Beware this site! DoNM

Note: the forum on this site has now been reactivated. It is not a free site and you will find a great deal of pressure to buy products in addition to paying a monthly access fee. The site is still active for shilling EFT, DVDs and pamphlets and the book that was written using the pain of the members of the forum for profit. If you think you can get healing from a person who shamelessly and heartlessly exploits the suffering of others for gain, it is your right to try. Just please be aware that others who have tried came away more hurt than when they began.

When you first go searching for information about your crazy mother, you input a lot of different search criteria. Eventually, if you search long enough and hard enough, you come across a site called DaughtersofNarcissisticMothers.com run by a woman calling herself Danu Morrigan. “Ahhhh,” you sigh after reading a few articles. “I’ve found a home!”

Like hundreds of other DoNMs (daughters of narcissistic mothers) before you, the site seems a godsend, a place where not only do they seem to understand what your crazy mother is like, but they seem to have honest-to-goodness empathy for the confusion, frustration, and just plain craziness that seems to go with having to deal with your mother. It’s like the Gods of the Internet were reading your mind and have blessed you with the information you have been seeking for so long!

You’ve heard the expression “If it sounds to good to be true, it probably is,” right? Well this website is that expression come to life...it is too good to be true and I have the bitter experience to tell you why. Lest you think mine is just a case of sour grapes, at the end of this page I am posting a list of links where you can go to read about the sad, bitter betrayal received by other victims of this site at the hands of the supposedly empathetic site manager and founder, “Danu Morrigan.”

Let’s start with some truth here: the site is run by a woman named Tracy Culleton and it is owned by her husband, Peter Harris, who owns an internet portal site and who designs and manages websites for a living. Contrary to the sad face Tracy wears on the site, she is actually an internet entrepreneur with many, many lucrative irons in the fire. Overarching all of her sites, however, is a thing called Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT or “tapping”) which she offers…for a substantial fee, of course…to everyone who reads any of her websites. It doesn’t matter what kind of trauma you suffer from, Tracy wants you to believe she can EFT you to emotional health, and that you need her services, no matter the cost. (Tracy is in Ireland—you have to pay for an overseas call for 30 minutes or more plus hundreds of dollars for each session!)

There is no bonafide, independent study ever done that indicates any effectiveness for EFT, only testimonials (anecdotal evidence) that people have given her that she displays on her site. Two years ago I contacted one of the writers of a testimonial (I don’t know if it is still running today) and this person told me a horror story that gave me the willies. Emotionally fragile, she succumbed to Tracy’s blandishments for EFT and Tracy’s pressure to write a testimonial. After a couple of sessions she had a severely traumatic reaction to Tracy’s probing and pushing. Given that Tracy was in Ireland and this woman was on America’s West Coast, there was no way Tracy could take appropriate palliative steps and the woman went into an emotional tailspin. She subsequently asked Tracy to take down her testimonial and not only did Tracy refuse, she posted the testimonial on a second site, this time using the woman’s full name (which is how I was able to track the poor woman down)!! Interestingly, there is nothing on any of Tracy’s sites that indicates you can get instructions on the internet on how to do EFT by yourself…for free!

So, Tracy is marketing an unproven therapy, she is not licensed to do therapies of any kind and is not educated beyond high school, and she is charging hundred of dollars for an unproved technique you can learn to do yourself for free by Googling “Emotional Freedom Technique.” And she is not just pushing it on her DoNM site, either—she has additional web pages that are dedicated to other emotionally traumatic issues, like a fear of clowns (no kidding!). She also flogs EFT on the web for being bullied, for lack of confidence and for, of all things, writer’s block.

Some years ago Tracy entered a writing contest in her native Ireland and won. The prize was a three-book deal with the small local publisher that ran the contest. The first book hit “best seller” status in her tiny Irish market but is largely unheard of outside Ireland. Reviews are not stellar and her next two novels (the ones she wrote after she fulfilled the three book deal) have been unable to find a publisher, not even the publisher whose contest she won. Despite her dismal showing as a writer, however, Tracy markets herself on the internet as a “best selling author” and holds writing seminars to teach other people how to write. Not only does she site these seminars in exotic locations and charge exorbitant fees, she also touts EFT on her writing websites as a way around writer’s block and a host of other writing-related ills. The last advert I saw for one of her writing seminars, it was being held on a Greek island, the course was a week long, and the cost was £900 (British). At that rate (and the ad said the classes were morning only), Tracy has managed to find a way to fund exotic vacations with other people’s money. Oh, you think she worked up the course all on her own and deserves the largesse? Nope—she copied the course from Rob Parnell’s “Easy Way to Write” course, which I was able to buy on the internet for $27 US at the same time she was advertising this seminar for £900.

As if this wasn’t all enough, Tracy also holds herself up to be a marketing guru and purports to teach people how to market themselves and/or their businesses on the internet. Here’s a site of hers in which she refers to the customers and clients as “food”! And if you think she has a softer, more compassionate attitude towards the women who join her DoNM website, think again—we are nothing more than a means to an end to her, a source of income, as evidenced by the conversation in this forum, which occurred in September of 2010: Warrior Forum.

