In a tender and unflinching exchange, Peggy Vermeesch joins American-born author and Jungian teacher of creative writing Susan Tiberghien to discuss her memoir Seasons of Love: A Lasting Marriage—the story of her 66-year journey with her French husband, marked by joy, faith, and the courage to face the darkness of sexual abuse within the larger family.
With her daughter Catherine beside her, Susan reflects on moving through the alchemical stages of love and transformation—from the nigredo, the confrontation with Shadow, through the albedo and citrinitas, toward an ever-deepening coniunctio, or inner marriage.
Together, they speak with honesty and hope about how dreamwork, therapy, awareness, truth, and dialogue can help families recognize, prevent, and heal the wounds of abuse across generations.
Peggy Vermeesch: Susan Tiberghien is an American-born author of five memoirs, two writing handbooks, and a teacher of creative writing at several Jungian centers in the U.S. In her most recent book, Seasons of Love, she tells the story of her 66-year marriage to her French husband, the love of her life: sharing moments of joy and vitality, as well as courageously giving voice to the darker experiences that shaped their life together.
Her daughter Catherine also joins the interview, her voice offering a second lens, illuminating not only love and commitment, but also the shadowed threads of inter- and transgenerational trauma woven through the family’s history.
Seasons of Love is more than a memoir of a long marriage or a family’s past. For those drawn to Jungian thought, it reads as an account of the opus: the long, transformative work of love and individuation within the closed alchemical vessel of a deeply committed relationship.
This work of transformation was carried forward by Catherine, who was the one to translate the book into French, with the title Les saisons de l’amour: Un mariage qui traverse le temps.
Susan Tiberghien: This labour of love done by my daughter is so close and true to my words that sometimes I prefer it to my own writing.
After 66 years of marriage, it’s clear that you and Pierre-Yves have moved through many iterations of the alchemical process: starting with the nigredo, or the confrontation with Shadow, through the albedo and citrinitas, to an ever-deepening coniunctio or inner marriage.
Susan: Yes, and the iterations continue, even in our tenth decade. The coming together, the coniunctio, is daily in a lasting marriage. If we, wife and husband, are able to see this coniunctio, that we come together in order to create more love, our marriage becomes a way toward wholeness—wholeness for each of us and wholeness for our relationship.
Nigredo is typically the stage that sets things in motion, as it involves confronting difficult emotions and what was repressed or previously unknown. For this reason, I’d like to begin at the threshold, perhaps even before you were a couple, with what could be seen as a first experience of nigredo: the first time you visited Pierre-Yves’ family, just hours after the untimely death of his sister. How did that experience in the presence of his large Catholic family, shape the beginning of your journey together?
Susan: That night, alone in the middle of a grieving French family, with a storm raging outside my window, I wrestled with my angel, like Jacob did in the Old Testament. Lying on the bunk bed, I listened to the footsteps going up and down to the room of his sister who had just died. The family was keeping watch. Why was I so afraid? Where was my faith? Where was God?
The morning brought sunshine and a knock on my door. Pierre reached for my hand. The family was waiting for us at the large breakfast table. We were together.
Intermingled with your early love and attraction to Pierre, there also seems to have been a longing for a life that was perhaps difficult to imagine while staying in the extraverted ambiance of America in the 1950’s. “A longing for the numinous”, you write, which had been stirred by your experience of accompanying Pierre-Yves on the night of his sister’s death, and the book you decided to read together during your year-long separation on different sides of the ocean. Can you speak to that longing: what it meant to you then, and how it drew you forward?
Susan: I uncovered a longing for the numinous during my childhood. I had a repetitive dream. I was three or four and going under ether for a tonsillectomy. I entered a pitch-black tunnel that went on endlessly. From then on during the night, the black hole often came back, threatening me. Was this all there was to life?
I started to pray on my own, to ask God to push the dark hole away, inside in my bedroom, or outside in the fields where I would sit on a large rock, a boulder where I would pull myself up and sit still to talk to God.
This longing for an answer to my black hole went with me to boarding school, on to university, with a double major in English and Philosophy. I had an early taste of Plato and fell in love with Bergson and his élan vital. There was more to life than an endless black hole.
With a minor in French, the stage was set for postgraduate studies in France, outside the American environment where I could better pursue my longing for the numinous.
At age 50, in analysis, I asked myself if I was ready to enter the black hole. I drew a picture of it which I included in my book, Circling to the Center, with the words: “God brings us into the night so that in the darkness we can see the light that burns in our heart” (p. 23).
In your book, you guide us through the spring of your marriage: your courtship, the early years together, and the births of five children across France, Belgium, Italy, and Switzerland, along with the adoption of a sixth from Vietnam. The summer phase was marked by your discovery of Jungian thought, your studies and analysis, a return to your American anglophone roots, and the launch of your writing career.
