Speaker 1: Hi there, It's Ruby Jones and I'm back to share
Speaker 1: another episode of Read This, Schwartz Media's weekly books podcast.
Speaker 1: It's hosted by editor of the Monthly Michael Williams and
Speaker 1: features conversations with some of the most talented writers from
Speaker 1: Australia and around the world. In this episode, we're going
Speaker 1: to hear from writer Sonya Orchard. Before we begin, though
Speaker 1: a warning. This week's conversation is about sexual assault and abuse.
Speaker 1: It's about the failures social, structural legal that entrench and
Speaker 1: prolong the trauma for victim survivors. It may be triggering
Speaker 1: and upsetting to hear, so please proceed with caution. As usual,
Speaker 1: I'm joined by Michael to tell me a bit more
Speaker 1: about the episode.
Speaker 2: Hi Michael, Ruby Jones. Hello, So, Michael.
Speaker 1: As I mentioned up top, this episode delves into some
Speaker 1: difficult topics and might not be for everyone. But as
Speaker 1: you mentioned in the episode, the proliferation of this kind
Speaker 1: of abuse means that there is actually a very good
Speaker 1: chance that many of us will have either experienced it
Speaker 1: or will know someone who has. So with that in mind,
Speaker 1: tell me a bit about Sonya Orchard's new book, Groomed
Speaker 1: and why you found it so powerful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a really tricky one and the warning is
Speaker 2: particularly acute this week. This isn't a book that deals
Speaker 2: with trauma and traumatic topics in passing. It is a
Speaker 2: book where they are front and center, and in many ways,
Speaker 2: that's the point of doing this episode. That's the point
Speaker 2: of Sonya Orchard's book, is that we understand, through things
Speaker 2: like the Me Too movement, through various global attempts to
Speaker 2: raise awareness, the ubiquity of sexual violence and sexual assault.
Speaker 2: You know, the chances are ruby anyone listening to this
Speaker 2: will have someone in their life who's been affected by
Speaker 2: gendered violence one way or the other. It's an absolute epidemic.
Speaker 2: And one of the things that have really well written
Speaker 2: memoir in this space can do is offer a language
Speaker 2: for victim survivors, offer them a space with which they
Speaker 2: can see their own experience reflected, understand the kind of
Speaker 2: universality of some of these challenges, and maybe hopefully give
Speaker 2: them the strength to find ways to process, fight, and
Speaker 2: live with that struggle themselves.
Speaker 1: And you note that this book is beautifully written in
Speaker 1: addition to of course being rigorously researched, and that's because
Speaker 1: Sonya is actually first and foremost a novelist, Is that.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, that's right. Sonya has written a couple of
Speaker 2: books before this, The Virtuoso, which won the India Award
Speaker 2: for Best Debut Fiction back in two thousand and nine,
Speaker 2: and Into the Fire in particular. Both of them were
Speaker 2: incredibly well reviewed. She's a natural writer and a beautiful storyteller.
Speaker 2: And one of the things that's really interesting in our
Speaker 2: conversation that listeners will get to hear is that relationship
Speaker 2: between the creative ridly life and the processing that Sonya
Speaker 2: was doing of her own experiences and working out how
Speaker 2: to share them with the world. The two are interconnected,
Speaker 2: and it's a fascinating.
Speaker 1: Conversation coming up in just a moment. How Sonya altered
Speaker 1: reclaimed her story.
Speaker 3: About ten years ago, I was at a counseling session
Speaker 3: and this just came up as a, you know, something
Speaker 3: to fill the end of the session with.
Speaker 4: And it came up.
Speaker 3: That I'd had this what I called a relationship, and
Speaker 3: she said to me, you know, you were violated, and
Speaker 3: I was just like, no, I wasn't, don't be ridiculous.
Speaker 3: And she was the one who kind of suggested new
Speaker 3: words to me for what I had experienced when I
Speaker 3: was a teenager, and I flatly denied what she was
Speaker 3: saying to me.
Speaker 4: And it was only when she sort of spun the.
Speaker 3: Story around and said, Okay, imagine your daughters are in
Speaker 3: that relationship. And that's when the story suddenly looked very
Speaker 3: very different to me, and I experienced what I realize
Speaker 3: now is a trauma response where I was shaking all
Speaker 3: over and shivering and it was like a you know,
Speaker 3: a computer crashing or something.
Speaker 4: That's how it felt.
Speaker 3: And that was very very confusing because she had just
Speaker 3: driven a truck through a wall kind of thing, and
Speaker 3: I was just like, hang on, what's on the other
Speaker 3: side of the wall.
Speaker 4: You know, what's going on here?
Speaker 3: I don't understand because I stick by my story and
Speaker 3: this is the story that I've held onto for my
Speaker 3: entire life, that I was in this regular in inverted
Speaker 3: commas relationship when I was fifteen. But she has unpicked
Speaker 3: something for me, and I don't understand what's going on here.
Speaker 3: You know, a lot of people might have just decided
Speaker 3: I'm not going to go there, but I suppose there's
Speaker 3: the you know, investigative journalist in me that took it
Speaker 3: on as a I need to.
Speaker 4: I need to get to the bottom of this.
Speaker 3: This is it's too interesting for starters, and it's too important,
Speaker 3: and it's it's important on so many levels. Sort of socially,
Speaker 3: it's important for me as a mother of teenage girls.
