Healing Together: A Guide to Supporting Sexual Abuse Survivors

Sex is such an intimate topic historically wrapped in shame and when someone shares they were sexually abused, we may not know how to respond. With recent #MeToo and #ChurchToo movements, we are learning just how many men, women, boys, and girls have suffered sexual abuse at the hands of a trusted person, often family members or leaders in the church. Sexual abuse is rampant in modern society and now--sometimes many years later--sexual abuse survivors are sharing their stories. Anne Marie Miller is a survivor of childhood clergy sexual abuse and has shared her journey toward healing with audiences all over the world. After speaking with thousands of survivors and their loved ones, she saw the need for a fundamental and practical guide for helping supporters of sexual abuse survivors understand the basics of abuse, trauma, healing, and hope. Drawing from her own experience as a survivor and evidence-based research, Anne addresses these questions and more in Healing Together: What is sexual abuse? How can I help survivors? Who are predators and how do they groom victims? How does trauma affect survivors? What happens when someone doesn't remember the details of their abuse? How does abuse wound the physical, emotional, and spiritual health of people who have been abused? When and how should authorities be contacted? How do you talk to your children about sexual abuse? What are the warning signs of abuse? Is healing possible? Whether you are a spouse, a family member, a friend, or a church leader looking for easy-to-navigate resources to understand and support sexual abuse survivors, you'll find answers and hope in these pages. Review Anne Marie Miller is a modern-day hero with a profoundly important message for all of us about the dark epidemic of child sexual abuse that has infiltrated our communities. In Healing Together, Anne Marie helps to answer the critical question of "What can I do?" that more and more people are finally beginning to ask. What I love about this book is that Anne Marie answers this question out of her own painful experiences in very trauma-informed, practical, and hope-filled ways. This amazing book is a must-read for all those who can no longer sit in silence but want to help create a refuge for the wounded that reflects the incomprehensible love and compassion of Jesus. Boz Tchividjian, Attorney and Founder of GRACEHealing Together casts a compelling vision for family, friends, and churches in their support of sexual assault survivors. It is a practical guide and first-aid resource written with the wisdom, honesty, and understanding of a survivor. Supporters have the privilege of being agents of compassion and love where evil wants to cause destruction and pain. This book explains clearly the effects of trauma, which is vital to our response and care for survivors. We will assign it in seminary coursers we teach on preventing, recognizing, and responding to abuse. Justin S. Holcomb and Lindsey A. Holcomb, authors of Rid of My Disgrace: Hope and Healing for Victims of Sexual Assault; and Is It My Fault?: Hope and Healing for Those Suffering Domestic Violence. Justin is a board member of GRACERarely does the community of survivors read books from someone who is a survivor of sexual assault, a gifted writer, a student of trauma and abuse, and an advocate for other survivors--But Anne Marie is all of these. This book is more than a memoir. She uncovers the relatively hidden world of sexual trauma that only we survivors and trauma therapists see. Remarkably, she has distilled complex concepts and made them straight-forward without over-simplifying. This is a stand-alone achievement. Mike Phillips, Trauma Counselor and AuthorI've read volumes of books on abuse and this is the most well-rounded book I've read to date. It is the perfect balance between personal narrative, spiritual implications, medical definitions, and practical application. This is an invaluable resource. Jimmy Hinton, pas