AUTHOR CHAT: Andrea Leeb's "Such a Pretty Picture"

Some stories don’t just break the silence, they explain how silence gets built in the first place.

This week, I’m joined by author Andrea Leeb to talk about her memoir Such a Pretty Picture, an account of surviving childhood sexual abuse, living with complex trauma and CPTSD, and finding a path back to yourself that isn’t linear or tidy but is real.

Andrea shares the early moments that shaped her life, the confusing mix of fear, love, and self-blame, and the way adults can miss obvious warning signs when a family looks “pretty” from the outside. We also get into the effects of trauma: freezing, shame, self-harm, complicated sexuality, relationships that can’t hold intimacy, and the exhausting pressure to perform normal.

Andrea details her turning point-- a breakdown that finally makes help non-negotiable, and what treatment, therapy, and community can unlock over time. We end with a conversation about forgiveness, closure, and agency, including Andrea’s work supporting survivors through organizations like RAINN and the UCLA Rape Treatment Center, plus concrete resource reminders for anyone who needs a first step.

If this conversation resonates, share it with someone you trust, subscribe for more author interviews, and leave a review so more survivors and supporters can find it. What would it mean to you to be fully believed?

Purchase Andrea Leeb's "Such a Pretty Picture"

Resources:
National - RAINN.org/ 1-800-656-4673
Helping Hands - Commission for Women (Los Angeles area)
UCLA Rape Treatment Center / 424-259-7208
HAWC.org - Houston area/ 713-528-7273
Chicago Rape Crisis Hotline - 888-293-2080
 
Thank you for being here, Xx Alex

Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod 

Transcript

Content Note And Hotline Support

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Content note. This episode contains candid discussion of childhood sexual abuse, incest, rape, self-harm, and suicidal ideation. Please take care of yourself as you listen. The RAIN National Sexual Assault Hotline is available 24-7 at rain.org, R A I-N-N.org, or 800-656-4673. Welcome to Babes in Bookland, your women's memoir podcast. I'm your host, Alex Franca. Today I'm sitting down with author Andrea Leeb, whose memoir, Such a Pretty Picture, is an act of profound courage, tracing her childhood, her survival, and the long, nonlinear road back to herself. She writes with the precision of someone who has done the hard work and the grace of someone who genuinely wants to help others. We talk about silence, about the complicated love we hold for people who failed us, and about what healing actually looks like. Not as a destination, but as a practice. This is not an easy listen, but it is a necessary one. And if you have lived something like what Andrea describes, I hope this episode finds you and reminds you that your story is real and that you are not alone. There is something sacred about what happens when a survivor speaks and someone truly listens. Today, we listen. We bear witness. It's nice to meet you. It's so nice to meet you. Thank you so much for coming on, Babes in Bookland. I I feel like your memoir is a life raft. It's a beacon of light and hope for women and all people who have gone through their own experiences with sexual assault and abuse. Your honesty, your vulnerability, your evolution was beautiful to read. And though this book was heartbreaking, I mean, that doesn't even begin to cover it. I left it feeling hopeful and in awe of your strength and compassion. Thank you for sharing your story with us. And I have no doubt that its impact has been and will continue to be extremely meaningful and far-reaching.

SPEAKER_02 2:11

Well, thank you. Those are those are wonderful words to hear. I think that's, you know, you've summed up why I wanted to write the book. Not that I wanted to necessarily break hearts, but I was, you know, to to give a talisman for healing and also to build awareness on this issue. So really, really happy that you said that. Those are lovely words. I think I'm gonna listen to them all the time.

SPEAKER_00 2:35

Well, you can listen to this episode whenever you want.

Why She Finally Wrote The Truth

SPEAKER_02 2:38

I think so.

SPEAKER_00 2:39

Okay, so before we get into your memoir, let's talk about the process. Walk me through that decision of sitting down and actually saying, like, I I need to put this on paper. I need to get this into the world.

SPEAKER_02 2:50

So it was a long time coming. I I have an MFA in creative writing. I've I've been writing most of my life on and off at different levels. I wrote fiction before. I always, you know, and I never, I I never intended to write memoir. You know, I never intended to put this particular story, the story of my childhood, on paper. I I wrote around it. And two things happened kind of at the same time. The Me Too movement happened and my father passed away. And I think the confluence of those events led me to begin really to think more about writing and to start drafting out what I would want to write. I I, you know, just I didn't quite get there. It took me another year, but it was reading those stories that other women wrote and how each story impacted someone else. I really started thinking, okay, you know what, this story can help people. Because I was so afraid of trauma dumping, but this story could actually help people. And it's been a long time and you've had lots of therapy. So my father was dead. So it was, you know, I thought I can go back and write it. And that was like the beginning of the story. And then, you know, I started slowly writing it for the first couple of years.

SPEAKER_00 4:07

Did it ever cross your mind or did you ever attempt to write it as a fictional piece first?

SPEAKER_02 4:13

I did, but it it the voice didn't work. So it it just um there were things that I needed to say, and and there's parts of the book that are almost unbelievable if they're fiction. I know that sounds crazy, but you know, we'll get into, but you know, my father sexually abused me, my mother caught him and went blind. And that's almost if it wasn't real, it would be unbelievable. So I I think that that became part of it, you know, as as Joan Diddy and once said, watching a small child take smoke marijuana, literary gold. And I think sometimes literary gold unfortunately and fortunately comes in nonfiction and and becomes harder in fiction. And what I realized when I started writing it as a memoir, it worked. You know, when I wrote the first chapter of the book is actually the first chapter I wrote.

SPEAKER_01 5:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 5:04

And when I wrote that first chapter, I I workshopped it about, you know, six or seven months later. And uh everybody was just blown off the face of the earth. And I realized it works. I mean, I never intended it at that point to be the first chapter. That was a process of where to start, where, but it was the first thing I wrote. So, and in the end, I ended up putting it as the first chapter after moving it around other places.

SPEAKER_00 5:30

Oh, interesting. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 5:32

As we know, writing is a process. Yes. I mean for me, I decided a chronological story was the best story. It was a story I felt more most prepared to tell, although obviously there's some looking back, and but it was this the way that I wanted to write the book.

