NO TEARS FOR MY FATHER: A TRUE STORY OF #INCEST

Well, it's done! My life-long dream of writing a book is finally a reality and it's quite daunting to think that people all over the world could now know all nasty details of my life from ages 11- 23. 

Do I regret baring my soul so publicly? Not for a moment!

Was it the book I always wanted to write? No way! 

In fact, it wasn't the book I wanted to write or ever planned to write ... but it was the book I HAD to write! And I know I'll never regret doing it.  This story had to be told to help increase awareness of the effects of child sexual abuse and to encourage other victims to speak out from under incest. 

But what's really interesting for me now is what is happening in my own mind as comments and reviews start to come in from those who have read it. Those reviews and the 5-star ratings I'm receiving are fantastic and very rewarding ... and you can read what people have said so far at my GOODREADS AUTHOR'S PAGE.  I am so grateful to those who have posted there and hope there will be many more over the months ahead. 

But when I refer to what is going on in my head now, it's more to do with what I am now learning about myself from my readers! They are saying things about me that I either didn't know or have denied  to myself for over 40 years. They speak of my childhood as "horrific"; they say my story is "gut-wrenching", made them want to vomit and more. And I read all this and I'm quite shocked. I ask myself why my story doesn't have that affect on me?  Am I that far along in my healing?  Am I that "strong" that I could just turn off the pain like that? Or am I perhaps, numb? Have I that effectively shut down all the pain valves and buried all that happened so deep I can no longer find it? 

And I'm scared too, in a way. What if suddenly it lurches up and slams me in the face, like that time I went under hypnosis and cried for 3 days and had no idea why I was crying. Or did I cry it all out then and move on?

This is quite amazing to me. Some have asked me if writing the book was therapeutic?  Well of course, but I think I had come to grips with it long ago or I might not have been able to write it yet.  But what writing NO TEARS FOR MY FATHER has done is given me closure. Yes, at last, I have closure on my abusive past.  I feel fully liberated. Now when folks say "Oh, you've written a book. What's it about?" I no longer swallow, gulp, blush with shame as I see their reaction to the word "incest". 

In fact, I feel the opposite: I feel proud, yes proud that I can say I survived incest and now am on a mission to help others get over incest and child sexual abuse. And I am proud that I have found a way to help them through my book.  From the beginning I've pushed the idea of "speaking out from under incest" and by practising what I preach, I now know how good that can feel. And I know NO TEARS FOR MY FATHER was the book I had to write!

I want to thank all those who have purchased my book this past week. It's only been available for 4 days and already, so many of you have bought a copy. I am truly humbled. I never dreamed this could happen for me. And it's what those readers are now saying that has restored my faith in myself, raised my self-esteem and proved to me that what my father drilled into my mind for years wasn't true: I wasn't ugly. He was! I wasn't a whore. He made me one.  I wasn't stupid, clumsy, all the other things he told me I was. And this wasn't my fault: it was all his!  And I wasn't a bad daughter as he said time and again, but he was a bad father. 

Included below are a few more photos of the book and its contents. If you would like to purchase a copy, you can do that HERE or at the highlighted links above. And if you're so inclined, I invite you to 'LIKE' my new AUTHORS PAGE AT FACEBOOK.  Thanks for reading and subscribing to this blog.  More posts coming in the future along with a new Author's Website where the blog will appear once it's fully created. 

And please do share my blog link with others who need and want to SPEAK OUT FROM UNDER INCEST!

NO TEARS FOR MY FATHER is 291 pages, printed on easy to read white paper. 

NO TEARS FOR MY FATHER contains photos of myself and my family, along with my poems.

NO TEARS FOR MY FATHER has a beautiful full-colour glossy cover, front and back.