WARRIOR SISTER, CUT YOURSELF FREE FROM YOUR ASSAULT

A comprehensive self-help guide for women and girls dealing with the trauma of assault.

This nonfiction debut from DeBellis, the founding director of the aRIFT+ Warrior Project, emphasizes survival tactics for young women and girls who are facing mental or physical abuse, including sexual assault. The author stresses that young women and girls, as a demographic, face the vast majority of such violence: Nearly 2 million minors have experienced sexual assault, says DeBellis, quoting a CBS News story, and 82 percent of those victims are female. The author herself is a survivor of such violence, which informs her insights and recommendations to readers. She touches on many of the effects of assault, including emotional pain, shame, and guilt, as well as many aspects of recovery, including psychological coping mechanisms that focus on straightforward truths: “Regardless of what your brain says you could or should have done differently,” she writes at one such point, “your attacker is wholly responsible for your assault. Period.” This recurring element of blunt practicality extends to the author’s advice on such things as seeking legal responses to assault; she advises that readers should, at all times, “seek justice not revenge.” DeBellis, who also edits Pink Panther Magazine, provides readers with tough, knowing support throughout this remarkably wide-ranging guide, and although the facts and statistics she relays are grim, she very effectively balances this with compassion and optimism: “Don’t give up all hope for humanity yet,” she writes, asking readers to remember that they are not alone. She also provides extensive contact information and helpful resources for recovery, and the consistent tone of hard-won personal experience is welcome. Overall, it’s a brief volume that assault survivors are sure to find invaluable.

An empathetic and knowledgeable recovery manual.