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An Unsuspecting Child: Coming to Grips with Covert Childhood Abuse
First place winner Autobiography Firebird Book Awards
Third place, Autobiography, in the Outstand Creator Awards
Third place, Women’s Non-Fiction & Women’s Issues, Outstanding Creator Awards
An Unsuspecting Child is both a personal memoir and a psychological look at the damage done to a child from sexual, mental or physical abuse. The effects of abuse on a child can cause long-term, often hidden, heartache to that child as they travel through adulthood. Acting out, bad decisions and constant flashbacks take the child on a road that includes confusion, secrets, and the inability to understand adult relationships. Living through the mental trauma of covert abuse is difficult and may take a lifetime to overcome. Some victims become alcoholics, drug addicts, or prostitutes. For Marylee Martin, it led to mayhem in her life that she didn’t understand and couldn’t stop. In sharing her story, she encourages others-no matter what their past-to seek professional help and find freedom. Join the author as she shares how therapy helped her discover the unusual form of child abuse that she’d suffered and how she rediscovered a sense of normalcy.
Third place, Autobiography, in the Outstand Creator Awards
Third place, Women’s Non-Fiction & Women’s Issues, Outstanding Creator Awards
An Unsuspecting Child is both a personal memoir and a psychological look at the damage done to a child from sexual, mental or physical abuse. The effects of abuse on a child can cause long-term, often hidden, heartache to that child as they travel through adulthood. Acting out, bad decisions and constant flashbacks take the child on a road that includes confusion, secrets, and the inability to understand adult relationships. Living through the mental trauma of covert abuse is difficult and may take a lifetime to overcome. Some victims become alcoholics, drug addicts, or prostitutes. For Marylee Martin, it led to mayhem in her life that she didn’t understand and couldn’t stop. In sharing her story, she encourages others-no matter what their past-to seek professional help and find freedom. Join the author as she shares how therapy helped her discover the unusual form of child abuse that she’d suffered and how she rediscovered a sense of normalcy.
176 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 14, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 15, 2022
it felt like a long time getting to the abuse
The story is hers so it happened how it happened (and I do believe it) but there were only a few brief mentions throughout the story - it wasn’t until the end that it was all tied together.
More importantly, though, it’s good for her to tell her story the way it is for her own sake and for so many others that need to hear it.
The story is hers so it happened how it happened (and I do believe it) but there were only a few brief mentions throughout the story - it wasn’t until the end that it was all tied together.
More importantly, though, it’s good for her to tell her story the way it is for her own sake and for so many others that need to hear it.
August 26, 2024
"When confusion meets chaos, the result can be incapacitating."
Actress, playwright, and composer Marylee Martin examines the hidden, long-term effects of childhood covert sexual abuse in this award-winning themed memoir. Covert abuse, while solely verbal and mental rather than physical, is a less dramatic but equally damaging form of sexual abuse and is sadly common in all cultures and at every level of society. Children who escape ongoing sexual molestation or more violent forms of physical abuse still struggle in their adult lives and experience similar symptoms of confusion, uncertainty, anxiety, and depression—reactions familiar to victims of overt, hands-on sexual abuse.
Along the way, Martin also suffered from uninvited sexual groping by boys and men that happens to nearly every woman alive, a problem now openly discussed in this age of the #MeToo movement. But before her brief scrapes with overt sexual abusers, Martin experienced the peculiar, covert form of verbal and mental sexual incest caused by her father’s inappropriate emotional boundaries. He shared intimate information about his disappointment with his sexual relationship with his wife, Martin’s mother, in long talks with his daughter. On the surface, the young Martin felt flattered that her father would share this information . . .
Read more at The US Review of Books!
https://www.theusreview.com/reviews-1...
Actress, playwright, and composer Marylee Martin examines the hidden, long-term effects of childhood covert sexual abuse in this award-winning themed memoir. Covert abuse, while solely verbal and mental rather than physical, is a less dramatic but equally damaging form of sexual abuse and is sadly common in all cultures and at every level of society. Children who escape ongoing sexual molestation or more violent forms of physical abuse still struggle in their adult lives and experience similar symptoms of confusion, uncertainty, anxiety, and depression—reactions familiar to victims of overt, hands-on sexual abuse.
Along the way, Martin also suffered from uninvited sexual groping by boys and men that happens to nearly every woman alive, a problem now openly discussed in this age of the #MeToo movement. But before her brief scrapes with overt sexual abusers, Martin experienced the peculiar, covert form of verbal and mental sexual incest caused by her father’s inappropriate emotional boundaries. He shared intimate information about his disappointment with his sexual relationship with his wife, Martin’s mother, in long talks with his daughter. On the surface, the young Martin felt flattered that her father would share this information . . .
Read more at The US Review of Books!
https://www.theusreview.com/reviews-1...
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews