PEORIA MAGAZINE September 2023

W O R D C O U N T

PAIN INTO PURPOSE Phillis Dewitt has turned her personal trauma into a mission to help heal others

BY LAURIE PILLMAN PHOTOS BY RON JOHNSON

A t 63, Phillis Dewitt is a pow erhouse. She’s a nurse practitioner with a post-doctorate de gree. She teaches future nurses at four different universities, including Bradley. The mother of three is a board member for Court Appointed Special Advocates for Children (CASA) of the Tenth Judicial Circuit. More than 170 foster children have lived with her, and she took permanent legal custody of 10 of them. Through 35 medical mission trips, she’s helped heal the physical and emotional wounds of the victims of hu man trafficking and abusive situations. “Sometimes, I think it takes a little bit of trauma and pain to develop people’s passion and motivation,” said DeWitt. “And that’s how I view my own life.” Indeed, Dewitt said she overcame years of sexual assault herself. Since 1985, she has been using her own story to remove the shame and stigmatization of sexual abuse. It’s the subject of I’m Still Standing: How God Turned My Pain into Purpose , written by Dewitt and Mary L. Alesandrini. Published by Trilogy Christian Publishing in October of 2022, the book tells how faith helped Phillis turn trauma into healing. “The title I’m Still Standing was cer tainly appropriate,” said Cal Rychener, founding pastor of Northwoods Com munity Church in Peoria, who wrote the book’s forward. “By the time you’ve finished the story, you wonder, ‘How?’

I believe her relationship with Jesus Christ is the answer to that.” A TROUBLED CHILDHOOD Phillis also believes that faith kept her going. She grew up in Pekin, where she remembers her parents fighting often. A couple of extended family members sexually abused her before she was old enough to tie her shoes, she said. The bright spot in her life was Grace Baptist Church in Pekin, to which she and her brother walked every Sunday. Dewitt went into foster care when her parents divorced, she said. Her first foster father was arrested for embezzlement, so she was rehomed, she recalled. Her second foster father, a prominent community member and a church deacon, molested her, she said. When she told her pastors, one didn’t believe her, she said. Dewitt remem bers another telling her not to return to church. Shortly afterward, at just 16, she became an emancipated minor. LEARNING ‘HOW HUMAN PEOPLE ARE’ Dewitt said people often ask her why her experiences didn’t turn her away from God. Those chapters of her life “never made me angry with God,” she said. “It made me realize how human people are, even pastors and deacons.”

Co-author Mary Alesandrini said that letters and therapy notes from this time gave her insight into the insecurities and destructive behaviors Dewitt had to overcome. ‘SHE TEACHES PEOPLE

YOU DON’T HAVE TO LIVE AS A VICTIM. TURN PAIN INTO PURPOSE’

— Craig Nelson

“What I like best about those chap ters,” said Alesandrini, “is to learn how she started to grow and begin the journey of overcoming her issues and begin to have small victories in her life that encouraged her and gave her strength and hope.” MARRIAGE AND FAMILY Eventually, Phillis fell in love and married Tony Dewitt. Together they had three children, Melanie, Chris, and Brandon, and fostered children from backgrounds of sexual abuse. Tony helped his wife confront her abusers, and before he passed away from cancer in 2006, he recorded a testimonial about those confrontations. “Tony felt it was important to get the testimony on record,” said Alesandrini, “The way he put it, she would have no one to corroborate her story once he was gone.”

76 SEPTEMBER 2023 PEORIA MAGAZINE