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Get Empowered: A Practical Guide to Thrive, Heal, and Embrace Your Confidence in a Sexist World
A practical guide for women, nonbinary, and LGBTQIA+ people to claim our right to be safe, to take up space, and to speak up for ourselves.
Don’t walk alone at night. Don’t leave your drink unattended. Don’t hurt anyone’s feelings.
Most women and nonbinary people are taught these rules, intended to keep us safe from harassment, abuse, and assault, from a young age. While the #MeToo movement has swept the globe and shined a light on the pervasiveness of gender-based violence that led to these “rules,” the fears persist—and for good reason.
While men—who commit almost all gender-based violence—are the ones who should be responsible for changing, those of us who are targeted shouldn’t have to wait for the world to transform and become a better place in order to live safer, fuller, more authentic lives.
Through real-life stories, meaningful questions, and interactive exercises, Get Empowered will teach readers
understand why gendered violence exists and how it shows up take up spacesay what they wantlet go of self-blameheal from past traumas
Whether you’re looking for ways to stand up for yourself, you’re a survivor focused on healing, or you’re committed to being an ally, this book will give you the tools you need to thrive.
Don’t walk alone at night. Don’t leave your drink unattended. Don’t hurt anyone’s feelings.
Most women and nonbinary people are taught these rules, intended to keep us safe from harassment, abuse, and assault, from a young age. While the #MeToo movement has swept the globe and shined a light on the pervasiveness of gender-based violence that led to these “rules,” the fears persist—and for good reason.
While men—who commit almost all gender-based violence—are the ones who should be responsible for changing, those of us who are targeted shouldn’t have to wait for the world to transform and become a better place in order to live safer, fuller, more authentic lives.
Through real-life stories, meaningful questions, and interactive exercises, Get Empowered will teach readers
understand why gendered violence exists and how it shows up take up spacesay what they wantlet go of self-blameheal from past traumas
Whether you’re looking for ways to stand up for yourself, you’re a survivor focused on healing, or you’re committed to being an ally, this book will give you the tools you need to thrive.
289 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 3, 2023
4 people are currently reading
1 person want to read
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February 3, 2024
The stories are real. The methods are accessible and effective.
When the young Nadia Telsey went shopping for jeans in a Brooklyn thrift store and was manipulated into removing her pants by a male employee who was pretending to work in the try-on area, she knew something was very wrong. But she instantly blamed herself. During the ensuing years, Nadia studied and began teaching martial arts and developed what she later called, Self-Defense From the Inside Out. Many years later, after providing training to tens of thousands of students, she teamed up with self-defense trainer and co-founder of Washington D.C.’s first shelter for abused women and their children, Lauren R. Taylor, to write and publish a comprehensive workbook for women, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+ individuals, and other vulnerable groups in the program of Empowerment Self-Defense. Research has shown that learning and applying these methods have been strongly effective in people’s lives.
The book opens with a quote from Prentis Hemphill, “Boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously.” The exercises that follow help us establish healthy boundaries. Readers are invited to choose only the exercises that resonate with their current needs or to practice using all of them.
Get Empowered is about “… protecting ourselves, including our inner selves, from harassment, abuse, and assault… to reduce the barriers that can make speaking up difficult, to gain skills for self-protection, and to [help us] create bigger, more authentic lives.” For example, by unpacking the stages of abuse and assault, this book will help us learn how to spot early stages so we are more able to interrupt them.
Readers will learn to:
“Defy the messages telling you to be small and passive,
Better understand your choices and behavior,
Gain skills to value and advocate for yourself,
Make choices that will help you get more of what you want and deserve, and
Live your life feeling more safe, confident, and free.”
Each chapter begins with grounding exercises, including conscious breathing, and ends with tools to help us incorporate new life skills with “patience, practice, self-compassion, and self-care.”
The message of Get Empowered is: “we’re all worthy enough to protect and speak up for.” With exercises on practices like taking up space with our voices, identifying our own feelings, and de-escalation as a strategy to increase our safety, Telsey and Taylor teach us how “You can be a good person with a kind heart and still say No.”
In the closing chapter, the authors inspire us to reach out for help because, “…human connections is…[also] where most healing happens, so we encourage you to take the risk.” An extensive index at the end of the book includes contact data for hotlines, counseling resources, books, podcasts, videos, and local and national groups, all to help the reader get plugged in to a community for support as well as to help end gender-based violence.
Get Empowered helps readers have a safer, more self-aware life. It’s a valuable gift to give yourself and to your loved ones, offering skills and practices that will keep on giving for a lifetime.
When the young Nadia Telsey went shopping for jeans in a Brooklyn thrift store and was manipulated into removing her pants by a male employee who was pretending to work in the try-on area, she knew something was very wrong. But she instantly blamed herself. During the ensuing years, Nadia studied and began teaching martial arts and developed what she later called, Self-Defense From the Inside Out. Many years later, after providing training to tens of thousands of students, she teamed up with self-defense trainer and co-founder of Washington D.C.’s first shelter for abused women and their children, Lauren R. Taylor, to write and publish a comprehensive workbook for women, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+ individuals, and other vulnerable groups in the program of Empowerment Self-Defense. Research has shown that learning and applying these methods have been strongly effective in people’s lives.
The book opens with a quote from Prentis Hemphill, “Boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously.” The exercises that follow help us establish healthy boundaries. Readers are invited to choose only the exercises that resonate with their current needs or to practice using all of them.
Get Empowered is about “… protecting ourselves, including our inner selves, from harassment, abuse, and assault… to reduce the barriers that can make speaking up difficult, to gain skills for self-protection, and to [help us] create bigger, more authentic lives.” For example, by unpacking the stages of abuse and assault, this book will help us learn how to spot early stages so we are more able to interrupt them.
Readers will learn to:
“Defy the messages telling you to be small and passive,
Better understand your choices and behavior,
Gain skills to value and advocate for yourself,
Make choices that will help you get more of what you want and deserve, and
Live your life feeling more safe, confident, and free.”
Each chapter begins with grounding exercises, including conscious breathing, and ends with tools to help us incorporate new life skills with “patience, practice, self-compassion, and self-care.”
The message of Get Empowered is: “we’re all worthy enough to protect and speak up for.” With exercises on practices like taking up space with our voices, identifying our own feelings, and de-escalation as a strategy to increase our safety, Telsey and Taylor teach us how “You can be a good person with a kind heart and still say No.”
In the closing chapter, the authors inspire us to reach out for help because, “…human connections is…[also] where most healing happens, so we encourage you to take the risk.” An extensive index at the end of the book includes contact data for hotlines, counseling resources, books, podcasts, videos, and local and national groups, all to help the reader get plugged in to a community for support as well as to help end gender-based violence.
Get Empowered helps readers have a safer, more self-aware life. It’s a valuable gift to give yourself and to your loved ones, offering skills and practices that will keep on giving for a lifetime.
Displaying 1 of 1 review