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It Won't Hurt None: A story of courage, healing and a return to wholeness
5 Stars - “An incredible book and an exceptionally important one. Quite an amazing woman fighting a formidable battle.” (Matt McAvoy) 5 Stars - “A daring and emotional memoir - Chandler’s strength shines through the pages and illustrates how resilient the human spirit can be.” (Book Nerdection) 5 Stars - “Ruthlessly honest, open, and unapologetically vulnerable” (Book Commentary) 5 Stars - “A story of healing written as a message for others who are still suffering.” (Literary Titan) 5 Stars - "Overwhelmingly candid and revealing, Chandler brings a difficult and sensitive subject out of the darkness and It Won’t Hurt None is unreservedly recommended." (Book Viral)
What sort of life does a girl from a small town live while carrying the burden of abuse? A surprisingly rich, complicated, and unexpected one. With candor and vulnerability, Rebecca E. Chandler’s courageous memoir takes readers on a journey as she navigates relationships, her career, and self-discovery while living with trauma, complex PTSD, and multiple personality disorder. Through perseverance, Rebecca’s story is one of transformation as she moves beyond the yoke of “Rebecca the Survivor” and comes to accept and love herself.
Overwhelmingly candid and revealing, “It Won’t Hurt None” brings a difficult and sensitive subject out of the darkness and reminds us that healing is rarely, if ever linear. "It Won't Hurt None" is a must-read for anyone seeking inspiration on the path to healing and wholeness.
Rebecca E. Chandler is an avid storyteller and pursued a full-time writing career after retiring from thirty years of producing film, TV, and marketing content around the world. Please visit www.rebeccaechandler.com to learn more. Buy It Won’t Hurt None today and start your healing journey. Please also purchase Hurt No More - Grow a Foundation for Healing the companion journal to It Won’t Hurt None . Co-Authored by Rebecca E Chandler and Aparna Ramakrishnan, MSW, Hurt No More offers practical insights, steps, and encouragement to stand in your truth. Buy It Won’t Hurt None today and start your healing journey. Please also purchase Hurt No More - Grow a Foundation for Healing the companion journal to It Won’t Hurt None . Co-Authored by Rebecca E Chandler and Aparna Ramakrishnan, MSW, Hurt No More offers practical insights, steps, and encouragement to stand in your truth.
What sort of life does a girl from a small town live while carrying the burden of abuse? A surprisingly rich, complicated, and unexpected one. With candor and vulnerability, Rebecca E. Chandler’s courageous memoir takes readers on a journey as she navigates relationships, her career, and self-discovery while living with trauma, complex PTSD, and multiple personality disorder. Through perseverance, Rebecca’s story is one of transformation as she moves beyond the yoke of “Rebecca the Survivor” and comes to accept and love herself.
Overwhelmingly candid and revealing, “It Won’t Hurt None” brings a difficult and sensitive subject out of the darkness and reminds us that healing is rarely, if ever linear. "It Won't Hurt None" is a must-read for anyone seeking inspiration on the path to healing and wholeness.
Rebecca E. Chandler is an avid storyteller and pursued a full-time writing career after retiring from thirty years of producing film, TV, and marketing content around the world. Please visit www.rebeccaechandler.com to learn more. Buy It Won’t Hurt None today and start your healing journey. Please also purchase Hurt No More - Grow a Foundation for Healing the companion journal to It Won’t Hurt None . Co-Authored by Rebecca E Chandler and Aparna Ramakrishnan, MSW, Hurt No More offers practical insights, steps, and encouragement to stand in your truth. Buy It Won’t Hurt None today and start your healing journey. Please also purchase Hurt No More - Grow a Foundation for Healing the companion journal to It Won’t Hurt None . Co-Authored by Rebecca E Chandler and Aparna Ramakrishnan, MSW, Hurt No More offers practical insights, steps, and encouragement to stand in your truth.