Some of you may, at this point, be thinking “so what? The woman’s got to make a living. It’s a tough economy and she doesn’t exactly have sterling credentials to get her a cushy berth in some investment bank or anything, ya know?” Fair enough—but unfortunately, she does not conduct herself on her DoNM website with any more compassion and gentleness than you would expect of a woman who refers to her customers and clients as “food.”

In February of 2010 I was laid up with a broken foot, confined to bed, in my house in South Africa. At the same time my father, with whom I was close, was dying in a hospice in Oregon and I was unable to make the trip to see him. I was in contact with one of my sisters but he was too sick to speak with me on the phone when I called. I shared this information and my emotional vulnerability with the others on the forum: my worst fear was coming true, my beloved father was dying.

There is a women on the DoNM site, one of Tracy’s admins, who goes by the name of Light. (Her real name is Michelle Ede and her credentials do not exist—she is a female handyman and knows how to use Google very well—that’s it.) Michelle is responsible for posting a lot of the articles on the site—but not necessarily for writing them. If a keyword search is done on Google, many of the articles will be shown to be plagiarized from other sites. This is Michelle’s specialty—copying articles from other sites, then altering them to fit her perspective and beliefs…all without giving credit to the original authors. Michelle is also not above making stuff up—and that is how I got into trouble on the DoNM site.

I posted in the “My Story” section a carefully watered-down version of some of my NM’s violent actions against me. I got a warning from Michelle, saying it was “too graphic” and that it might “trigger” other members. I thought this was odd, since it wasn’t graphic at all and I thought it might elicit feelings of “Oh! I’m not alone!” from other members. Just a couple of days after my post was yanked (and the criticism of it also removed), Michelle put up a new article in which she alleged that if your mother was violent with you, she was not a narcissist, that narcissists are not violent, so if your mother was violent she's not a narcissist and you do not belong on a site for the daughters of narcissistic mothers. I was shocked, but before I could respond, another member stepped in.

Beccas12 is a highly credentialed psychologist with advanced degrees from UCLA and many years of clinical research practice. Becca was also raised by a severely N mother who was also a psychiatrist by profession (now that had to be a crazy-making upbringing!!) Becca responded to Michelle’s new article with gently-phrased corrections of Michelle’s misconception about narcissists and violence. Michelle’s response was to ban Becca from the board! (Fortunately Becca and I had privately exchanged email addresses—she lives in Europe—and we were able to discuss the situation outside of the forum.)

I wrote to Tracy in protest, telling her that I was sure Michelle was mistaken because of Becca’s credentials and Tracy said I had a good point, she was going to speak to Michelle, and she would get back to me. Before the day was out I, too, had been banned! No explanation, no recourse, and, shockingly, nothing was ever announced to the members. In fact, if you go to that site today and search on SweetViolet or Violet (I forget now what my name was there), you will undoubtedly find my old posts, including the ones about my dying father.

Tracy and Michelle were well aware that my father was dying and, in fact, he died two days after I was banned. I had a broken foot and was bedridden, emotionally vulnerable, and without a second’s thought, they pulled the rug out from under me, leaving me unable to contact those women with whom I had made supportive friendships on the forum. Only Becca was there, and she was fighting her own battles with her nasty narcissistic mother at that time.

It wouldn’t be so bad if I was the only one this happened to, but apparently it is a standard practice for Tracy and Michelle to summarily ban people with no appeal and no explanation. The tenor of the forum is such that you walk on eggshells, never knowing what you might say that will get you expelled and, once expelled, never knowing exactly why. They ban all mention of God or religion, even such innocuous things as suggesting books by Christian writers like H. Scott Peck (People of the Lie).

Tracy Culleton’s DoNM forum is a toxic place. The truth is not allowed there, nor are women who are on the road to healing who can help the more vulnerable sisters. That role belongs only to Tracy and you have to pay, pay, pay for her help via EFT. If you don’t believe me after what you have read here, Google “banned from DoNM” and you will get the following results, which are only the tip of the iceberg:

Freedom from Toxic People:1 (be sure scroll to the comments and in particular, Kate's comment)
Freedom from Toxic People:2
Words from the Daughter of a Narcissist

NOTE: I will no longer be publishing or responding to either email or comments asking me to justify this post. It has been privately brought to my attention that Michelle Ede (Light) and/or Tracy Culleton (Danu) could be attempting to get me to say something illegal in order to take some kind of legal action against this blog.

As in all posts on this blog, these are my opinions and feelings, often demonstrated through my own experiences, sometimes through the experiences of others. My experience with this site and the other site I warn against are based on personal experience. If you think you can get honesty and forthrightness from people from whom I suffered underhanded and devious experiences, it is your right to try. You are not obligated to believe anything related here, and you have every right to your own experiences. I posted this warning because I wished someone on the web had put up such a warning before I got involved and got hurt. Now the warning I wished for exists for others--you may heed it or ignore it as you wish.