SPEAKER_00 5:47

So I think it was a really powerful way to go through it. And to me, you know, it's it's interesting because I think there's a denial in fiction and a safety in it when we're confronted with a story. If you were to have written this as fiction, we could easily just say, oh, well, that's just a work of imagination. But your memoir holds up a mirror. It's a life raft, like I said, but it's also a mirror to those people who are denying that this is happening.

SPEAKER_02 6:16

And I wanted to do that. And I thought, you know, given my family, where I came from, that it would be really important for me to tell the story. And, you know, one of the things that happened writing the story, and we'll talk, I think, a little bit more about this later, is but the gift I got, I started realizing I could do more with this book as I started writing. You know, I I it started hitting me that I wanted to do more. I wanted to work more in the survivor community. And, you know, if it were fiction, that said, one of the books that influenced me a lot was Dorothy Allison's Bastard Out of Carolina. That book really influenced me. And she has, you know, before she died, she she had said a long time she had said that it was auto fiction, but that was a different time. And this is, you know, more of a time for memoir. And I, you know, for me, it it just, I don't think it would have held the power that it's held. Well, and my ability to really help people without it being memoir.

SPEAKER_00 7:15

Yeah. Okay. So you're going through and you realize you want to write this down, your truth, your story, the way it happened to you. And you talked about you felt ready to do it, you've gone through the therapy. But were there really difficult moments? Did you ever face a block? You didn't want to go there. Did you have a safe a way to safely reaccess these memories and these experiences? You could write them down.

SPEAKER_02 7:39

Two things. I I actually had been working as an attorney and always been that person who's you know, wrote at five o'clock in the morning, you know, I got it right, I got it right. But I don't have a, you know, I have this big job and I have to do my job. And and I I got laid off right before COVID. And I started thinking, well, I'll go back to work, find another job. Then COVID hit, and my husband said to me, You don't need to if you you want to write, just use the time, right? And so I I was able to write the book full time. And I also became connected through a workshop with with Pam Houston and the Writing by Writers Draft Program, which was a two-year program, and it kind of forced me into having to continue writing pages. I was also home, you know, it during, I mean, you know, COVID was an unfortunate thing. And I I know people who had books come out during COVID, and that was a nightmare for them. Yeah. But for me, you know, a lot of people wrote books during COVID, but it gave me that space to, you know, I was in my kit in the space where I'm talking to you from writing all day. And it gave me that time. But yes, it was very difficult. I actually went back into, I had been out of therapy for a few years, and I ended up finding a therapist because I I felt that I needed to have therapy. A couple of years once the the the uh we were back out in the world, I I started really getting into yoga, which really helped me. So I I was finding ways to separate myself from the book. I it was it was very hard. There were moments where I said, Well, what am I doing to myself? You know, why do I want to go back here?

SPEAKER_01 9:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:20

I have a good life compared to especially a really good life for somebody who survived the level of trauma that I have, but a good life for anybody. And I was like, what am I putting myself through this for? But I kept writing.

SPEAKER_00 9:35

Yeah, you had a bigger purpose, I think.

SPEAKER_02 9:38

Right.

SPEAKER_00 9:38

Like you said, your book isn't trauma dumping at all. You can tell you're writing it for other people the entire time. And it's very obvious.

SPEAKER_02 9:46

I'm so happy to hear that. I'm always happy. I've heard that before, but it's always refreshing to hear because it's, you know, one of the big fears, of course, when you're writing memoir is how it will be received. I mean, this is a very intimate story.

SPEAKER_00 9:59

Yeah. Actually, um, I think you saw on Instagram I shared a, you know, don't judge a memoir by its cover, judge it by its first sentence. And yours was was one of those because that first sentence just makes you sit up straight. I couldn't put it down.

SPEAKER_02 10:11

And I wrote it kind of, you know, it reads a little bit like a novel.

SPEAKER_00 10:15

It does it definitely does.

SPEAKER_02 10:16

Same as novelistic. I think that was my, you know, my intent too is was was to keep it that way. I I know a lot of memoirs are are very much about self-reflection. And I I actually resisted that urge a little bit and had it stay in a more novelistic way. Pam, who I worked with a lot, set told me, you know, your readers are very smart. You don't have to explain to them what's going on.

SPEAKER_00 10:41

Yeah, that's really, really good advice.

SPEAKER_02 10:43

It was really good advice.

Craft Choices That Shaped The Book

SPEAKER_00 10:44

Yeah. Yeah. And it also, I think it helps other people who've experienced this resonate with you more because it's it's an invitation as opposed to a very like strong declaration of this is exactly you know what I felt and how you should feel. And it was really well done. Brilliant. Finding the title. Now, of course, I know where it came from because I've read your memoir, but did you have a title, working title as you were?

SPEAKER_02 11:11

I actually didn't find it. I can't I wish I could say I did, because I was struggled. Oh, I had so many working titles. Oh, you want to share any? Do you want to share any? Well, complicit. Then I went with the lucky one, but complicit became like I'm not the one complicit. Then people said, Well, do complicit with small letters. I had all these titles going forward. I would send my friends titles, my you know, I my beta readers of people I went to graduate school or people I've known from workshop. And I would send them, what about this? And then they they'd send me back something and I couldn't find it. And when I my publisher actually found it, they found a whole bunch of titles, and I was like, no, no, no. And it does come from a line in the book, yes. And when I sat with it for about 20 minutes or so, I said yes. And then when they they did the book cover, they made it because the book cover, it's called such a pretty picture, but there's little lines through the words, little tiny lines, and it's so perfect. I I am grateful to them. So it was my editor and my publisher who who who found it.

SPEAKER_00 12:22

So you know, those people are professionals for a reason, right?

SPEAKER_02 12:26

Exactly. And they had read the book and it's from a line in the book. They didn't just make it up, they pulled it from a from a line where my mother and I are very I'm very I'm about 10 and I had been sick with pneumonia. And she I just gotten home from the hospital, and she and I are looking at a picture of me as a baby and her holding me. And my mother sighs and looks at it and says, such a pretty picture. And it is a pretty picture.