258 pages, Hardcover
Published January 2, 2023
4 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 8, 2023
This is an incredible book, on many different levels, and an exceptionally important one – for the reader, for society but, more than anything, for the author. Rebecca is a survivor in the rawest sense of the word; the sexual abuse she suffered for most of her childhood was depraved and devastating, and she gives her own account candidly and openly. I’m sure the decision to write this book was many years in the making for her, and that the therapeutic value in doing so is a decisive next stage in her cathartic psychological self-actualization. We get to share this journey of acceptance with her, and whilst extraordinarily harrowing, it is clearly of great import to Rebecca that she is listened to – the absence of which was a terrible enabling factor in the offences she suffered. At this point, I should warn you that the depiction of her abuse in this book is detailed and graphic – indeed, at times so vivid that I admit I had to speed-read through some sections, and one in particular was a little too much for me. But, for the sake of Rebecca, her bravery and the necessity to hear her story, it needs to be endured.
But I don’t want to put you off – this book is excellent; superbly well-written, finely polished and top quality. Rebecca is clearly a professional in her media field. Even though she reaches rock bottom on more than one occasion, her life is an inspiring one. In spite of the demons which haunt her relentlessly, and the “fragments” she has broken her internal persona into to cope with her trauma, she has managed to travel the world working in an impressive and envy-inducing creative career. But it is clear that every life-changing decision she has made, and relationships she has been involved with, have been influenced by the monstrous events of her childhood – yet she continues on with recurrent optimism. She talks of suicide at one point, as the social impact of COVID lockdown tears open and reveals the fragility of her mental health (she is, you tend to suspect, bipolar, with dissociation), but for the most part she looks forward to her next chapter in life. Yet it becomes increasingly clear that the only way forward for her in life is to revisit the roots and creation of each and every one of the “voices” she has created, and the book delves inevitably deeper into her past to fix her future.
This is an inspiring book, written by a person doing everything in her power to be positive and stronger than her PTSD, and to make peace with the sadly common story that her abuser went entirely unpunished – quite an amazing woman fighting a formidable battle. May this book (and hopefully its tremendous success) give her the therapeutic boost she needs on her journey.
But I don’t want to put you off – this book is excellent; superbly well-written, finely polished and top quality. Rebecca is clearly a professional in her media field. Even though she reaches rock bottom on more than one occasion, her life is an inspiring one. In spite of the demons which haunt her relentlessly, and the “fragments” she has broken her internal persona into to cope with her trauma, she has managed to travel the world working in an impressive and envy-inducing creative career. But it is clear that every life-changing decision she has made, and relationships she has been involved with, have been influenced by the monstrous events of her childhood – yet she continues on with recurrent optimism. She talks of suicide at one point, as the social impact of COVID lockdown tears open and reveals the fragility of her mental health (she is, you tend to suspect, bipolar, with dissociation), but for the most part she looks forward to her next chapter in life. Yet it becomes increasingly clear that the only way forward for her in life is to revisit the roots and creation of each and every one of the “voices” she has created, and the book delves inevitably deeper into her past to fix her future.
This is an inspiring book, written by a person doing everything in her power to be positive and stronger than her PTSD, and to make peace with the sadly common story that her abuser went entirely unpunished – quite an amazing woman fighting a formidable battle. May this book (and hopefully its tremendous success) give her the therapeutic boost she needs on her journey.
February 18, 2023
This is a very difficult book to read, not due to the writing or storytelling, but because of the subject matter. Chandler doesn’t hold back many details of her journey and because of that, there are many graphic descriptions of the abuse she suffered at the hands of her grandfather. I often had to pause reading and take a break before picking it back up.
With that being said, I think the story is one that needed to be told. People don’t talk about sexual assault often enough. The topic of rape culture is often brought up without mentioning the individual stories or the long-term effects that it has on survivors. In this story, Chandler talks about the shame, guilt, and fear she felt both during the attacks as well as decades later.
One aspect of her journey that stuck out to me was how she felt when her abuser died. Chandler hadn’t told anyone in her family that her grandfather had been assaulting and molesting her, so she was called to the hospital to visit him before he passed away. She and the fragmented identities were all torn on how to feel. Thirteen, the angry teenager, was happy and cheered while Seven, the scared and sad child, was saddened someone had died. There is no right way to handle a situation like that and I think that Chandler does an amazing job of sharing those complex emotions and feelings with the readers.
