Since 2016, Author Alisa Zipursky has been blogging about her experiences as a millennial woman trying to live a full life while healing from her abuse. As many of you know, I am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and I am thrilled that Alisa is my first guest who has written a book about her healing. She wrote Healing Honestly: The Messy and Magnificent Path to Overcoming Self-Blame and Self-Shame to put a book out in the world that honestly addressed the balance of trauma recovery and living a happy life. Going out in the world and trying to be practical or rational about your abuse story to make others less uncomfortable is just bullshit, and she takes that head on as an effort to show how it can ultimately combat shame.
She is a beautiful writer and on today’s show, we get deep into the balance of personal narrative and research in her book, as well as who connected with her when she first started the writing process online. When she got public in her survivorship, the first survivor who connected with her was from India, but she also heard from people in her social circle that they were affected by abuse. She realized it was all around her in this seemingly perfect community in Bethesda, Maryland. The truth is, we are all surrounded by survivors.
We chat about:
Her grandmother was Alisa’s biggest champion through the early process of her writing her blog (which eventually led to the book.)
How she at first felt that just body memories were not enough to be a legit survivor only to discover this was one of the biggest areas where people connected with her story.
When she shared about a niche experience in her process of facing abuse that she never thought anyone would connect with, that it was exactly what people needed to hear.
As writers in recovery we are tasked with writing about what goes on inside us, even if we think we will be stigmatized as angry feminists as abuse survivors (which may be on some levels true, but not so binary). Our job is to show that it is not black and white thinking for healing where you are either thriving or victimized. We get to have many layers and stages of our recovery and it is ever changing.
She offers practical strategies for survivors of sex abuse to support themselves in living full and vibrant lives.
You can find Alisa at - Founder HealingHonestly.com
Author of Healing Honestly: The Messy and Magnificent Path to Overcoming Self-Blame and Self-Shame (June) pre-order now!
If you enjoyed this show, may we suggest other episodes you may like with Book Client/Authors of Kim’s? Check out recent episodes with Joy McManigal, Author of The Good You or Matthew Brownstein, founder of the Institute of Interpersonal Hypnotherapy. Subscribe to not miss any upcoming guests, and if you liked this episode, I would love a review! It’s the lifeblood of podcasts. My podcast is also connected to my 3x weekly column Inner Circle so be sure to subscribe!
I have written a book! Check out No Longer Denying Sexual Abuse: Making The Choices That Can Change Your Life. I also have a 21 week series Abused No Longer.
The Messy and Magnificent Writing of “Healing Honestly”