Susan: It is important to note that all this time, through the seasons of spring and summer, Pierre and I were building a strong foundation for our relationship through our “sit-downs”, our monthly couple dates, and through our prayer practice every night: a few spontaneous words, almost always a thank you for the day. We remember that Meister Eckhart said that if we have only two words of prayer—thank you—they suffice.
It wasn’t until the autumn of your marriage that a dream by your daughter Catherine announced another profound nigredo phase. Catherine, could you recount the dream and what it set in motion for you?
Catherine Chevron-Tiberghien: I was 35 at the time, career driven, happily married with two children of six and seven, but with an unexplained sense of unhappiness. I returned to writing down my dreams. One was particularly relevant:
I’m at home, getting up in the morning. I go to the window and, instead of the view we normally have, I see a road and a row of adjoining villas, with front doors, staircases leading down to basements, and entryways.
I see two men coming out from below one of the villas. They’re wearing masks—stockings pulled over their heads—and carrying a large plastic bag (the kind of 110 liters), full and heavy. They have brown hair.
They head toward the front door and, with a crowbar, easily pry the hinges off the entrance door. Looking at each other and laughing, they wipe their feet and step inside, slamming the door shut. It’s number 54.
I tell my husband that there are burglars in the house across the street and that we must call the police. He agrees, but leaves it to me. I insist we need to do something. He agrees again, but does nothing. Clearly, I’m the one who must act.
I try to find the number in the phone book, but I can’t. I call the hotel next door. I speak to a young woman who starts talking to me about my son, saying they can take care of it—it’s very complicated, but they’ll manage.
I respond: “But what are you talking about? I don’t know what you’re referring to. I’m telling you there’s a burglary in the villa across the street, number 54. May I speak with the Director, whom I know very well?”
Somehow—I don’t know how—the Director is suddenly right next to me. He takes the matter very seriously. He picks up the second line and calls the police: “Put me through to the Chief, this time I’ve got one, at number 54.”
I remember seeing those two men leave the house. Their hair was grey.
When I woke up from the dream, the number 54 kept flashing repeatedly in my head.
What it set in motion was that suddenly memories came crashing back to my mind. Something had happened to me in my childhood. I began to understand some of my previously unexplained reactions to events. Like when my son at the age of seven (the same age I was abused) started catechism: when meeting the priest for the first time, I shook his hand and in total shock I had the feeling I was being raped. That feeling was awful and inexplicable. Then started the long trip through the nigredo before reaching the rubedo. I had been abused by the priest giving me catechism classes.
Can you explain the importance of the number 54?
Susan: I still have shivers when I remember the scene. My daughter coming to me with a dream. We were sitting on my bed. She recites the dream. In the middle she mentions the number 54. A sudden intuition makes me pick up the phone book and look for the number of the parish house. It was 54. We fell into each other’s arms.
How did it affect you, and how did you and Pierre-Yves respond as a couple, and as a family, to this difficult truth?
Susan: I was horrified. It seemed impossible, but I trusted and believed our daughter. I went to see the family of the second girl whom the vicar had told me would be with Catherine for the lessons. The family denied that she had been there. Catherine had gone up and down those steps alone.
Together Pierre and I stood by our daughter as she sought healing and retribution. Helped by a Dominican friend of the family, she filed for an ecclesiastical trial. When Rome, then the Cardinal Ratzinger, found a way to refuse, we held her close in our arms. When, again with the Dominican’s help, she then filed for a pastoral trial and the Swiss bishops finally came to her side, we went to thank our Dominican friend who celebrated a family mass for us. It was our last family mass. Our faith in the church had been broken.
In the winter of your marriage, another bombshell came from the wider family. Could you walk us through what happened that led you to the truth of your own daughter?
Susan: It was one of Pierre’s seven brothers who came to us in our home to announce that his daughter had been abused by her grandfather. It was a bolt of lightning. We could only reach out to console him. This brother took it upon himself to go to each of his seven siblings to share his tragic story. I see this as a strength of these eight siblings.
Five years later our daughter Lucie started to questions what had happened to her during a stay at her French grandparents when Pierre and I were in America. I did not remember leaving her in the care of my parents-in-law. It took reading my letters to my parents to bring me to my senses.
Ten years later, a third granddaughter came forward with vivid memories of her grandfather’s abuse. Could you describe the context in which these memories resurfaced and the impact this had on your extended family?