The highlight of the story, and by far the most difficult part to read, was when she was facing the fragments and trying to heal them all individually. She used a meditation practice taught to her by Amelie and she met them all face to face where she retold in detail what happened to her to cause the fragment to take form. She helped them realize what happened wasn’t their fault and that the only way to get better was to move forward.
The writing of the book was very personable. I felt like I was talking to the author and she was telling me about her journey over tea. She does an excellent job explaining how her fragments came to be and how she has managed with them her entire life. I loved that the ending was very hopeful, too. Chandler doesn’t consider herself a survivor anymore, she has faced her trauma and healed herself, and moving forward with a positive outlook.
Overall, I’d rate this book 4.5 stars. It’s something I think people who can handle the content should read because I think it provides a different perspective on the aftermath of abuse.
With that being said, I think the story is one that needed to be told. People don’t talk about sexual assault often enough. The topic of rape culture is often brought up without mentioning the individual stories or the long-term effects that it has on survivors. In this story, Chandler talks about the shame, guilt, and fear she felt both during the attacks as well as decades later.
One aspect of her journey that stuck out to me was how she felt when her abuser died. Chandler hadn’t told anyone in her family that her grandfather had been assaulting and molesting her, so she was called to the hospital to visit him before he passed away. She and the fragmented identities were all torn on how to feel. Thirteen, the angry teenager, was happy and cheered while Seven, the scared and sad child, was saddened someone had died. There is no right way to handle a situation like that and I think that Chandler does an amazing job of sharing those complex emotions and feelings with the readers.
The highlight of the story, and by far the most difficult part to read, was when she was facing the fragments and trying to heal them all individually. She used a meditation practice taught to her by Amelie and she met them all face to face where she retold in detail what happened to her to cause the fragment to take form. She helped them realize what happened wasn’t their fault and that the only way to get better was to move forward.
The writing of the book was very personable. I felt like I was talking to the author and she was telling me about her journey over tea. She does an excellent job explaining how her fragments came to be and how she has managed with them her entire life. I loved that the ending was very hopeful, too. Chandler doesn’t consider herself a survivor anymore, she has faced her trauma and healed herself, and moving forward with a positive outlook.
Overall, I’d rate this book 4.5 stars. It’s something I think people who can handle the content should read because I think it provides a different perspective on the aftermath of abuse.
March 6, 2023
It Won’t Hurt None is a memoir by Rebecca Chandler, following her life from young adulthood into her fifties. Chandler shares her experience with Complex PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) and DID (Disassociative Identity Disorder) after years of childhood, sexual abuse. A content/trigger warning is necessary for descriptions of sexualt assault, Chandler’s writing is graphic at times so do be mindful of this if you are a survivor of abuse. But Chandler’s story is triumphant, inspiring and healing, and most certainly worth the time.
I approached reading this memoir from the perspective of someone also with a diagnosis of Complex PTSD but with very little familiarity with DID and the many ways it manifests. I knew there would be moments of revelation, reminders of my own trauma, and times I would be moved to the core; because while Chandler’s story is unique to her, as the statistics at the end of this memoir state, sexual assault and abuse, particularly in childhood, is staggeringly high. It Won’t Hurt None, as a result, is a tough yet important read.
Chandler’s story reminded me of the lack of linearity to healing, and her experiences with multiple specialists and somatic healers was incredibly reaassuring. While the depiction of the fragments, Thirteen, Seven, Six and Five, was enlightening and continually moved me, helping me to understand the nature of Complex PTSD and DID. The final sections, in particular, titled Reconciliation and Freefall were very powerful in how they portrayed how exhausting ‘doing the work’ and recovering from trauma inflicted upon you, can be. If anything, living in denial is often easier, looking at your trauma and the way it embeds itself within everyday life, is difficult and requires sheer courage.
