Flying Child - A Cautionary Fairy Tale for Adults (eBook)

Sophie Olson, Patricia Walsh (Autoren)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024 | 1. Auflage
416 Seiten
ZunTold (Verlag)
9781915758156 (ISBN)

Infos

'And then came the session where I felt I would give up. I felt frustrated as I'd worked so hard on trying to speak but the most important words; the worst ones, had simply not come out. I implied I would not necessarily come back the following week and as I got up to leave the room, Pat said,   'Try detaching from it entirely. Try writing it as a fairy story. Start with the words, once upon a time there was a little girl'.   That evening, I tried. I sat on my bed and typed on the note's app of my phone Once Upon A Time ... and finally, four decades after the abuse began, the words started to flow.'   This book documents the therapeutic journey undertaken by Sophie and her therapist, Pat. It includes all chapters of the fairy tale and the drawings Sophie created to help her make sense of her experiences and to reconnect with herself. It also contains the many in-between session conversations Pat and Sophie had by email, WhatsApp, and texts, with important insights into how to work safely with trauma.   Essential reading for all therapists, counsellors, health professionals, educators, and social workers, interested in understanding or working with survivors of child sexual abuse, and for those who are survivors of sexual abuse, The Flying Child - A Cautionary Fairy Tale for Adults- Finding a purposeful life after Child Sexual Abuse through compassionate and creative therapy - is a must- have for your bookshelf.   Today, Sophie is a survivor activist, writer, founder and managing director of The Flying Child: a non-profit, National Lottery Community Funded organisation improving the awareness of child sexual abuse and the consequences of trauma. The core aim of The Flying Child is to normalise speaking about CSA. The Flying Child Project brings lived experience into the heart of professional settings, providing training in Education, Social Work and Healthcare.   Pat Walsh is an experiential and intuitive counsellor with over forty years' experience of working in trauma. Her background in nursing and occupational therapy taught her that to heal properly, wounds must be deeply cleansed, and purpose and meaning must be established to build any long -lasting recovery. She brings these learnings into her therapeutic work with survivors of sexual violence and childhood sexual abuse.

Textauszug

Praise for The Flying Child

This is a powerful and inspiring account of one person’s journey to recovery after childhood abuse. It gives hope to us all.

– Dr Lucy Johnstone, Consultant Clinical Psychologist, Co-author of The Power, Threat, Meaning Framework

The mental health system declared Sophie disordered and irreparably ill, telling her that she’d never work again. This book - Sophie’s story, serves as a vehement rejection of psychiatry’s labels, and is a passionate testimony that true healing lies in relationship and connection.

– Jo Watson, author of Drop the Disorder: Challenging the Culture of Psychiatric Diagnosis

The Flying Child bravely depicts an unapologetically honest account of the devastating impact of child sexual abuse. It is a stark reminder of the need for us all to work towards creating a society where safe adults are appropriately equipped to act on concerns and give children the opportunity to speak out. It also highlights the significant need for those who have experienced abuse to have access to appropriate, traumainformed support at the earliest opportunity. A powerful and courageous account, providing valuable insight for professionals.

– Kate Regan, NSPCC Team Manager

Sophie’s book is an essential read for any adult working with children and young people, in schools, colleges, healthcare or the wider community. Sophie’s story sensitively charts her own traumatic experiences and their long-term implications, reinforcing the absolute imperative that professionals should become informed about childhood sexual abuse. It reminds us to prioritise keeping children safe, prompts us to think the unthinkable, and shows us that any child could be suffering in silence. I hope this book helps to bring an end to childhood sexual abuse by highlighting its devastating consequences. It is our responsibility to notice children like Sophie, provide a safe space for them to be heard, and enable them to fly.

– Dr Clare Brunet, Headteacher

It’s impossible to read Sophie Olson’s account of her life after sexual abuse without being struck by her courage. But this book offers so, so much more - incredible skill and creativity, immense wisdom and psychological insight, inspiration, honesty, humility, and curiosity. A hunger not just for recovery, but for meaning. A desire to tell not just Sophie’s story, but to leave every reader understanding themselves, their relationships and their world with greater depth, nuance, and – despite the pain of the subject – hope.

And there’s love. Because this is also a story about the relationship between Sophie and her therapist, Patricia Walsh. It’s a story of how professional compassion, commitment and courage can underpin healing; how integrity and creativity can elevate professional practice into a transformational experience for everyone involved.

In short – this is a very important book. Whether you’re a survivor of trauma or a therapist, whether you seek or offer healing, whether you simply want to understand humans, our capacity for harm and for recovery; or whether you’re an artist who wants to witness art in a living context at its raw and powerful best.

For Sophie and Patricia, creativity is activism, medicine, language, and life force. For these reasons, and for the love, the honesty, the beauty, and the hope - most of all the hope - I am grateful to them for the gift of this wonderful book.

