A survival story of childhood abuse

It wasn’t until years later, after becoming an adult, that Mandie Kender finally realized her childhood was far from normal.
And for Kender, loving your enemy meant forgiving someone very close to her heart—her father.
Kender grew up in a dysfunctional home with an abusive father who physically and emotionally scarred his children for years. As the oldest child, she took on the role of being a “surrogate parent” to raise her siblings.
“He was very abusive, and I was angry,” Kender said of her father. “I excused his behavior as a kid because I didn’t know what normal was.”
Adding to the complexity of the situation, Kender’s mother, Ann Bolton, was often away from home working in the military.
“I shut my feelings down so I could take care of the family,” Kender said.
However, the anger really didn’t set in until after she left the house to go to college. “As I got older, I realized his behavior wasn’t right,” she said, adding, “I became more upset with dad once I was away from him.”
Kender and her father are now sharing their story of abuse, second chances, and forgiveness in hopes that other families don’t go down the same path they endured.
“It’s a miracle,” Kender said of surviving an abusive childhood.
 
Growing Up
In some ways, Michael Bolton’s life seemed to be doomed from the start. He grew up in a foster home in Wisconsin after his mother was committed to a mental institution while his father was in prison.
“My earliest memory was going to the mental hospital to see my mother,” said Bolton, noting she suffered from bipolar disorder.
As he grew up, Bolton found little hope of becoming anything, mostly because he lacked a family support system.
“I remember being in the foster home for three years, and I never once heard that anyone loved me. That affects your psyche… I thought I wasn’t worth anything,” Bolton said. “My grandmother always said ‘you’re going to end up in prison like your father’ and constantly tore me down.”
Bolton married Ann in 1974, and they had children in 1976, 1977, 1985 and 1988. He said he knew from early on in his marriage that something wasn’t right.
“I was struggling so hard,” he said.
 
The Abuse
Michael Bolton admits to abusing all four of his kids, who lived in fear of their father slapping, hitting, pushing and shaking them.
“What I did is criminal,” Bolton confesses.
Mandie Kender recalls when she was 4 years old, a Sunday School teacher at church spotted a welt on her body from her father hitting her with a belt. That led to a child protection worker coming into the home to inspect her body.
“It was humiliating,” Kender said. 
One time her brother ended up with a deep bruise on him. That became the turning point for the family as Kender’s mother reached out for help to Crisis Resource Center of Steele County.
There was also a time when Bolton slapped his wife while they were traveling on the highway. That’s when it really hit home that things were bad.
“I thought, you low life scum,” he said.
But the physical abuse was only part of the trauma suffered by family members.
“The emotional abuse was the worst,” Kender says, noting she and her siblings endured years of it. “The emotional abuse is as bad as the physical abuse.”
Said Bolton: “I went through the cycle of mad dad, happy dad, mad dad, happy dad. I could get a bill in the mail and just blow up. I would explode and overreact to many things. Emotional and intelligence were not in the same category for me.”
As he looks back on the years of abuse, Bolton bristles at the fact that his wife often told their children “don’t do anything to set him off.”
“It starts with a dominant male, and it all goes downhill from there,” Bolton acknowledged. “With abuse, if it starts at the top, there are the poor children at the bottom.”
“I struggled for years that I’m not a good enough man. The bad thing is you hate yourself,” he added.
Kender referred to her father as the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde story, which focused on the complexities of science and duplicity of human nature.
“That was my dad,” Kender said, noting he never drank alcohol or abused drugs. “I was really confused as a child because I saw two different people.”
In 1993, Ann Bolton reached her breaking point and filed for divorce.
“That was a gut hit,” Michael Bolton said of the time he was served with divorce papers. “It takes the wind out of it.”
With his marriage on the line, Michael Bolton finally reached out for help.
“My world was falling apart,” he said.
 
The Diagnosis
When he initially sought help, a doctor told Bolton “it wasn’t that bad,” and tried to dismiss what had been boiling inside of him for years.
“I told the doctor, ‘you don’t have the devil inside or the demons living inside of you like I do’,” he said.
What made things even worse was that no family members or friends tried to intervene, even though Bolton claims they knew what was going on.
With a history of mental illness in his family, Bolton kept telling doctors something was wrong with him. He was finally diagnosed as bipolar, a mental disorder that causes unusual shifts in mood, energy, activity levels, concentration, and the ability to carry out day-to-day-tasks.
“I was either happy or I was mad. There was no in between,” Bolton said, adding he was like a steam engine with steam rolling inside of him before finally blowing.
Speaking directly to her father, Kender added, “There were times when you blew up and people saw us being abused. All of us have struggled on our own because of the abuse.”
Doctors put him on medication, which he has religiously taken ever since and says he will never stop taking.
Asked about the bipolar diagnosis, Bolton said: “It was a godsend, period. The diagnosis saved my life. It was not the same as having a child being born, but it was right up there.”
He’s happy with what has resulted from the diagnosis and subsequent medication.
“It rescued me and my family from the monster,” Bolton said. “They are saved now. I can’t truly put it in words… it’s night and day different. The stuff that overcame me is now being overcome.”
And it saved his marriage. Ann dropped divorce proceedings, and they are still married.
Even with the stigma often involved with mental illness, Bolton has no problem sharing his story.
“I would shout it from a rooftop. I’m not ashamed of it,” he said. “The wonderful thing is there is help out there. If you think there is something wrong inside that you can’t control, get help.”
 
