Get Savvy: Letters to a Teenage Girl about Sex and Love

by Kathleen Buckstaff

On a winter night at a prestigious New England boarding school, two teenage girls compared secret love letters male teachers had written them. One girl kept a journal and recorded the events that followed. The other, years later, took her own life.

When her own daughter was 16, Kathleen Buckstaff, author and former Los Angeles Times columnist, developed severe stomach pain and within a few months lost thirty pounds. Doctors eventually determined she was suffering from PTSD. As she reviewed her old journals, Kathleen had to face painful truths. When she discovered the two teachers were still teaching, she felt obligated to do everything possible to protect current students.

Kathleen interviewed over 60 college students, recent graduates, healthcare professionals, self-defense instructors, and professors. In letters to a teenage girl, Kathleen revisits the events that changed her life and the lives of her closest friends, drawing from her interviews to describe what she wishes she had known about sex, predators, self-defense, and love.

Get Savvy also includes a journal section with reflection questions, in which Kathleen offers a practice of self-love, kindness, and respect, encouraging the reader to take time to get to know herself.

Get Savvy can be used as a reference book in Health and Sexuality education classes. It covers bullying, resisting peer pressure and how to create positive social alliances. Get Savvy also addresses what to say to someone who has been sexually assaulted or raped; how to identify an abusive relationship; what to say to someone who is depressed and may be suicidal; what to say to someone who may have an eating disorder. Get Savvy covers how to ask someone on a date; how to talk about sexual boundaries; what consent looks like; how to identify predatory behavior; verbal language around self-defense; how to intervene and help as a bystander; bystander training; and how to get help for oneself or a friend who is suffering from PTSD, mental illness, or sexual trauma. Get Savvy specifically deals with suicide prevention and lists warning signs and prevention strategies.

Get Savvy also includes mindfulness training, the cultivation of compassion and healthy boundaries, and encourages the exploration of one's inner guide, gifts, and goals. Get Savvy teaches self-love, respect and resilience. It is a resource tool for teens, both male and female, parents, educators, healthcare providers and community leaders.


"Buckstaff didn't intend to share her story of sexual trauma. Her courage in confronting this deeply damaging personal experience brings cohesion to 60-plus interviews creating a powerful, unsettling but ultimately inspiring and affirming book. Intended to help teenage girls navigate sex and love, Get Savvy is a blueprint for recovery that offers hope to anyone at any age who has experienced emotional trauma." –Karen Barr, RAK Magazine

402 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 13, 2017

About the author

The Tiffany Box, a memoir is Kathleen's first book. Kathleen Buckstaff lives with her husband and three children in the San Francisco Bay area and is a writer on The Huffington Post Blogteam.

In addition to writing columns, plays, and books, Kathleen works as a performance artist. With the help of Artistic Director Carol MacLeod, Kathleen wrote a one-woman play using the e-mails, letters, columns and diary entries contained in The Tiffany Box, a memoir.

“The Tiffany Box, a love remembered” opened at the Theatre Artists Studio in Phoenix, AZ on November 4, 2010. Kathleen performed the play to sold-out theatres in Phoenix and San Francisco. She performed the play again in New York City as part of a solo festival and “The Tiffany Box” was honored as one of the most outstanding plays.

Kathleen received her BA in English and Creative Writing from Stanford, and her MA in Journalism from Stanford. Her columns have been published in the Los Angles Times, The Arizona Republic, The Sun Literary Magazine, and The San Francisco Chronicle.

Reviews

[Audrey Monke · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'd like to encourage everyone with a teenage daughter to order this book, read it yourself, have your daughter read it, and discuss it together. I think this is such an important book to get in the hands of all the young women we love. The message and insights are extremely important, and the book offers a way to open up discussions on topics that many of us find difficult to talk about.

Updated review (including podcast interview link):

Listen to my podcast interview with Kathleen: http://sunshine-parenting.com/2017/07...

“I’ve written the book that I needed as a teenage girl.”
-Kathleen Buckstaff

In Episode 12 of the podcast, I’m talking with author and parent Kathleen Buckstaff. Kathleen and I were classmates at Stanford in the 80s, and we reconnected a few years ago when I learned about this book she had just started writing. We have since shared many lengthy conversations about parenting and educating others on important issues affecting teenagers.

Kathleen’s new book, Get Savvy: Letters to a Teenage Girl about Sex and Love is a must-read for every parent, educator, psychologist, and camp professional. If you love or work with teens and young adults, please read this book!

Kathleen wrote this book intending it for mothers and daughters but is finding that her audience is also including fathers and even two fraternities who are reading the book this summer.

Identifying predators’ traits, tactics, and tricks is just one important part of Kathleen’s educational message for young women. Examples from Kathleen’s own experience and interviews with many young women provide compelling examples of steps to take to reduce the risk of sexual assault.

“Basically, I want us to change how we think about predators so that we can then talk to our daughters and sons, so that our daughters are aware that it’s most likely someone that they know who may approach them in a way that isn’t okay or that’s illegal or both, and for our sons to be willing to step up and intervene and not look the other way or laugh.”
-Kathleen Buckstaff

I want Kathleen’s important insights about relationships, respect, and love to be shared with this entire generation of young people – both girls and boys.

Respect, discernment, boundaries, and love are all topics that Kathleen covers by offering excellent discussion questions and role playing ideas. Her goal is to help all people create happier relationships.

[Katrin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is about a tough subject yet is so beautifully written that it is, literally, a page-turner. I want to give it to all my friends and my children and my children's friends-- it's that good, that important. It tells a harrowing story of abuse and recovery, and woven in are words of wisdom from young men and women finding their way through the maze of our confusing modern rituals around sex, drinking and experimentation. It includes definitions, statistics, science and interviews with experts. But above all, it's a big-hearted, generous book that seeks to help all young people become more savvy about sex and love. Don't hesitate. It's a must-read, empowering and honest.