SPEAKER_00 12:49

I'm getting emotional thinking about that moment right now because it's so strong.

SPEAKER_02 12:52

You know, the the funny part about my my family is we we didn't save many photographs of my childhood or young adulthood.

SPEAKER_00 13:00

It sort of makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 13:01

Yeah, and I think I write about that too. Yeah.

The Abuse Begins And Silence Forms

SPEAKER_00 13:04

Yeah. Let's get into the memoir. I think we just it's time. It's time. So it starts with a bang, like I said. You're describing your first sexual assault experience. Your father inappropriately touches you when he's bathing you as a young child. You're four and a half, and your mother comes in, witnesses the truth. She sees what is happening, and then she goes blind. She suffers immediate hysterical blindness. Take me through this confusing experience because you you have this thing happening with your father, and then your mother comes in, and all of a sudden, what do you feel?

SPEAKER_02 13:37

You know, it's funny. When I wrote this scene, I almost went into a hypnotic state. I can recall, this is so burnt in my memory. You know, I knew something was off because my father was breathing really heavily. He's touching me, he took my washcloth away, and I it felt strange to me. I was four and a half, I didn't really understand. And when my mother walks in the bathroom, she screaved and you know, she faints and he catches her and um and wakes blind, as you said. I thought I had killed my mother. I mean, I thought I had killed my mother. I thought we had killed my mother. I was so scared. And and then I didn't really know what blind meant, but there was so much panic in the room. And the moment I was terrified. I just terrified. I, you know, goosebumps all over. I was standing against the the bathtub. I had stood up in the bath against the bathtub tiles. I mean, even talking about it, I can feel the tiles on my skin. And I thought we had had killed her. And then I father told me that night before he took her to the hospital. He didn't call an ambulance, but he took her, which is in retrospect, well, strange and not strange, right?

SPEAKER_00 14:51

Manipulative for sure.

SPEAKER_02 14:53

And he um he told me that it was my fault, you know, what had happened was my fault, which I I have learned. It's a common grooming, you know. This is this is common grooming.

SPEAKER_01 15:06

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:07

You know, my mother's in the hospital, she's blind, she's in the hospital two weeks, and my grandmother's take I have a little sister who's two and a half, two at the time, and she's screaming and tantruming for my mother, who's gone suddenly, and I was told I have to be brave, and that became the mantra.

SPEAKER_01 15:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:26

I started believing I had to be brave, I had to be resilient. You know, for a very long time in my whole life, I confused resilience with bravery and silence and toughness. Even it was only many years later that I realized that resilience is something else, that resilience is the ability to embrace your trauma and ask for help. But that took a lot of years growing up and a lot of time at four and a half. I I just thought, okay, I have to be good, I have to be brave, I have to be silent.

SPEAKER_00 16:04

That's what being good and brave is is being silent. I mean, you have your father shaming you on one hand, and you do through your memory, you see all of the things that you take on in your life, all of the responsibilities, the burdens, the weights that quite frankly, you shouldn't have had to take on.

SPEAKER_02 16:21

And it is very typical of what children who go through what I went through often have.

SPEAKER_00 16:27

Right. Your mother comes home from the hospital and you feel rejected by her. She's she's she's doing that thing where she knows what she saw, but she doesn't want to believe. She doesn't want to look, so she's not seeing or you write. Most of all, I wanted her to forgive me.

SPEAKER_02 16:42

I did. I loved my mother. You know, I really so it's hard to go back in time be before that moment. So much of my my life is colored by that moment in time. My my memories before that are fragments. I mean, I I remember the day that my sister was born, okay, coming home from the hospital. She was in a yellow bassinet. I can remember that. I can remember walking with my grandmother, and but I don't have that many memories. But what I do know, and I my mother taught me to read very young. She told me I don't really remember it. But what I do know is a memory of feeling loved. I have, I believe so strongly that, you know, my mother loved me. We're going to get into excusing her, I know, a little bit, but I do that a little bit still. But uh, but she was really young. When this all happened, she was not even 20, 25, and she had two small children. And we learn over time in the book and over time in the life. You know, my father was a hard person to live with. He was a violent, complicated man. Some would say a monster. I would have points have even said that. I I try not to write anyone in my book as a monster, even my father. But you know, the what he did was certainly monstrous.

SPEAKER_00 18:02

Many things that he did, especially especially to you. But then when you kind of find out background a little bit, think that there is a bigger conversation that can be had, not just through your memoir, but excusing because of people's past trauma. Why do we allow it to excuse their current behavior? Because not everyone who was abused as a child turns around and abuses their children.

SPEAKER_01 18:25

Correct.

SPEAKER_00 18:26

You have to have a society that is willing to embrace the trauma along with the person to uplift them. Correct.

SPEAKER_02 18:32

And my father was definitely abused as a child. We do find that out in the book, and we'd find that out in our in our my life. I found that out, but don't know if he was sexually abused. Um and my mother was very young and still, I think there's I think there's a way to uplift and not completely excuse. It's a fine nuanced line. Yeah, you don't get excused for pedophilia. You can't. You don't get a hall pass. And my mother didn't get a hall pass for not protecting. I you I see this in the work that I do today. I I've been around children who've been abused and their mothers are young and their mothers are are socioeconomically, you know, not wealthy, and and some of them are, but their mothers are willing to bring them in to get help to to a center, even if they've at their own cost. So I I know she could have, she could have had the support, but she didn't.

SPEAKER_00 19:26

And you never really were able to figure out why.

SPEAKER_02 19:29

No, I I my sister and I can speculate.

SPEAKER_00 19:33

You know, it's so fascinating because we want to understand why people make the choices that they make. And it can be really complicated. But as the person who is trying to heal from this, have you had to give yourself some sort of answer that at least has brought you peace, or have you found peace in the unknowing?

SPEAKER_02 19:52

I think it's a combination of both. The the abuse went on for a long time. I mean, we're not gonna give every part of the memoir away, but maybe it's it's it's a truth. And it went it went on for a very long time. And there were certainly moments where my mother could have acted differently, without a doubt.