Susan: The third granddaughter, upon reading La Familia Grande, by Camille Kouchner, had sudden recall of being abused by her grandfather while on vacation. The book tells a story of incest that was hidden for decades and the devastating results. Kouchner’s story shocked the granddaughter into total recall, and awakened our extended family into the horrors of incest and how close to home it was hitting.
What led to the creation and signing of the “Document of Family Recognition and Responsibility”?
Susan: It was this horror that made our generation recognize our part of responsibility in the incest perpetuated by Pierre’s father. We had condoned an incestuous atmosphere in our large family gatherings; we had even laughed at it. When the grandfather late at night knocked on the doors of his sons, asleep with their wives, we laughed.
When they sang off-color songs while washing dishes, we laughed. When the grandfather who had a factory that made women’s hosiery took photos of the legs of his eight daughters-in-law, we laughed. When finally we realized the horror that the grandfather was perpetuating, we stopped laughing.
When the third granddaughter came forward in the family of the brother who was most recalcitrant to admitting what his father had done. He listened to his daughter and believed her. The door opened to a recognition by all the members of our generation of our responsibility. We had not recognized the incestuous atmosphere which reigned in the family. In so doing–or rather in not doing–we had contributed to a laisser-aller situation which permitted my father-in-law to abuse three of his granddaughters.
The parents of the third granddaughter took it upon themselves to compose a document acknowledging our responsibility. Each of the seven brothers and the one older sister (two of the original ten children had died) and each of their spouses signed. It is a tremendous testament to the fortitude of the family.
How have you come to understand or make sense of how the abuse of your two daughters, one by a priest and the other by your father-in-law, went unnoticed at the time? What insights can you offer other parents to help them prevent, or at least recognize, similar situations?
Susan: Pierre and I questioned ourselves. We looked for how we had let this happen. We both felt that we had let ourselves become too busy. Nothing replaces a listening ear every day. We had failed. Furthermore, we had put our trust in the institution of the Church. Whether it be the Church, or the school, or a scout troop, or our extended family, we–the parents–are responsible for our children. We needed to remind ourselves of that.
Catherine: I can add the following: don’t trust anything or anyone blindly. Check for yourself. And very importantly: look carefully at the drawings, scribblings, or other creative expressions of your children.
Kidpower International teaches prevention skills that help children to stay safe, act wisely, and believe in themselves. They do abuse prevention by teaching kids that private parts are private, and they do bullying prevention. I also organized workshops in my kids’ school for children of six to fourteen years old with a professionally trained instructor.
In the spirit of supporting others who may have faced similar experiences, do either of you wish to share what you found helpful in facing the painful truth of the sexual abuse in your family, and what was harmful, or could have been harmful?
Susan: What was helpful for me in facing the painful truth of sexual abuse was first of all the complete support of my husband. And then my complete trust in each of my daughters.
What was harmful was my adherence to a code of upbringing instilled by the Church that was too strict. Here, in raising our children, I was too rigid. For example, I adopted too easily the strict Lenten code of behavior, which led Catherine to be surreptitious.
Catherine: When it was Lent, we weren’t allowed candy at home, and if we got any, we had to put it in a paper bag that our church distributed and then bring the bag back to the church. I still remember the purple color of the bag. So, when the priest gave me candies, orange ones, I would hide them in the box under the mailboxes of our building. I was guilty. I had never understood why years after I could not eat an orange candy or even wear anything orange.
What what was so harmful: the disbelief, the questioning, the scepticism, the doubt. Not from my immediate family, but from some people around me, and the church during the long years of the ecclesiastical trial. One must possess great strength to withstand such incredulity. Victims are often the last to recognize or believe their own truth.
So, I would say that above all, it helped me realize that none of it was my fault. That realization lifted the guilt from me. I was freed from its weight. I often saw myself as a bird in a cage. Facing the truth slowly opened the door of my cage. I was free. I could fly.
I’m not saying there is no more darkness. Some darkness remains, but recognizing its cause has given me the strength to cope with it.
Would you like to say something about your family’s experiences with therapy?
Susan: Our family has benefitted greatly from the help of Jungian analysts. My three years of analysis strengthened my sense of self.
On the other hand, Pierre suffered from his therapy. He sought help from a Freudian therapist who believed that child abuse was the norm, and that he should not dwell on what happened to him at the hands of a priest at boarding school. I was witness to this when the therapist called me into his office to tell me to stop talking to my husband about the abuse, that it was normal. Pierre changed therapists but was unable to find one who corresponded to his needs.
Catherine: When I was anorexic in my twenties, I went to see a Freudian psychiatrist.
In my thirties I saw a Jungian analyst for a year and a half. Despite his warning that it would be dangerous, I decided to stop. Maybe he had already seen what I was not yet able to see.
