Accusations Against Me (Part 2)

(Find Part 1 here.)

Danu Morrigan/Tracy Culleton, operator of the website Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers, after banning dozens—if not hundreds—of vulnerable women from her site’s forum without explanation, got wind of the fact that not all of these callously rejected women crawled off into dark little holes to lick their wounds. some of them decided to fight back by publishing their experiences with her on the web, a fact that apparently sent her scrambling to do damage control. Ultimately, she published a rebuttal to the accusations she found on the web, a rebuttal that was laced with subtle and not-so-subtle untruths, and which left no space for disagreement, correction, or comment.

Herewith, the truth about Tracy’s rebuttal to the truths published on the web about her:

(My remarks are in violet, Tracy's quotes from SoaringDove’s blog are in blue)

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How much weight you put on my assurances is, of course, up to you.

Danu, like all Cult Leaders is very charismatic and has the gift to tell you just what you need to hear, so that she appears to be an educated, insightful, understanding & trustworthy person. She told me it was both her professional & personal opinion that I am a talented & gifted writer, and that she was surprised I never thought of writing and thought that I was not very good at it. She had the ability to tap into a passion I never knew I had and only recently realized by communicating w/other DONM members, starting my own Blog and joining A Safe, Healthy, Encouraging, Very Enjoyable & Inspirational On-line Support Group, WebofNarcissism.com.

It is true that I encouraged Soaring Dove to write as I found her writing to be good, and to set up a blog. I find it hugely ironic that she now uses this blog to defame me and also that she has, somehow, twisted this encouragement to meaning that I am trying to be a cult leader and have some nefarious purpose for encouraging her.

It is only defamation if it is untrue and while I see the irony, Tracy has no one to blame but herself. She should never have encouraged a person whom she could not control to write outside the forum…and maybe that speaks more to the crux of SoaringDove’s expulsion from the forum more than anything else: Tracy could not control her.

You see, if you read her Terms of Use, take on board all these women who Tracy has jettisoned without remorse like so much trash and then put your thinking cap on, you eventually come to a single, simple conclusion: Tracy runs that site solely to fill her pockets and certain people get in her way—and those people have to go. People who have outside support sources like faith (people who believe their faith will support them and make them OK in the long run), knowledge (like mental health professionals such as my friend the psychologist), people who are far along in their healing (like me—NM dead for 12 years, veteran of 5 years of intensive, supportive therapy), people of high intelligence who can work out for themselves what she is up to, people who are charismatic or persuasive in their own right—these people all get between Tracy and the money. She needs her members to be needy, vulnerable, dependent, willing to try anything to feel better…she does not need people who are not susceptible to her sales pitch, people who can see through her and maybe even tell others what they see.

Now, stop a minute and think. Who else do you know like that? Who else do you know lives a life strictly self-oriented and has no use for people who can see them as they really are, who can see through the mask to the real grubby, greedy, grasping creature behind it, and associates almost exclusively with people from whom they can get something? Uh huh—your NM…and mine… Isn’t the resemblance remarkable?

At the DONM forum, I enjoyed my interactions w/many great women and that is why I continued to stay even though it became very clear that Danu had placed a neon target on my back and it was only a matter of time before I was Unjustly Banned.

Soaring Dove kept breaking the Code of Conduct by proseltyising [sic] and preaching her religion and we gave her a number of warnings asking to to stop doing this. This is now interpreted as being a Neon Target.


In the end we did ban her for consistently breaking the Code of Conduct.

Unfortunately, we have only Tracy’s unsupported word for this and at this juncture, that’s not good enough. SoaringDove is very religious and for those people who are, it is an integrated part of their lives. I have several family members and friends who are and while none of them are so presumptuous and rude and to try to proselytize and convert me (I have come to own my position as the Black Sheep of the family), phrases like “God is good,” and “it is a blessing,” and other religiously-tinged things pop up in their writing all of the time. SoaringDove did put up a post about Tracy’s accusation that she was proselytizing here and if we can trust what she says, Tracy made a mountain out of a mole hill…which would make me, an avowed atheist, wonder why…

I suppose if I was querulous or looking to pick a fight, I could cite my religious family and friends being so wrapped up in religion that they can’t speak without referencing it as a reason to cut them out of my life. In other words, I could take any religious-sounding phrase and use it as an excuse to blame them for me doing what I want to do in the first place. I suspect either SoaringDove’s faith irritated Tracy or she feared it would drag in a bunch more overt Christians who believed their god would give them strength, or maybe she was afraid SoaringDove’s faith would be contagious to other members and they wouldn’t be susceptible to her blandishments to be saved via her very costly, wallet-filling EFT. And she did what any self-respecting narcissist would do when someone gets between her and her goal: she got rid of her quickly, quietly and efficiently and in such a way that none of her intended victims ever got a hint of what was happening. You have to admit, Tracy, if you’re not a narcissist, you do an amazingly good imitation of one!

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Next Soaring Dove shares a message she got from Kate, a former member and moderator.

Message from Kate:

I found your blog today purely by accident, but I'm so glad that I did.

I was one of the original moderators on Danu's DONM forum, and have my own story to tell, as do many other women who have been hurt by this wolf in sheep's clothing.