SPEAKER_00 20:08

And there are moments where you almost feel like she will, and then she doesn't. She doesn't do the thing that you're desperate for her to do, which is to protect you and but to believe you.

SPEAKER_02 20:18

You know, I don't try to tell her for a very long time, but she also doesn't, she did turn away from me as if she couldn't look at me. And it that that was really difficult as a young child, and she took her anger out at me too.

SPEAKER_00 20:33

Physically, she would slap you, and meanwhile, you're seeing the juxtaposition with your younger sister, and she's not acting this way towards her.

SPEAKER_02 20:41

Not my mother. My father wasn't very nice to my younger sister, but my mother wasn't was was, and she was, you know, not she was way more protective of my younger sister in that way. Uh there were other my father was also violent, and I think my younger sister took on more of the violence, strangely enough, um, than I did.

SPEAKER_00 21:01

You took on a different kind of violence.

SPEAKER_02 21:03

I took on a different violence.

SPEAKER_00 21:05

You write. As an adult, I'd question the hypocrisy of my mother's commitment to peace and civil rights, given the way my parents treated their own children. But at the time I felt proud of her. You just wanted you wanted your mother to love you. You wanted her to love you so desperately.

SPEAKER_02 21:21

I did, and and for a long, long time, maybe a whole life. That's why I feel like it was taken away. And that's that's the issue, really. It's is when love, maybe if the love had never been there, it wouldn't feel so desperate. It wouldn't have felt so desperate to get it back. Yeah. But it was it was it she had it, and there were times. There were times she was there for me.

SPEAKER_01 21:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:44

I write about those times, but for whatever reason, she was incapable of of doing anything. My mom was 15 when she met my father. My father was 18, and and they were very, very young when they got married. And she had told me he was the first person that looked at her as something other than pretty. It's hard for me to kind of put together because my my father, I I don't really view my father as the paragon of feminism by any stretch of the imagination.

SPEAKER_00 22:19

But yeah, yeah. And then there's the part when you guys moved to Florida and your mom sees the Confederate flags everywhere, and your dad's like, it's fine, just ignore them. And your mom's like, I can't ignore this. And then we're like, but you ignored the bigger thing.

Warning Signs Adults Missed

SPEAKER_02 22:31

And they both went to like Martin Luther King's march. And they we've marched on. We we marched. Uh we were, you know, quite liberal as a family. We're against the Vietnam War. My father had to watch the news. Everybody was, you know, they were very progressive in many ways, but they, you know, when it came to their own children, they had their secrets, they had their and the secrets were, and that's why nobody would really, you know, from the outside. I mean, that's where we get such a pretty picture. From the outside, the family, my father was a professor, and my mother, although she didn't have an education at the time the abuse first happened, ultimately she would go back to school and become a teacher. And and this was a house where books were cherished and talked about, and and reading was encouraged, and academic success was expected. And I was still a student who excelled. In second grade, I would cry every day and she put me in the hallway and I'd cry. I I I don't think I put that in the book, but she'd put me in the hallway and she'd have to take me out to stop me from crying. I would just cry every day in school. You know, my mother kind of pushed back against her because I was reading above grade levels and I got good grades and I did well. So what is she talking about? But I was starting to fall apart. And it was a first time anybody noticed. We moved a lot. So I didn't really have many teachers for many very long. But this teacher, her name really, she's the only person who's not a member of my family whose name I didn't change because by the time I wrote the book, I figured she was pro long deceased. But her name was Mrs. Powers, and it was too good.

SPEAKER_00 24:14

It was too good, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:15

It was too good to change. So she tried to tell my mother that I was falling apart because I was I I still got good grades, but I bit my nails down to the quiff, chewed my hair.

SPEAKER_01 24:26

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_02 24:27

It was clear to the outside that I wasn't doing quite as well as everybody would think.

SPEAKER_01 24:33

Right.

SPEAKER_02 24:34

My mother told me that people would think I was a mess, crazy, you know, not good. And I overheard my parents talking about this incident when the teacher called them in. And my father said, Well, if she continues to, you know, have issues, we we could all there are places we can send her.

SPEAKER_00 24:51

I know. And I was like, You cause the issue, you bastard, when I'm reading this book.

SPEAKER_02 24:56

And that was always the fear and the underlying threat of my childhood was that, you know, I kind of realized that if I told, I mean, there were threats. If I told, I would, you know, be put away. And the older I got, the more I read, the more scared about that I got.

SPEAKER_00 25:12

Yeah, of course, of course. And did you have any friends or any any outlet at this time in your life that gave you happiness?

SPEAKER_02 25:21

My only outlet for when when I was little was books. Yeah. Reading. It I we moved so much, and it was really hard to make friends. And I was, you know, not you were emotionally distressed. I was distressed all the time. Even I after Mrs. Powers, I no longer cried in class because I realized that was probably not a good thing. My mother, you know, I realized there'd be no tolerance for that. But I I had trouble making friends, and but I had my books, and ultimately at around 10, my mother bought me a diary, and it was my first diary, and I realized that I I um I couldn't write my stories, my truth into that diary. So I I started making up stories about another girl, a girl named Emily. Right. And Emily had a much better family, and she was popular, and I have a terrible singing voice, the worst. And Emily could sing in the choir. I I can't.

SPEAKER_00 26:28

I never You were living vicariously through.

SPEAKER_02 26:31

I had Emily and I I started writing and I started making stories up, my Emily stories and other stories. I would see other girls along the way, and I would make up stories about their lives. So that was the first that I I had. So those were the healthy things. There were some unhealthy things.

SPEAKER_01 26:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:50

Started young. I started poking myself with the straight edge of pins. I would poke myself, and you know, eventually later that would lead to cutting.

SPEAKER_00 26:59

Yeah. So, like we talked about, we can only attempt to theorize why your mother acted the way that she did, ignored and and your father too. We can only theorize what would lead someone to do this to their child. But one thing that I really appreciated about your memoir is that I think unfortunately, some people don't understand why children don't come forward about being sexually abused and assaulted. Even like you've spoken about today, you do such a good job of showing the reasons why, the reasoning, the threats, the manipulation. It seemed like you had no other choice but to not bring it up.