Eight months later, I started seeing another Jungian analyst and stayed with him for a couple of years. The dream I mentioned earlier happened while in analysis with him, and then the memories of the abuse came back.
At that point I went back to my first Freudian psychiatrist because I wanted her insight. I was questioning my memories, unsure if they were real. But she did not really believe that I had been abused as a child. It was very destructive.
Next I saw a medical doctor, psychotherapist and Ericksonian hypnotherapist. This work centered on body memory. It helped me understand and validate the memories of the abuse.
Now that you are in the evening of winter, with another dark cloud challenging the strong and beautiful outer, as well as inner, marriage (or coniunctio) you’ve built with Pierre-Yves, could you describe some of the struggles you’re facing as a couple at this time, and how you are finding ways to stay connected, supported, and hopeful together?
Susan: It is our inner strength from years of loving each other, from the support we have found in our sit-downs (our monthly couple dates), our evening prayers, and more recently in our active imaginations that has let us confront his Parkinson’s together. We cannot be hopeful that it will get better. We know it won’t. We need to remember that after each winter there is spring.
We are also discovering that with age, both in our tenth decade, our roots pull us back to our childhoods. We now live more in our separate worlds, Pierre in his French world, I in my American world. Sometimes the two confront one another. I think of the little plastic magnetic dogs, Scottish terriers, one black one white, that I played with as a child. They could swing one way to be close or another way to be separate. We need to swing the right way!
To end, I was hoping you could share something of the wisdom you teach in Jungian programs, and more specifically on active imagination: how it has helped you in your journey, how you continue to practice it together with your husband, what you learned about each other through it, and how such practices continue to nourish your connection and growth today.
Susan: These last years, my workshops in Jungian programs have focused on journaling, soulfulness, and wholeness/oneness. The Jungian component is specifically addressed in each. But more important is the overall Jungian tone of my classes. I cannot separate what has become the deepest part of myself from what I teach.
Let me give an example of how I encourage an entire class–on Zoom–to do an active imagination with their souls. I start with a review of how soul and imagination have been understood across the centuries. I explain how we can use our imagination to enter the spiritual world, the home of our soul, describing the practice of active imagination and the five steps that I culled from Jung’s Mysterium Coniunctionis (CW14, par. 706) and defined in my book Writing Toward Wholeness (p. 41).
- Choose an image to represent your soul, or better, let it choose you.
- Hold on to it while asking what it wants to tell you.
- Put the image on the stage of your imagination.
- Take part in the play. Speak and listen to your image.
- Write down what happened, describing briefly your image, then writing the dialogue.
The last step is important for otherwise we will forget. We will even downplay the experience.
Pierre and I have discovered that we can do this together, each of us with a pencil and our own journal, sitting close but not sharing until we have finished. I lightly lead the exercise, introducing each step. The results are astonishing. If we truly enter into the exercise in good faith, clearing our minds of all the debris that blocks the doorway to our imagination, our soul will speak to us.
A recent active imagination for Pierre was with the image of a wood fire in our fireplace. His soul told him that to keep it burning, he had to keep putting wood on it. Simple! Yet translated spiritually, to speak with his soul, he had to nourish her, to keep talking to her.
A recent one for me was with the image of two wilting roses in a vase. I wanted them to stand close to each other. My soul told me that they did not need to, they were in the same vase, they needed space. It was a lesson for me: to give space to my husband!
When Pierre shares his exercise with one of his children or brothers, they find it difficult to imagine. And there we have the whole lesson. I just said it was difficult to imagine.
So are sixty-six years of a rewarding marriage!
Thank you, Susan and Catherine, for your openness and generosity in sharing such deeply personal and painful parts of your family’s story. Your courage not only honors your own journey but also offers invaluable insight and hope to others. It has been a privilege to share in your story and the profound reflections you offer in your book Seasons of Love: A Lasting Marriage.
Interview conducted by Peggy Vermeesch – October 2025
Susan Tiberghien
Susan Tiberghien, an American-born writer living in Geneva, Switzerland, has written five memoirs and two nonfiction books. She holds a BA in Literature and Philosophy (Phi Beta Kappa) and did graduate work at the Université de Grenoble in France and at the C.G. Jung Institute in Küsnacht, Switzerland.
She teaches at C.G. Jung Societies, the International Women’s Writing Guild, and at writers’ centers and conferences in both the U.S. and Europe.
Her website is: www.susantiberghien.com
Learn more
- Darkness and Light in Seasons of Love—an interview with Susan Tiberghien & Catherine Chevron-Tiberghien, conducted by Peggy Vermeesch
- Writing Toward Wholeness—an interview with Susan Tiberghien, conducted by Jean-Pierre Robert