Strong at the Heart: How It Feels to Heal from Sexual Abuse

by Laura Davis (Foreword by), Carolyn Lehman

Overview

"This book is an absolute gift to the world." - Jacqueline Woodson Every year more than half a million young people are sexually abused or assaulted in North America alone. This groundbreaking book brings readers face-to-face with ten teen and adult survivors who speak with candor and courage about the abuse they experienced, how they have healed, and how they are moving forward with their lives. White, black, Latino, and Native American, these everyday heroes come from a wide range of communities and have found different ways to cope with and overcome sexual trauma. Through moving personal stories and striking photographs they take readers into their lives, offering insight and hope for anyone--male or female--affected by this all-too-common childhood experience. In the comprehensive resource section, readers of this softcover edition will find an updated guide to worldwide help organizations, as well as the best books, films, and Web sites on healing and resilience.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780989463607
Publisher:	Sky Pilot Books
Publication date:	02/03/2014
Pages:	170
Sales rank:	1,677,935
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.36(d)
Lexile:	760L (what's this?)
Age Range:	14 - 17 Years

About the Author

Educator and author CAROLYN LEHMAN has spoken publicly on overcoming abuse for more than twenty years. Her children's novel Promise Not to Tell received the Christopher Award for its sensitive portrayal of a young girl's struggle to tell about molestation. Lehman lives on the north coast of California with her husband and partner in wilderness adventures, Peter.

Read an Excerpt

Strong at the Heart

How It Feels to Heal from Sexual Abuse

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By Lehman, Carolyn

Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

Copyright © 2005 Lehman, Carolyn
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0374372829

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From the Foreword
"This powerful book is filled with the distinct, diverse voices of people who experienced rape, molestation, and incest when they were young. With remarkable honesty they tell how they stopped feeling victimized and reclaimed their lives - the choices they made, the people they turned to, the inner strength they discovered." - Laura Davis, author of The Courage to Heal
From the Survivors
"Other teenagers can see that I'm a kid just like them, from an everyday town like theirs. That's when people realize that sexual abuse isn't just a story in a book or a scene in a movie. It's something that happens every single day to people like them." - Jonathan, age 17
"This book is like a Healing Circle that anyone can join." - Sheena, age 16
"For me, activism is an important part of my healing process. I'm taking something that hurt me and isolated me in high school and transforming it . . . I'm using that anger I have about what happened to me when I was fifteen . . . I'm using it as a catalyst to try and change the world." - Aaron, a member of SAFE on the Smith College campus, age 19


Continues...

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Excerpted from Strong at the Heart by Lehman, Carolyn Copyright © 2005 by Lehman, Carolyn. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Editorial Reviews

In Strong at the Heart: How It Feels to Heal from Sexual Abuse by Carolyn Lehman, nine adults describe experiences of sexual abuse that happened to them when they were young. Their distance and healing from the events may well give teens who have had similar experiences the courage to come forward with their own stories and to begin to heal from them. One girl was raped by someone at a party; one boy was molested by his priest; another girl's courage to report a rape led to evidence that her rapist had killed another teen. All of the contributors here now lead productive, healthy lives. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Gr 9 Up-Primarily about the experience of healing and recovery, Heart gathers 11 personal stories by young men and women who experienced rape, molestation, or incest and found healing through speaking out about their abuse. Lehman, a child-sexual-abuse survivor herself, emphasizes the importance of consciously choosing to tell what happened and meeting with others who have had similar experiences, and shows the wide variety of ways to express feelings and find community. Clearly and candidly written, the narratives recounted here include sufficient details of abuse to be authentic, but never titillating. The clear message to other victims is that they are not alone and that recovery is possible. An attractive, accessible format and black-and-white portraits throughout personalize the presentation. Extensive appendixes list organizations and annotated resources for further reading that offer help. Patti Feuereisen and Caroline Pincus's Invisible Girls: The Truth about Sexual Abuse (Seal, 2005) also includes powerful personal stories within a larger context of more generalized discussion of child/teen sexual abuse.-Joyce Adams Burner, Hillcrest Library, Prairie Village, KS Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal

Lehman offers nine interviews with adults and teenagers who were sexually abused as children. Presented as first-person narratives (as if there were no interviewer), each story begins with a close-up black-and-white photo of the interviewee looking directly at the reader. The stories differ greatly, both in the type of abuse and in the type of support each person received. Some stayed quiet for years; others were able to speak out right away. The wide differences between them only serve to drive home to the reader the extraordinary similarity in all of them: a lasting courage and strength born from a sense of vulnerability. Lehman's excellently balanced package includes black and white photos throughout, and annotated resources at the end (books, films, Web sites and organizations). The clean design will lead readers directly to the narratives. Over and over, the interviewees each say how much it helped to hear that someone else shared their experience-that they were not alone. One hopes that this book will be that voice for readers. (Nonfiction. 10+)

Kirkus Reviews