SPEAKER_02 27:36

Well, you destroy your family. I mean, think about it as a child. It's your family. That's all you have. Right. The idea of destroying your family, I and I really believe they would put me away. Yeah. Around 11, I started thinking, knowing what we were doing was was wrong. And I started understanding that my father and I, our relationship was, you know, what coming to my room every day. And I mean, it's all very secretive, right? And I I of course knew it was wrong, but I I I think it was really hard to understand that I didn't cause it.

SPEAKER_01 28:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:17

That took a long, long time. I mean, even though, of course, by the time I was a teenager, I, you know, I realized I didn't do this. This is like this was done to me. But being able to intellectualize it and and really metabolize it on an emotional level is a whole different thing.

Grooming, Threats, And Not Telling

SPEAKER_00 28:37

And that makes complete sense. You do talk to a therapist and he intuits what's happening to you. But in order to protect to protect your family, you lie to him.

SPEAKER_02 28:48

The the story of the therapist is always it always kind of I was 10, 11, 12, 12. And I I was going back out about 11, right before my 12th birthday, my father took me shopping and he bought me a dress, and it was a whole grooming moment.

SPEAKER_00 29:05

Oh, I know. When the sales lady is like, Oh, aren't you a lucky girl? And I was just like, Oh, you have no idea.

SPEAKER_02 29:11

It was just this whole grooming moment, which you know, fathers can buy their daughters' dresses.

SPEAKER_03 29:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:18

It doesn't have to be Machiavellian. In my case, it was. I mean, he he he it it freaked me out and I started having nightmares. So my parents sent me to a child psychiatrist, and I I I never knew why. Did they send me to the child psychiatrist to help me? Or was it my uh a a you know, my father's Machiavellian kind of way to to kind of set up the story that I was men emotionally disturbed?

SPEAKER_01 29:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:47

I I didn't know, or was it my mother's way of trying to save me?

SPEAKER_00 29:52

Right.

SPEAKER_02 29:53

Have someone else do what she couldn't do.

SPEAKER_00 29:56

Yeah. You have this moment, but at that point you were so conditioned to internalize the shame. And also, did did you really think that he'd believe you?

SPEAKER_02 30:05

I didn't know, but I wanted it to stop. Part of this book is he's my father never penetrated me with his penis. I I write that and he never kissed me. And there was right a scene where and a moment where he started changing the way it with the dress, and I got scared we were moving into a new reality. I was older and I got your body looked different. My body looked different, and I got really scared and I wanted it to end. So I thought the psych if I could tell the psychiatrist just a little bit that maybe it would stop it. And in some ways it worked. It did work because he did intuit something. This is 1968, so we have to continue remember too, things are different. I think at this point, if this exact thing happened today, one would like to believe that a psychiatrist would tell, you know, would report this. But in 1968, it was a different time. And my father was very imposing. I don't ever know what happened when he met with him. My father told me that the psychiatrist told him I that I was in love with him and that's all you, all my fault. Yeah. And he then afterwards he left me the Scarlet Letter.

SPEAKER_00 31:21

Oh gosh.

SPEAKER_02 31:22

And I understood. And I I think most of your readers have read The Scarlet Letter, but for those who haven't, it's a story about a woman named Hester who prime who has an affair with a married, she's married and has an affair, she's very young with a married pastor, and the end result is she ends up having to wear he goes off scot-free and she wears a letter for the rest of her life.

SPEAKER_00 31:47

For the rest of her life. I would also like to think that if the situation with Mrs. Powers happened today, that social services would be called in.

SPEAKER_02 31:55

I think there might be. Although, you know, it's and that's one of the things I talk about with with when I speak publicly, is, you know, one of the things that teachers should look for is a reactions like that or a change in behavior. And, you know, a child who's doing something like that, it it's indicative of something going on at home.

SPEAKER_00 32:18

Children don't cry every day for no reason. No, they just don't.

SPEAKER_02 32:21

Is it sexual abuse? It's something.

SPEAKER_00 32:24

It's something, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:25

The other thing with the psychiatrist and other people. My father could be quite charming when he wanted to be.

SPEAKER_00 32:31

He definitely read like a man who got away with a lot.

SPEAKER_02 32:35

We we see this a lot.

SPEAKER_00 32:36

Yeah. We do see this.

Rape At 14 And Lifelong Fallout

SPEAKER_02 32:38

I mean, look at what we're seeing with Jeffrey Epstein and look at what we see with so many. Um, I mean, my father was far from a billionaire, but we're seeing it with rich and powerful men. And and, you know, he was one of those types of people who he was quite smart and quite manipulative. I would like to think today this wouldn't have happened, but I can't say with any certainty. We moved, I was in a new school district every year for years.

SPEAKER_00 33:05

So then the assault from your father stopped, but then you are raped by three boys in the woods.

SPEAKER_02 33:12

At the age of 14. And, you know, it's so I I that there was an earlier incident that had happened at a party. I I was with these boys and they were touching me and I left them. And, you know, I didn't know how to be. I did not know how to be. I I didn't know where danger, I was hyper-vigilant in so many ways. You know, if a car backfired, I would jump off the and I I was so hyper-vigilant to any kind of somebody disliking me, but at the same time, I didn't know where danger ended and safety began. I had no idea.

SPEAKER_00 33:54

Well, you write this, which was heartbreaking. You write, although my father had not touched me for over a year, he had trained me well. When the boys touched me, the only thing I knew how to do was stay still and wait for it to be over.

SPEAKER_02 34:07

I think for incest survivors or survivors of childhood sexual assault, navigating your sexuality later becomes incredibly complicated.

SPEAKER_01 34:18

Yeah. Yeah.