It Won’t Hurt None was an impactful read that will remain an important read for me this year — I have learned so much from Chandler and I admire her truth and bravery. She has reminded me that while self-awarenes can feel like a curse, it is a tool with which to heal.
Thus, I believe anyone can be changed and inspired by Chandler’s memoir. It is a brilliant insight into DID, especially when it is a condition often misconstrued and misinterpreted in media. Take your time with it, at times it is heavy, but it is worth staying alongside Chandler, much like how she chose to stay alongside herself.
I approached reading this memoir from the perspective of someone also with a diagnosis of Complex PTSD but with very little familiarity with DID and the many ways it manifests. I knew there would be moments of revelation, reminders of my own trauma, and times I would be moved to the core; because while Chandler’s story is unique to her, as the statistics at the end of this memoir state, sexual assault and abuse, particularly in childhood, is staggeringly high. It Won’t Hurt None, as a result, is a tough yet important read.
Chandler’s story reminded me of the lack of linearity to healing, and her experiences with multiple specialists and somatic healers was incredibly reaassuring. While the depiction of the fragments, Thirteen, Seven, Six and Five, was enlightening and continually moved me, helping me to understand the nature of Complex PTSD and DID. The final sections, in particular, titled Reconciliation and Freefall were very powerful in how they portrayed how exhausting ‘doing the work’ and recovering from trauma inflicted upon you, can be. If anything, living in denial is often easier, looking at your trauma and the way it embeds itself within everyday life, is difficult and requires sheer courage.
It Won’t Hurt None was an impactful read that will remain an important read for me this year — I have learned so much from Chandler and I admire her truth and bravery. She has reminded me that while self-awarenes can feel like a curse, it is a tool with which to heal.
Thus, I believe anyone can be changed and inspired by Chandler’s memoir. It is a brilliant insight into DID, especially when it is a condition often misconstrued and misinterpreted in media. Take your time with it, at times it is heavy, but it is worth staying alongside Chandler, much like how she chose to stay alongside herself.
March 9, 2023
Family secrets and childhood trauma lay a heavy load on the child, which stays on the child’s shoulders way past childhood. Trauma lingers in the dark corners of the mind lifting its ugly head at most random times with consequences for every aspect of a person’s life. So how does one go on with this burden? How can a person navigate relationships, career, and healthy decisions with someone else in the background calling the shots? Especially when that someone else is another form of yourself. What does it take to move on and live a life as a whole person when parts of you never moved on?
It Won’t Hurt None by Rebecca E. Chandler is a deeply personal story of a successful woman living with deep scars from the sexual abuse she suffered as a child. While this is by no means a professional guide, this is a story of healing written as a message for others who are still suffering. There is hope. There is a chance to heal the old wounds and be able to live a healthier and happier life. It is not an easy journey, but it is a path that can be taken and successfully completed with the right help and dedication.
This autobiography covers sensitive subjects and, at times, is graphic and descriptive. There is no genteel way of describing certain events without taking away from the deep horror of the events and experiences. Reader discretion is advised. Those who join Rebecca Chandler on her literary journey in this memoir will find her work beautiful and well-written in its raw and honest form. This inspirational book encourages those who have suffered abuse and gives others a look into the world of someone with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID).
It Won’t Hurt None by Rebecca E. Chandler is a deeply personal story of a successful woman living with deep scars from the sexual abuse she suffered as a child. While this is by no means a professional guide, this is a story of healing written as a message for others who are still suffering. There is hope. There is a chance to heal the old wounds and be able to live a healthier and happier life. It is not an easy journey, but it is a path that can be taken and successfully completed with the right help and dedication.
This autobiography covers sensitive subjects and, at times, is graphic and descriptive. There is no genteel way of describing certain events without taking away from the deep horror of the events and experiences. Reader discretion is advised. Those who join Rebecca Chandler on her literary journey in this memoir will find her work beautiful and well-written in its raw and honest form. This inspirational book encourages those who have suffered abuse and gives others a look into the world of someone with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID).
June 16, 2025
now I know more about dissociative identity disorder
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews