but the areas where integration seemed impossible became sand kernels disrupting many intellectual resting places. Being fiercely honest in confronting contradictions, she honed her wisdom, gained unusual insights, and enjoyed a professional and personal journey that could only be shared by telling the whole story. After numerous attempts, and twelve years of writing, Dr. Stucky completed The Fog of Faith: Surviving My Impotent God. The provocative title aptly indicates unflinching moral dilemmas. The gripping story reads like a real-life thriller that can’t be put down. Still, each step grounds itself in nuanced networks of passion, relational complexities, cultural and religious quandaries, choices bound by woman’s poverty, persistent violence, and an untamable resilient desire to reconcile herself with or without God. Dr. Stucky has been a post-graduate teacher, a speaker, a trainer and workshop leader for professional therapists, and this year (2018) she will be a panelist for an NGO presentation at the UN Commission on the Status of Women. |