Breaking Point And Getting Real Help

SPEAKER_02 34:19

I had long ago lost any any ownership of my body, although ultimately I would take it back in a very kind of a not a very good way. I I, you know, started confusing control. You know, I I realized with a little bit of pot and a little bit of alcohol, I could have sex and I used that as a way to manipulate men later. So I I really didn't have any any clue about what my body was, any kind of way to cheer. I didn't cherish myself. I was still filled with shame. I I I thought I was ruined. I thought I was ruined for most of my life. I I thought, oh, you know, there is no chance for redemption for me. I've been ruined at such a young age. And I think about this a lot. I I read an article in the uh New York Times about the sex trafficking here in LA on Figueroa Street. And and when I've been reading about the Epstein survivors, I I I know it's like, you know, there for the grace of God, go I. One wrong turn turn, and and life I could have been so much different. And it was such a struggle, or I could have killed myself. I had had suicidal ideation a long time, and I had it later. But yeah, and then I ended up having to move home with my parents, strangely enough, because I had I was such a I I had had a complete breakdown, and that was it was very difficult, although I will give my mother some credit there. She was she was kind to me at that point, as kind as she could be. I I make it through that that particular depression. And I'm a nursing st I was a nursing student. I graduated from college, I had a degree in nursing. I I went to Georgetown and I I ended up going and I became a nurse and I worked in Arizona. I worked for the public health service for several years and decided then to go to law school. And I went to law school and I did pretty well in law, I did really well in law school. So um, and I became a lawyer, and in that time period, I had a lot of relationships. I was married a few times. I, for very short periods of time, I would get married and then I'd leave, or move in with somebody and then I'd leave. And I couldn't stay with anyone. I my intimacy muscle was severed, so to speak. And I could be with people for for about a year, a year and a half, and then I would just leave them. I I couldn't handle love or connection. So I was going on with my life, doing the best I could from the outside, though, aside from the the little marriages, as I like to call them. I looked okay from the outside. I worked at a law firm and I really truly believed if I was pretended well enough and if I was smart enough, pretty enough, kind of perfect enough, I could pretend this abuse away. I could pretend this never happened and have a normal life. I wanted so much to have a normal life. I wanted this this dirt that I felt inside to be erased. And I I thought if I pretended, it would be gone. But you can't pretend this away. This kind of trauma needs to be addressed. And when I was 33, I was on a subway and um the lights went dark and a man grabbed my breast on the subway. It was a grope. I I I even write that I know so many people who have been through gropes on a subway in New York City, unfortunately, as women, the things we have to put up with. But I had a breakdown, I unraveled, and I started having suicidal ideation again. I was having panic attacks, and I reached a point where I became very aware that I was not gonna survive unless I got some help. And I didn't want to die. I I did not want to die. So I got some help for the first time. And I had a good therapist. She was a really good therapist, a nice, nice person who told me that I had been assault, you know, assaulted, who supported me. Um eventually I ended up going into an impatient program where I got more help, and that's how I started to heal.

SPEAKER_00 38:47

Was that the first time at the inpatient facility? Because you write about your experience there, and it's incredible. Was that the first time that you ever said those words out loud?

SPEAKER_02 38:57

I had talked to the the other therapist and told them what had happened.

SPEAKER_01 39:02

Right.

SPEAKER_02 39:03

But I had never said it in a public setting. I mean, I said that beyond the therapist, I wrote uh a letter back to my parents that, you know, this is pretty common in therapy. And they had me, they said if you can't talk about it, you have to write a letter and read it to the group. And I did it. And I wrote a letter to my father, and it was the first time I did try to confront my parents before I went in. That was part of the unraveling. They denied it, and they actually even made up another person. So my mother, only my mother could do that. I it's just only my mother. I uh my mother saw the world through it. It's what I've realized. She could only see the world the way that she wanted to see it. And she made up a she another person we knew. She said, Well, it must have been this person.

SPEAKER_00 39:50

Yeah, you were confused. Yeah, I remember that part. Yeah. You're unraveling. You know that this thing has happened to you, and for them to invalidate your reality like that was more than I could take. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:01

Yeah. That was it. I I couldn't. It was more than I could. That was the end of the I had to go into to an impatient. And I won't talk about all of it, but I had some very tender moments in the end.

SPEAKER_01 40:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:16

And I met somebody who, not sexually, but a man who told me his story. I could go into it a little bit. It's all right. It's a book.

SPEAKER_00 40:24

It was such a beautiful moment. And and everyone, just go pick up her book, okay? Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 40:30

Every once in a while we meet a person in our life who gives us strength, and they come in a package we never expect. And this person did that for me. And I write about it. And that was the beginning of healing for me. And I continued to get help. But one thing I do say, and I say it in my book, and I say it in my life, it it wasn't a bow. I did not walk out of the inpatient and I'll heal. I'm perfect. You know, it's taken a long time. I mean, I had a lot of severe trauma. My father abused me for close to 10 years. It's a long time. And with the level of CPTSD that I have, it's taken a long time. But I have healed. And that is my message to other survivors. If I can heal, you can heal. But you have to get help. This, you can't pretend this away.

SPEAKER_00 41:25

Since releasing the book or before you got the book published, did you reach out to him? Did you ever find him again? Because the way you leave it in the memoir is like, and then we never talked again. And I had to know. He died.

SPEAKER_02 41:36

I did for him. He was probably so there were not many people I I shared the book with. My sister, of course, before it was published. I and although she didn't read it until after I talked to my niece a little bit about publishing it. So she my sister's daughter. Okay. Um, my husband didn't read it, although I think he might have ended up reading parts of it because he he helped format, but um, he chose not to read it, which is fair enough. I mean, he knew the story.

SPEAKER_01 42:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:07

I would have reached out to him because the story that I tell in the book is his story and it's quite intimate. But he had died about 10 years before I went to write the book, and he lived his life helping other people. So I thought he would be okay about me telling this. But I never saw him again. It's it there are people that that again come into your life and you know, it was it was a model for a future in it. We didn't have a physical relationship, it was a very pure friendship, and yeah, it was a soul connection for sure. Soul connection. And I I I thank him in my heart so much for for being, and so you have to read the book to know the story.

SPEAKER_00 42:53

But he saw you, he saw you.

SPEAKER_02 42:55

He was the first person to see me.

SPEAKER_00 42:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:58

Funny, I was in a yoga, did I did the yoga teachers training just to get not because I want to teach yoga, but because I like to get deep on things. Yeah. When I did it, that was one of the things somebody's, you know, one of the exercises, when is the time where someone really saw you? And I I thought that is the time. I wrote about it already.

