Time To Tell is raising funds to purchase copies of Healing My Life From Incest to Joy to send to organizations serving survivors of sexual abuse and assault.
THE BOOK Screen Shot 2017-10-13 at 1.49.54 PM.png 160.4 KB Donna Jenson's book, Healing My Life from Incest to Joy is a call to arms for other survivors and their loved ones, and a reminder that violence within families is a public health and social justice issue that must be addressed with renewed urgency. A key theme being: healing is possible. In Healing My Life Donna removes the shackles from one of the most taboo subjects in our culture—incest. Hers is a deeply personal story that explores the sexual violence Jenson endured at the hands of her father, the refusal of her family to acknowledge her pain, and a rocky escape as a teenager from the Midwest to start anew in seventies-era California. In chronicling the physical and spiritual steps she took to reclaim her life and peel away the layers of damage done by incest, Jenson has written a powerful narrative of one person’s healing journey. And though the subject matter is deeply serious, Jenson writes with her sense of humor firmly intact, reminding us that joy is possible in the face of great pain. Poignant, brave, and helpful, Healing My Life offers a much-needed testimony for anyone affected by or concerned about childhood sexual abuse.
THE BOOKS TO SURVIVORS INTENTION We want survivors to SEE this book. Donna explains, “I tried three times to read The Color Purple by Alice Walker. On the first page Celie speaks of the sexual abuse she is suffering under. I closed it, I wasn’t ready to read it. I started it three times before I was healed enough to read it all the way through. I want Healing My Life to be in places where survivors go – social service centers, shelters, rape crisis centers – safe places where they can see the book. Maybe they’ll only look at the cover, maybe just the dedication, maybe only the table of contents. And then maybe, one day, they’ll want to read it, like me with The Color Purple.”
WHERE THE BOOKS WILL GO Organizations to receive Books To Survivors:
Statewide and National Coalitions
1. New York State Coalition Against Sexual Assault – 100 organizations and projects
2. Jane Doe, Inc (Massachusetts Coalition of Domestic Violence and Rape Crisis Centers) – 60 organizations
3. Maine Coalition Against Sexual Assault – 7 organizations
4. Connecticut Coalition Against Domestic Violence – 18 organizations
8. Six Nations Haudenosaunee (named Iroquois by the French) Reserve, Canada
9. Saint Lawrence University Advocates, Canton, NY
10. The National Sexual Violence Resource Center Research Library, Harrisburg, PA 11. The Community Crisis Response Team, Greenfield, MA 12. I Am a Rockstar online survivor community
FACTS:*
Every 98 seconds an American is sexually assaulted and every 8 minutes that victim is a child
82% of all victims under 18 are female.
*www.rainn.org/statistics
FROM DONATIONS TO BOOK DELIVERY
Whatever you can give will make a difference and be gratefully accepted. A book costs $19.95. With shipping and handling it is $25.00. As your tax deductible donations come in the publisher, Levellers Press, will send the books off to the organizations listed above.
$ 25.00 will send 1 book $ 50.00 will send 2 $100.00 will send 4 $500.00 will send 20 $1,000.00 will send 40
And, like our first donor, $2,500.00 will send 100 Books To Survivors
To Pay By Check: Send a check made out to Fractured Atlas earmarked for Time To Tell on the memo-line to: Donna Jenson 27 Laurel Hill Dr. Leverett, MA 01054
TO ORDER A BOOK FOR YOURSELF Click Here: This one can not be tax deductible. DONNA'S BIO Donna Jenson founded Time To Tell™ in 2009 with a mission to spark stories from lives affected by incest and sexual abuse to be told and heard. She wrote and performs her one-woman play, What She Knows: One Woman’s Way Through Incest to Joy, which is based on her own experience of surviving incest and what she did to make her life worth living. She's performed her play at conferences, for organizations focused on boys who have sexually abused others, girls in prison, college students, domestic violence and sexual assault advocates, and communities in need of healing. She leads Time To Tell What We Know writing and mindfulness workshops for survivors. Donna is a leader, counselor and organizer who built grassroots women’s centers in New York City during the 1970’s and 1980’s and is still active in the leadership development consulting and training practice she established in 1986. Her book, Healing My Life from Incest to Joy, is a narrative of the choices she made and experiences she had that helped her heal from her childhood trauma.
ADVANCED PRAISE FOR Healing My Life from Incest to Joy: "You might think Donna Jenson’s new book would be a heavy, difficult read. But though she is honest and deeply human as she tells her story of childhood incest, what is most striking about this book is the joy.
Through her, we learn techniques of storytelling, therapy, and relationship building. She does not ask the reader to suffer with her, rather inviting the reader to heal with her.
This book is not prescriptive, not a “how-to” guide to overcoming trauma, but it is a detailed account of what helped Jenson, how and why she came to learn new tools for introspection and growth, and where any person could find them, should they have an interest. It’s the kindness of this storytelling that is so striking. Jenson does not pretend to speak on behalf of all survivors, but she clearly speaks to all survivors. This book firmly says, “If I can do it, so can you,” and reading her words, she compels you to believe them.
The joy Jenson has for the life she has built is apparent on every page, and with every new page that joy transforms into hope, and gratitude. Healing My Life will speak to anyone who has tried to heal, who wants to heal, or who has begun to heal their own lives. Jenson not only offers readers the understanding of a friend, but helps them to understand themselves."
Lea Grover, Empowerment Advocate
The Voices and Faces Project, Chicago, IL
“Author Donna Jenson gives us a personal, detailed account of her healing journey. Dedicating this book to the tens of millions of incest survivors with her expressed hope that “more and more of our lights reach out and illuminate one another,” Ms. Jenson’s generous contribution to that mission carries a life-giving tone throughout. She chronicles each stage of her process with mention of resources and with clear, practical recommendations, but without pontificating… readers who are survivors will come away with a deeper understanding of themselves, of available components of the healing process, and with new or renewed hope that they, too, can heal and experience joy.”
Catherine McCall
International Bestselling Author, Never Tell
Panel Member, UK Child Sexual Abuse People's Tribunal
Time To Tell is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions for the charitable purposes of Time To Tell must be made payable to “Fractured Atlas” only and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.