Two Worlds
Mandie Kender said she grew up living in two worlds.
“I was raised in a loving and a volatile home,” she said. “I was confused. I grew up in a home of laughter, but there was also fear. We knew there was love, but we weren’t secure in it.”
Kender said she hid the abuse for years, through high school and during her first years in college. A part of her wanted to forget all about it.
“As a victim, I thought I did something wrong,” she said, noting she received so many conflicting messages from her father.
It wasn’t until graduate school that Kender sought therapy. Ever since she got help, “it has made me an advocate for people that are struggling,” she said.
Forgiving her father didn’t come easy. “It’s hard. I didn’t really want to engage with my family because I was hurt,” Kender said.
Though he has changed, Kender said the real hero is not her father.
“My mom is the hero of the story because she finally said, ‘no more, I’m done with this.’ If she would not have said no more abuse, it could have ended badly.”
And there is no arguing that fact with Bolton.“I agree with that 100%,” he said. “She put up with 16 years of garbage.”
Added Kender, “The generational abuse is stopping with my family.”
 
Career Path
The family’s struggles helped define Mandie Kender’s professional path. After graduating in 1994 from Owatonna, Kender went to the University of Northwestern in St. Paul and Colorado Christian University, where she obtained a master’s degree in counseling.
Most of her career has been focused on mental health and domestic violence programs. Among other roles, Kender served as associate director of community and family supports services at Accord in St. Paul.
“My career path is to help others,” Kender said. “I have the ability to help both the light and darkness. We’re all in this together. I don’t demonize the perpetrators.”
In January, Kender signed on as director of the Exchange Center for Family Unity, which serves Steele, Rice, Waseca, Dodge and Freeborn counties. The Center provides dependable and efficient support-based in-home mentoring to parents who can use additional support to be successful.
“I left Owatonna to find myself and separate myself from the abuse,” said Kender, now 46. “It was like full circle to come back and help in the area that our family struggled with.”
 
Darkness to Light
After years of healing herself, she is ready to engage the community in ending the cycle of abuse.
“I am so close to the mission,” she said. “I have a clear understanding of the issues, and I think it makes me easier to help people.”
Kender recognizes that it’s a “vulnerable thing” to put her family’s story out there. In fact, it’s one that she never thought would happen.
“I wanted to hide from it,” she admits.
But she has developed a deep passion to help others and wants them to know there is hope. 
“This darkness, I really wanted it to come into light. In order to get help you have to face the unhealthy and ugly parts. You have to make changes and face your demons,” Kender said. “I want them to know our story. This is a story about a miracle, second chances and forgiveness. I am blessed to be a survivor.”
Because of her abusive childhood, Kender said she has often struggled with being a parent herself. She and her husband, Lexy, have two children: Grace and Lucas.
“I was afraid of myself and didn’t know if I would be a good mother,” Kender said. “I had to figure out what was healthy and unhealthy.”
One of her professional battles, Kender said, is that society doesn’t see child abuse as a problem. She wants all parents to have a better relationship with their children.
“I don’t want other people to go through this,” she said referring to abuse. “I want to help change the trajectory.”
As she looks back, Kender’s hope is for the community to advocate for children.
“No one spoke up for us,” she said. “People minimized it even when dad tried to get help.”
People often do not understand the complexities behind abuse, Kender said, creating the need for education, treatment and support.
More than anything, Kender wants children to “feel love and feel safe in it.”
“If we love our children, they will take care of the world,” she said. “We need to teach our kids how to love.”
Though April is designated Child Abuse Prevention Month, both Kender and her father feel raising awareness should happen every month.
“I’ve seen healthy relationships and I want that for everybody,” Kender said.
Unfortunately, in her case, it took an unhealthy childhood and first-hand knowledge to reach that point.
Kender’s husband has a tattoo on his arm that reads, “Love your enemy.”
“Sometimes your enemy might be a family member,” she said, adding she once looked at both her mother and father in that light. “You need to have forgiveness.”