SPEAKER_00 43:16

That's a beautiful question for all of us to reflect on.

SPEAKER_02 43:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:20

And who do you feel seen by in your life right now?

SPEAKER_02 43:22

Now, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 43:24

Tell me a little bit about your husband. How long have you guys been married?

SPEAKER_02 43:27

25 years. So the intimacy, oh, it will be 25 in September almost. We've been together for over 25, almost 26 years, and we'll be married over 26 years together. 25 years um, we'll be married in September.

SPEAKER_00 43:41

So oh my gosh, congratulations.

SPEAKER_02 43:44

So the intimacy uh muscle is healed. Yeah, we have a very a good marriage. I I have a wonderful life. I am I'm quite lucky, although it took me a long time to get here. And I end the book where I end it. You know, there's an epilogue, but I end when I leave rehab um leave the or program because it was a a rehabilitation place um I I end it there but I have you know there's more to say waited are you teasing a second well I think so yeah I I I think I've reached a point in fact I I said that yesterday I I've been on this book tour for the book came out in October and I've been going pretty hard since and also speaking a lot about this issue and I think it's time to sit down and and find the page again I'm I'm really needing it. I've thought about not doing it but people have asked and I I've started just writing a little bit about it. So I think so I think there's a whole second part because it wasn't easy. Yeah but it happened but it was never that hard again I think that's the thing even when it was hard again and there were some definite things that happened along the way it was never that hard again. Yeah once I began to shine a light my own light on on what happened it was never that hard again.

SPEAKER_00 45:09

Yeah like grief healing isn't linear you know you take one step forward two steps back sometimes.

SPEAKER_02 45:15

And that's why I added the epilogue for for that reason.

Forgiveness, Advocacy, And Resources

SPEAKER_00 45:18

You already have one customer right here. Okay good before we wrap this episode up let's talk about forgiving your mother and forgiving yourself. You write about the moment as your mother is dying that she finally seems to recognize and take accountability for the pain that she caused you.

SPEAKER_02 45:35

What was this moment like for you and for all of the younger versions of you so you know I I write before that that I made the decision to keep my mother and my life it's a whole nother discussion we could go on for another hour. But it was your decision to make I think it's really important that that people when they have survivors in their life they understand that we get to pick what justice looks like we get to pick what's forgiveness looks like it's our story and it may not be what you think you might decide. You know and I tell survivors that when I talk on podcasts when I talk to people like you survivors you need to get some help but you get to pick what you do with your with your story afterwards. You can keep it in a little shell you can go public you can forgive you can go to court you can do all these different things but you get to pick and nobody gets to judge you. Yes for my mother my mother told me that she was sorry two weeks before she died I I had forgiven myself for the most part all of it you know I knew it wasn't my fault like I said intellectually but I always took care of my mother just a little bit and I always kind of missed you know I lost that you know unrequited love. My mother was my first unrequited love. And so she apologized to me. I I took care of her right before she died and um she told me she was sorry and I really almost wanted her to stop and to protect her because she was really frail at that point really frail. And I let her talk because we all like I all of us my my four and a half year old me the me as a little girl who just felt so abandoned by her mother and wanted to die. 14 year old me who was raped we talked about her and whose body looked like a roadmap of razor blade cuts all of those the older me who was groped on the subway and and and all of those iterations of me and even the me that I was at that moment because that was that was really actually only I was already right almost done with the book. I had finished everything except for this epilogue and the me that was sitting there as a as a you know 65 year old woman hold holding her hand and I I finally you know I I needed to hear whatever it was she had to say and she needed to say it I I I realized that for the first time. So I let her talk and and as I said she she asked me to forgive her. She told me she was sorry and she she uh said she should have left my father and she asked me to forgive her. And before that I hadn't I had made the decision to keep her in my life but I had not forgiven her completely. You know I loved her. You know you can it is two things are possible. It is possible to have unconditional love it is possible to keep someone in your life and it is possible not to fully forgive them. And I had not but at that moment in time I I I listened I was with my mother when she died the night she died I her last breath and my last word to her I bent down and told her I forgave her. I just I forgave her and and I think something released in me too despite all the therapy and I had decades of it um and all the internal work I'd done certainly I I I was living a good life but I had this tiny little kernel of a little girl inside of me who had not quite a hundred percent forgiven herself. And with that kind of those words forgiving her those were gone and it it just freed me. Pam who I've mentioned a couple times she worked with me closely she told me that I I wouldn't be ready to fully publish it and I wouldn't be able to write this epilogue and I struggled with the epilogue. It was it took me forever. You asked me about roadblock before but I forgot about the epilogue. So many epilogues none of them worked and then when my mother died I guess you know that freed me to write and I don't think I could have really been able to do the work that I'm doing now with the book and been out here quite as publicly as I have been in the past few years. You know I've joined the UCLA rape treatment center where I'm I'm on the board. I'm a volunteer there I speak so much. I mean I did a little TV programs talking about child of sexual abuse not just my story but the story as a whole of that issue. And I wouldn't be able to be doing this work. It was a little easier that she was gone. It was very hard writing about my father no problem writing about my mother was a harder thing. I mean he was who he was but our relationship and in the book as people read it it's it's almost a bigger part of the relationship of the book is is healing that wound.

SPEAKER_00 50:38

Yeah I I had one question for you when I finished your memoir what do you have to forgive yourself for I I don't know if there's anything but I like I said it was this little kernel.

SPEAKER_02 50:49

It doesn't have to be intellectually sound yeah it it doesn't even have to be emotionally sound but there was something inside of myself that I had to let go of so I call it forgiveness. It was just a freeing of the self-blame maybe I forgave myself for all the self-hatred and self-blame that I had for so many years. Yeah while the things that I did to myself because I punished myself a lot for you know the shame was so all-encompassing. Yeah I just remember going okay this is forgiveness I felt free.

SPEAKER_00 51:24

I think that's a part in your book that women and people who have experienced this will be able to understand in a way that maybe I can't and that's okay because like we talked about earlier this is your journey.

SPEAKER_02 51:35

And this question has come up at bookshops you know because I've read that part even though it's the end of the book it's really it's quite lovely and I I cry still when I read it and so I read it a lot and it has come up. Some things don't have to be fine.

