Obituary: Robin Elouise Connors / Dedicated career to aiding trauma survivors
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Robin Elouise Connors, a longtime Pittsburgh psychotherapist with a gift for healing and a passion for advocating for victims of sexual abuse and other mistreatment, died from breast cancer Friday at her home in Dunkirk, N.Y.
Ms. Connors, a former resident of Moon and Regent Square who grew up in Edinboro, Erie County, was 59.
She had devoted her professional career to aiding people who had been traumatized, which included work from the early 1980s to early 1990s as clinical supervisor for Pittsburgh Action Against Rape and decades spent as a private therapist.
Ms. Connors authored a 2000 book, "Self-Injury: Psychotherapy with People Who Engage in Self-Inflicted Violence," which brought attention to a growing field involving one difficult way in which sexual abuse victims acted out afterward. She was often summoned to speak or train at regional and national conferences.
"She was an incredibly gifted healer with an ability to understand what people were feeling and how to help them not be so distressed," said Anita Mallinger, who remains a PAAR psychotherapist after working with Ms. Connors there three decades ago.
Ms. Connors had started out to be a teacher, receiving an elementary education degree from Edinboro State College in 1974. She taught afterward at Arsenal Family and Children Center in Lawrenceville and was focused on young people. The rape of one of her sisters in 1980 first sent her to PAAR as a volunteer, and she stayed to become a leading staff member.
Ms. Connors was an activist in her personal life as well, ever since she fought against strict dress and hair codes at General McLane High School, where she was a cheerleader and the valedictorian for the class of 1970. She would become known afterward as a well-organized, motivational leader for victims' rights and women's rights and any issues of inequality that came to her attention.
She served in the late 1970s as president of one of Pittsburgh's multiple chapters of the National Organization for Women, campaigning to bring notice to women's reproductive rights issues.
Ms. Connors obtained a master's degree and a doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh and wrote some 30 published papers in her counseling field. She was credited for her work in 2003 as the Allied Professional recipient of the Pennsylvania Governor's Victims Services Pathfinder Award. Her additional volunteer activities included reading for the blind.
"She was a very strong woman, very hopeful, very kind, very generous," said her college roommate, Karen Chapin of Springdale, who remained a close friend. "She was masterful at anything she put her mind to."
Ms. Connors became a gourmet cook, talented seamstress, excellent gardener and even a creator of exquisite glass jewelry and other pieces in a home kiln -- all of them hobbies she developed interest and proficiency in as an adult to round herself.
She had two marriages when young that ended in divorce before she came out as a lesbian midway through her life. She was with her partner, the Rev. Janice L. Dreshman, since the late 1990s, when they were both doing crisis therapy work for the Hopewell Area School District. They had a union ceremony in 2001.
Rev. Dreshman said Ms. Connors was first diagnosed with cancer in April 2003, received treatment and was clear of it until it recurred in November 2009. They then moved to Dunkirk, in the southwestern corner of New York state, to live with their two dogs at the edge of Lake Erie, a setting they loved.
Rev. Dreshman said Ms. Connors was helping others throughout her illness as a leader of the BC Mets online network for cancer survivors, offering comfort and advice to strangers on the message board.
As her illness grew worse, she maintained her hobbies and still visited nursing homes and hospitals with one of their pets, trained as a therapy dog, in addition to assisting in a local literacy program and serving as a teacher at the Lily Dale Healing Temple, in Lily Dale, N.Y.
"Her themes in life were loving, kindness and advocacy," Rev. Dreshman said. "If she saw something wrong, she would step in to help."
In addition to her partner, Ms. Connors is survived by her mother, Elouise Connors, of Edinboro; four brothers, Michael Connors of Northampton, Mass., Timothy Connors of Mount Horeb, Wis., Christopher Connors of Lexington, Va., and Keith Connors of Washougal, Wash.; and two sisters, Kathryn Sasowski of Akron, Ohio, and Elizabeth Connors-Keith of Eureka, Calif.
A service will be held at the Lily Dale Healing Temple in Lily Dale, N.Y., at 11 a.m. on Feb. 4.
First Published January 24, 2012 12:00 am
