Dispatches from the Couch is a raw and fiercely intelligent memoir about the enduring scars of childhood sexual abuse and the intricate, often agonizing process of healing. Why was this an important book for you to write?

Writing the early drafts gave me permission to spend as much time as I needed to interrogate my memories and the intrusive thoughts they manifested. I was in such a dark place that I didn’t believe I deserved to talk to my therapist repeatedly about particular memories or challenges. I’d put myself on a healing schedule with a ridiculously short timeline. Writing suspended that clock. In later drafts, the editing process required I interrogate every description of my experiences that I was developing. It allowed me to revisit and reconsider what our therapy sessions revealed. Editing my manuscript with the goal that readers could better understand childhood trauma’s lifelong impact and perhaps identify how their or a loved one’s story might relate to mine ultimately allowed me to understand it and myself as well.

What was the most challenging part of writing your memoir and what was the most rewarding?

The most challenging part was deciding what to keep and what to cut. Therapy is a slow, repetitive process. One that sometimes was made even slower by my scientific mind’s penchant to step outside what I was experiencing and overanalyze things. We can feel stuck in the mud for weeks, even months. The two steps forward, three steps back, one step forward nature of the process is difficult to convey in a way that keeps a reader engaged. It was challenging but ultimately rewarding to retain the truth of what it feels like to slog one’s way through therapy that doesn’t read as a slog. This is where candid but gentle editors and beta readers are essential. My first developmental editor, author Tessa Fontaine, was vital to this effort. As was my ongoing relationship with Melissa Walker of HeyDay Coaching as my writing coach.

How has writing your memoir impacted or changed your life?

It answered a question I first articulated as a teenager: Who might I have been had the man I call Mr. Jay never been a part of my life? The six bouts of therapy prior to working with my current therapist, identified as Piper in the book, helped. They allowed me to process the trauma of child sexual abuse and keep going. However, working with Piper as I wrote out the dialogues of our sessions and later worked and reworked them into a coherent story created opportunities for us to revisit an issue until I felt I had exorcised it from my brain and body. It gave us the chance to think more critically about the more nuanced ways trauma shaped my understanding of the world and my place in it. We went from asking the question: What happened to you? to the question: What did it do to you? Today, I no longer see myself as damaged goods making the best of the scrap heap a pedophile left me to work with. I am a woman with a voice and the privilege of an education that allows me to understand trauma through a unique combination of scientific knowledge and personal experience.

What do you hope is one thing readers take away from your story?

Fight the unkind things your brain tells you, along with the sadness, fear, or frustration they bring. We live in an overwhelming world. Accept help. We so often feel like burying ourselves under the covers in isolation and loneliness. Whatever might cause you to think no one cares or no one could possibly understand, challenge those beliefs however you can. Give it everything you’ve got. Not one person whom I eventually reached out to averted their eyes or walked away. Had I written the Acknowledgements of my book before I wrote the book, I might not have needed to write it. (I am still glad I did!) There are people, whether through professional or personal relationships, who want to and can help you find your way through whatever your brain is telling you will be impossible to overcome.

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