The site is basically run by Danu and Light who are both severely disturbed women. Danu has no training in psychology, is not an expert on narcissism, and created the site as a money making venture pushing her EFT.

Whether Light and I are severely disturbed you will have to decide for yourselves. I don't think so, but then I would say that of course.


It is true that I have no training in psychology, but then I never pretended to.


As for not being an expert in narcissism - again, I do not pretend to any more expertise than that of a DONM who has researched it.

And yet, without claiming to having any training in psychology, without claiming to be an expert in narcissism, she “diagnosed” me and the banned psychologist as narcissists and sent the membership into a tizzy when she announced we had been outed and removed. How does that work? She also claimed, even when I was a member, to have ferreted out and banned narcissists from the forum. With no psychological training and not being an expert on narcissism, how did she do that?

I did not create the site as a money-making venture pushing EFT.

Well, Tracy, you coulda fooled me! PayPal donation button, an Amazon link begging members of the site to buy books through the link so the site gets money, constant harping on EFT as a cure all for everything from PTSD to fear of clowns to writer’s block to narcissistic abuse, all for a fee—NOT a money-making venture? You are only kidding yourself. How many of your members know that your third novel was based on a narcissistic relationship, the inspiration for and information source were vulnerable DoNMs…oh, not from this site, but from the McBride forum you destroyed? (more on that later) And now you have written a book that, unless it contains NO anecdotal illustrations, will line your pockets further with the pain and suffering of the women who trusted you not to disclose their private agonies to the rest of the world.

I created it as a resource for fellow-DONMs. I put months of my own time into creating the website and its information which is available free for anybody. And hours of time has gone, and continues to go, into running the forum, all for free. There is the possibility to donate if people want, but this is not required and, frankly, most people do not donate and the income from that is minimal - and that is fine.


As for the EFT - I am creating resources using EFT for people to purchase, and I make no apology for this. EFT is a wonderful tool for recovery and healing and I am delighted to be able to share it. I give the EFT instructions for free and it is only if people want the more specific resources that there is a cost. There is also a full money-back guarantee, so there is nothing underhand about this.

First of all, there are no bona fide independent studies that confirm EFT has any beneficial effect. The one study cited by Tracy on her site was not done at an “arm’s length,” meaning the people who would benefit from the study were involved in the study. I used to work in the biotech industry and was involved in the preparation of documents for submission to the FDA for approval of our products—I know first hand how bona fide studies are conducted, and this one was not done that way. I have searched the web, including websites that carry articles from professional journals (where such a bona fide study would be published) and nothing shows up. A huge red flag should be the testimonials…if this EFT thing really did work, there would be no need for them, there would be two or more research studies done and published in professional journals, and Tracy would be citing them as proof. Testimonials are what is known as “anecdotal evidence” and has zero credibility with the scientific community. It might get them interested enough to do an independent study or two, but the testimonials—and their writers—would never be considered as part of the study or its conclusions. Real studies are done to find out the truth—the study that Tracy cites on her website was done to make the process look like it works.

A word about the writers of testimonial writers: they are not liars. They felt better when it was done. Does that mean it was effective? No. It means they experienced the “placebo effect,” a well-known phenomenon in medical research. It comes from you and your belief that it will work. So, I could send you a brass disk wrapped in string and tell you to balance this on your head every day for ten minutes and it will make arthritis pain and stiffness disappear and, if you really believe me, it will work!! EFT works much the same way: it is simply your brain believing it will work and providing the relief. But placebos don’t work for everybody, as you will later see.

As far as her claim that she put the site together as a “resource,” that’s pretty cheeky, considering she got the whole idea from a forum for DoNMs run by an honest-to-god therapist who actually knew what she was talking about, which Tracy ultimately destroyed in order to get the participants to join the site she built to make money from…

I first met her on Karyl McBride's forum for DONMs, which Danu was using as feeding grounds for new EFT customers. There were many red flags about Danu from the very beginning, and she was actually publically accused by another member of being a narcissist. The group there did not have a moderator so it was a bit like the Wild West, enter at your own risk.

It is true that this is where Kate and I first met. I was not using it as a feeding ground for EFT customers, although I was keen to tell people about it, and looking back, I can see I was too keen. But I was so excited to be able to share this amazing resource to try to help DONMs (again, you could learn it for free online).

Sometimes we don’t see ourselves as others see us—and sometimes others see right through us. Having had numerous conversations with this same Kate myself, I’m going to have to go with Kate’s version of events, especially since I have also had conversations with a few others who were on the site when Tracy, under the name of Dana, brought the whole thing crashing down and Dr. McBride closed the forum. Which, unfortunately, played right into Tracy’s hands because the participants were shut out of their forum and had only one place they knew of to go—to Tracy’s new site.

Oh, and notice Tracy tells us we can learn about EFT for free on line—did you know this rebuttal page is not accessible from inside her site, so unless a member finds it on Google, they will never know that those overseas phone calls and Visa charges were totally unnecessary. Tracy, you see, does not disclose the free availability of EFT on the DoNM site.

I cannot comment as to the red flags - certainly Kate, who for a while was a friend of mine and was, as she shares below, a founder member of my forum, didn't see them at the time.


It is true that I was accused by another member of being N. Many members at the time did not agree with her, although several, including Kate, came to think so in time.

Next: Part 3