“The person I most want to read my book is…”

The Hay House Writing Community program journal prompt #2 was: “The person I most want to read my book is…” to which I set a timer and wrote for seven minutes in my journal without lifting my pen from the page:

The person I most want to read my book is a woman who says Oh My God, it’s not my fault, it’s not only me, because so many survivors don’t know it’s happening all around them; because she didn’t cause it to happen. She was chosen. Her shame needs to be shifted so she can put it back squarely on the shoulders of her abuser. She should have been kept safe as is every child’s right. She doesn’t need to hold it all tight inside her. I’ve put in facts, not just a story, so she can see for herself, to relate, to find a common thread and seek support, and begin the work of peeling away the layers of protection. To find that little girl who was happily living her childhood, innocently, when this thing changed her life’s path. It has. It cannot have done otherwise. It’s not something to be normalised or fobbed off. To break the code of silence on this abuse takes one woman reading the book, weeping over it and smiling too at the possibilities for the rest of her life. The knowing that those moments of fear, of feeling unsafe, watchful, it’s all part of it. Let her little brave child know it’s safe now. It’s safe and she survived. Now, she can become the creator of bigger and better things. That is what’s next for her.

From Alice’s handwritten journal notes in 2021 to clarify her vision for writing a memoir.