– Clare Shaw, Writer, and Activist

The Flying Child – A Cautionary Fairy Tale for Adults is a courageous, powerful, and thought-provoking book about healing after Child Sexual Abuse and the harms caused in the aftermath of abuse by systems unprepared to respond to trauma. It illustrates the importance of bearing witness to Child Sexual Abuse survivors’ experiences, and the power of the wisdom held by survivors

– Dr Síofra Peeren, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London

The Flying Child is a remarkable, compelling and urgent book. Sophie Olson has harnessed the fairy tale in the most ingenious and relatable way to portray the horror of her childhood, adolescence, and her journey into adulthood. Her writing is clear and clever, honest and evocative, and witnessing the abuse she suffered for so long broke my heart over and over.

Sophie’s brilliance is to weave the threads of her therapy throughout, alternating the chapters of fairy tale and reality. This exchange allows space to breathe, not least for the reader, and is especially helpful in providing an independent voice so that we can understand what Sophie is going through at each stage. The insight, care and guidance of the therapist is invaluable; showing us how the mind works, what our memories mean, how we process trauma, and crucially how we can find a way out of the dark.

– Joe Gibson, survivor and author of Seventeen: A Coming of Age Story

In my role as Therapeutic Team Manager for a service offering healing interventions to children who have experienced child sexual abuse I was keen to read this book on many levels; I was seeking an opportunity to fully understand the long term impact of a child’s experience, I was keen to learn how to strengthen our team’s approach and I wondered how the book might support some of children in their own process.

The book is written in such a way that I felt I was alongside the healing journey, as if in a therapeutic attunement with the author and there is a core message in the initial pages that validates what we as a team try to advocate in terms of Child Sexual Abuse in the author’s choice to not provide a ‘trigger warning’. For me this removes the shame and secrecy that allows harm to remain undiscovered.

It was the use of metaphor in the book that I feel will have the most profound impact on my practice - in our work with children, some as young as 3, the therapists try to find creative methods to give them a voice; a way to explore their muddles and worries. The concept of fairytale enables the child’s story to be told through characters that represent their subconscious thoughts and feelings and make sense of them at their own pace.

– Clare Sullivan, Barnados

The Flying Child simultaneously locates the reader in humanity’s darkest and brightest, most hopeful hour. Through recorded interactions between Sophie Olson and her therapist Patricia Walsh, we learn of the deep and awful trauma of sexual abuse in childhood. It is closer up than most readers will have ever experienced such abuse. It is uncomfortable and awful, nightmarish, and yet, we read on. We are aware that Sophie is doing the hardest work of all, travelling back and facing her abuser and so, reading on, strangely, feels like a supportive act. We are with Sophie, every step of the way. And on every step of the journey we are unendingly grateful for the presence of Patricia. Ultimately, despite the book’s difficult subject matter, we are buoyed by the strength of these two remarkable women: Sophie in persisting through a living hell; and Patricia in guiding her steadfastly back to her own strength and inner beauty. I have learned so much about the devastating impact of trauma from this book but I have learned more about the beauty, and the twinned fragility and strength of survivors.

– Jenny Horgan, author, Columnist Irish Examiner, teacher

Although there are many memoirs that recount childhood abuse, some rely on familiar tropes. But this wonderful collaboration between Sophie Olson and Patricia Walsh is quite different. It is emotional but not sentimental, engaging as well as elevating. Through its different modes of telling – personal reflections, texts between survivor and therapist, the fairy story, the illustrations – it draws the reader to ‘travel alongside’ Olson. A precious resource for practitioners who want to deliver better services and for survivors and their allies alike.

– Dr Ruth Beecher, social and cultural historian, Birkbeck, University of London

Have you ever read a book and felt that it was an absolute privilege? That is how I feel after reading A Cautionary Fairy Tale for Adults. A contained and delicate relational dance that enabled the deconstruction of shame and reclamation of power and hope. Sharing their journey, Sophie and Pat have allowed insight into the most private therapeutic process, demonstrating the power of words, courage and offer of a human interaction. It has a universal application for personal or professional development. Whatever your reason is for turning these pages, it will reach you in ways that you are not expecting, it provides a prism of perspective of the complexities of child abuse and the legacy of trauma that it leaves. Expect incitement, clarity, guidance, reflection, ideas and empowerment. The current safeguarding and trauma healing system must recognise that a child is not responsible for stopping their abuse and people must be reached at where they are at. If you are a curious and...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 15.9.2024
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Gesundheit / Leben / Psychologie ► Krankheiten / Heilverfahren
• Themenwelt: Medizin / Pharmazie ► Medizinische Fachgebiete ► Suchtkrankheiten
• ISBN-13: 9781915758156 / 9781915758156