I wrote hundreds of poems, dozens of essays-I became obsessed with finding the missing conceptual knowledge. Well aware of the research conveying how trauma can physiologically distort the functioning of the brain, how our brains can hide and erase memory to protect us from unbearable pain, I worried I had forever blocked elements I needed to fully access those necessary truths.įrustrated, I let go of the memoir, and began to explore the themes of dissociation, memory, sexual abuse and resilience, using different forms-poetry, essay and fiction. A truth that I needed if I was to thrive, a truth I needed if I was to contribute to the larger conversations of mental illness and sexual abuse-conversations that meant everything to me. Writing the memoir was revealing and agonizing and achingly healing, but in the end, something was missing-an emotional truth I could vaguely sense, but not articulate. For more than a decade, with the support of my psychotherapist and trusted writing mentors, I wrote to make sense of what happened, to understand the impact, and if I was lucky, to finally live a life free of deep hypervigilance and detachment-to believe I had a life worth saving.

The Night Child, a novel, was born from my memoir-a narrative of my personal history with dissociation, sexual abuse and survival.

Angeline by Anna Quinn