Continuing with my interview with Mike O’Connor, author of Crisis, Pursued by Disaster, Followed Closely by Catastrophe: A Memoir of Life on the Run., my next question was:

How do you relate trust and love? How does lack of trust affect a loving relationship?

For me personally, it would kill it. Some relationships are built on lack of trust. For a proper relationship, you have to be able to trust the person completely. I think my parents loved me and I loved them, but I couldn’t trust them. It drove me away from them. When I
was a smaller child and dependent on them, I was frustrated by the inconsistencies, but when I was 16, I got away from them because I couldn’t handle the contradictions.

What is the single greatest impact your childhood had upon your character and life as an adult?

A good journalist is skeptical. But I don’t want to be a person who doesn’t trust much of anything.

I am on guard now for non-trusting issues. I see it more now that I have written the book. I have to keep on trying, learn to trust more. I expect to be disappointed.

As a war correspondent, Mike has seen a great deal of trauma and pain. During our interview, he discussed the impact his career had upon the formation of his character:

One of the reasons I didn’t want to write this book is because there is no place I have been where I haven’t seen thousands of people in much worse shape than I was. I was lucky to be raised as an American, even given the goofy family I have. Most people in the world don’t have those things. I have seen many people much worse off than I ever was. As a journalist, you must put a wall between you and what you cover. You can’t be overwhelmed by suffering or you can’t do your job. It is like being a doctor at a school bus accident. You have to be a doctor at that point and later you can sit down and cry.

I drank more than I should of or was more morose and angry than I would have been otherwise. I have seen lots of needless suffering. Regular people getting hurt for the wrong reasons. You can’t do that for a long time without it affecting you. I was mad, belligerent, and found it impossible to relax; I couldn’t sleep.

Mad? Belligerent? Unable to relax? Suffering from insomnia? Does that remind you of our kids, per chance?


As we wrapped up our conversation, Mike shared with me that he has three nieces adopted from China (one sister’s children) and a nephew adopted from Ecuador (the other sister’s son.) He plans to talk to his sisters about trust issues in adopted kids!


I thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with this fascinating man, and his experiences reinforced my belief that trust is at the core of happy, healthy relationships.


Photo courtesy of Mike O'Connor--his mother, two sisters, and a dog they left behind in one of their retreats.