SPEAKER_00 51:50

They just are and and for me it just was what do you think the relationship between closure and healing is don't know that you forget full closure.

SPEAKER_02 52:00

I have a closure but is it full closure like somebody asked me for example we talk about healing and forgiveness and somebody asked me if I forgave my father and I think I have closure on him but I don't have forgiveness and I'm not going to I've made that decision.

SPEAKER_00 52:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 52:17

Healing is a process I think I think I got another level of closure from the book from writing the book and I got another level of voice an empowerment. So but it's hard for me to say that you know that there is full closure on anything ever it's a big so yeah you know even with grief do we ever close completely probably not um so I I I'm not sure I can answer the question. It's a tough one right yeah it's a good question and it's something to ponder but to think about but I don't know I I do know that the biggest thing I want people to take away from this book is is that if a survivor tells you something believe them. Yeah these stories are real people don't make this up and that you know for survivors it's not your fault but you need to get some help. Here's how I began to heal yeah you know continuing to heal.

SPEAKER_00 53:11

You spoke about talking at these panels and going to bookshops do you have any connections that stick out in your mind?

SPEAKER_02 53:17

I I had this question and somebody asked me what was the one and then I gave them like four. I I because there isn't one it's just everywhere I go someone comes up to me and tells me and it's not just women that's what's really men too yeah the number is one in four girls one in six boys before the age of 18 will be sexually abused as a child you know there's a lot of moments like that people come up to me you know I worry that the book is too hard or gonna hurt but people telling me that the book has helped them.

SPEAKER_00 53:51

That's what it's all about right that's why I wrote the book. Speaking of you know your book doing this for other women have you been able to read other survivors books?

SPEAKER_02 54:00

Well I just finished Nobody's girl which was really really poignant and not an easy read but a beautiful read. Um I it's it's so sad that she is not here Virginia's not here to see yeah what has happened and uh Maya Angela was the first right that I read at 14 I know where the cage bird sings. So I have read these books.

SPEAKER_00 54:25

I still read them and I hope mine will give someone else the freedom I encourage everyone to read it in light of the dialogue that we're all going yeah it's all part of the same conversation that we need to keep having we have to keep talking we have to keep having these conversations and women like you sharing your stories especially in such beautiful ways.

SPEAKER_02 54:44

And you didn't just share your story you're also donating the royalties of your book I I am I mean not look authors don't make a fortune out of book no one's getting rich. Um but I but it's helpful so I'm donating 25% to the Rape and Incest National Network which is the national hotline and I have the number in the back of my book. I also have resources on my website and I'm donating the rest a lot to UCLA rape treatment center but also when I go to a town for example if I was hosted in Minneapolis I donated to a Minneapolis rape treatment center whatever I sell at a bookstore plus usually a little bit more because I can to do a local rape treatment center. I I think it's so important to support these hotlines and these sectors that this is where people can begin this healing journey. I was very fortunate that I had the money to go to therapy but not everyone does necessarily but you know at we at UCLA we do offer therapy to victims as well as to children at the Stewart House which is part of the rape treatment center the children can get up to a year of therapy which is incredible because it can change the trajectory of their life I imagine I think all of these hotlines are the first door for people they can be anonymous you don't have to tell anybody but they are the beginning of the healing journey. So we have to do whatever we can to support these organizations.

SPEAKER_00 56:14

That's my pitch I love that we will link thank you for asking about that. Of course of course we will link I'll link a few local ones and just you know pick some cities around around the United States so people can pick those as well and I do want to go ahead and share Rain's National Sexual Assault hotline with everyone right now. They have 247 support in English and in in Spanish you can call 800 656 HOPE 800 656 4673. They're available to chat online 247 or you can text HOPE H O P E to 64673. Like Andrea said take that first step you are worth it you are worth it to heal and rain and rain will get you in touch with something local because they're national perfect two questions for you and then I'll let you go my first question I ask all my authors how do you stay hopeful today?

SPEAKER_02 57:05

Gosh I look at videos of Punch the monkey not why I love an honest answer like that. Um I I also I I think I get hopeful when people tell me that they've read my book and it helps them I do a lot of yoga and meditation these days in particular I'm it's hard. So I do recommend Punch the monkey we will link punch. If you don't know the story go look at the very moving story of a monkey in Japan who who found a stuffed friend.

SPEAKER_01 57:40

Oh I love that.

SPEAKER_02 57:41

Truthfully we all have to look for those little ways. Yesterday I was walking to yoga and I saw blue jay and I was like so happy I said oh a blue jay you know and then I saw a squirrel running up a tree with a with a little acorn in its mouth and I said okay this is it. Yeah it's those little bits nature always gives us hope.

SPEAKER_00 58:00

That's right. Okay and then my last question I pull from the jar do do do I have no idea what the question will be.

SPEAKER_02 58:07

Okay this is interesting that this came up for you what's a question you wish someone had asked you sooner are you okay that's kind of crazy that that came up for you I mean as a child it would have been nice for someone to ask me not my parents in an empathetic way. You know I wish somebody had taken me aside and said I I see that you're struggling I'm here to help you and are you okay? So for me it's a pretty simple one.

SPEAKER_00 58:37

Andrea thank you so much for coming on the show.

SPEAKER_02 58:40

Thank you Alec I really had this was a lovely conversation and I appreciate your time. Thank you to all the listeners for listening to my story.

How To Support The Show

SPEAKER_00 58:48

And we will link how to buy Andrea's book such a pretty picture in the show notes and you can find it on mybookshop.org website and everyone out there thank you for listening and take care. Bye. Thank you bye thank you all so much for bearing witness to Andrea's story today. If you would like to further support the show you can find us on Patreon or Apple Podcasts. Subscribe there for extended episodes and bonus content. We also have some really cute merch at Tea Public. We have a special treat coming up for you our first Friday fiction episode drops this Friday the incredible New York Times bestselling author Kate Quinn joins me. We have a fantastic conversation how she finds inspiration and the women's memoirs that she's used in researching her fantastic historical fiction novels. Until then take care