Speaker 4: It's you know, I just needed to.
Speaker 2: And and also presumably once you start pulling at the thread,
Speaker 2: it's no longer a choice to see it through because
Speaker 2: the scaffolding is down. Just to mix my metaphors from
Speaker 2: thread to scaffolding, get a single go. But you know,
Speaker 2: that thing of reassessing story and story as coping mechanism
Speaker 2: no longer being adequate.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Part of what I love so much and groomed is
Speaker 2: that you're in really deft, careful ways toggle between memoirist
Speaker 2: and investigative journalist. As you say that, on the one hand,
Speaker 2: this is a deeply personal, very story that you're bravely
Speaker 2: sharing with readers, and on the other hand, it seems
Speaker 2: to be one of the new mechanisms you have to
Speaker 2: make it possible to do that is your instincts as
Speaker 2: a writer. How can I think about utility? How can
Speaker 2: I think about where the problems are here that need
Speaker 2: to be identified? How can I write about it dispassionately.
Speaker 2: Was that the way the writing flowed out, and was
Speaker 2: that the way the retelling of your own story flowed out,
Speaker 2: that you have the arms length thing of the writer there.
Speaker 3: Absolutely everything I wrote was very intuitive, and I think
Speaker 3: one of the ways that I deal with issues in
Speaker 3: my life and problems, whether it be a relationship or
Speaker 3: parenting or whatever it is, is I research the hell
Speaker 3: out of it. And it's something that I do talk
Speaker 3: about kind of intellectualizing in Groomed and how intellectualizing and
Speaker 3: really studying a topic can become a form of sort
Speaker 3: of self soothing, where you are just poking at something
Speaker 3: and poking and poking and poking and trying to look
Speaker 3: at it from different angles, because well, I think there's
Speaker 3: trying to understand it, and there's also if you do
Speaker 3: have disassociation, which I think anyone who's had any trauma
Speaker 3: will have some disassociation. It's a way of trying to
Speaker 3: break out of the numbness. I was hitting these walls
Speaker 3: in my own memory and my own sort of sort
Speaker 3: of emotional response.
Speaker 4: I was kind of trying.
Speaker 3: To feel something and often it just wouldn't be there,
Speaker 3: or try and remember something, and it wouldn't be there,
Speaker 3: so I had to do something, so I would just
Speaker 3: start reading and researching.
Speaker 2: That makes a lot of sense. I can see both
Speaker 2: the kind of support that that would give to the writing,
Speaker 2: but also the kind of comfort it would give that
Speaker 2: you don't have to feel everything that happens on the page.
Speaker 2: Sometimes you can think it through and.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And I mean when I put them into
Speaker 3: the book, I didn't put them necessarily in like a
Speaker 3: glossary or oh, you'll need to understand this term. I
Speaker 3: was putting things in as I was learning about them,
Speaker 3: So I was it was the process of my discovery
Speaker 3: and learning that I thought, if this is relevant to
Speaker 3: me and my unpacking, then.
Speaker 4: It's a part of the story.
Speaker 3: A part of the story is me learning about these
Speaker 3: things and trying to fit them into my life and
Speaker 3: what they mean for me as I'm going through this process.
Speaker 2: So the crucial thing is off the back of having
Speaker 2: that conversation and therapy of suddenly starting to reassess your
Speaker 2: own experiences through this different lens and understand them differently
Speaker 2: at some point, and that understanding led to a desire
Speaker 2: or a need for action and a need to kind
Speaker 2: of for lack of a better word to socialize that
Speaker 2: experience in the legal system in a kind of search
Speaker 2: for repair.
Speaker 4: Yes, well, it was probably about six or eight.
Speaker 3: Years between the therapy and contacting the police, and I
Speaker 3: think there were quite a few factors at play there.
Speaker 3: There was obviously the time that I sat with it
Speaker 3: and sort of got used to the idea of okay,
Speaker 3: so this is my new story. Now.
Speaker 4: There was the fact.
Speaker 3: That I was more aware of how trauma had played
Speaker 3: out in my life and had affected me, and I
Speaker 3: wasn't really seeing the shifts I would have liked to
Speaker 3: have seen. And you know, it can get really boring,
Speaker 3: you know, dealing with the the same problems and going
Speaker 3: why can't I move on Like this happened thirty five
Speaker 3: years ago. Why can't I just flick a switch and
Speaker 3: move on from it? So there was kind of getting
Speaker 3: sick of it and sick of the fact that nothing
Speaker 3: had shifted really for me. And then there was I've
Speaker 3: got three daughters, and my eldest daughter was fourteen at
Speaker 3: the time, and I was just finding myself among lots
Speaker 3: of other parents chatting about teenage parties and getting drunk
Speaker 3: and oh, it's all a lot of fun. Isn't it
Speaker 3: when the teenagers go out and get drunk. And I
Speaker 3: found myself getting really upset during those conversations, and I thought, Okay, clearly,
Speaker 3: I'm not comfortable with this next phase of my daughter's
Speaker 3: hitting teenage years. There's stuff that I need to work through.
Speaker 3: But then there was that year of Grace Tame, becoming
Speaker 3: Australian of the Year, Britney Higgins allegations, the Christian Porter allegations,
Speaker 3: and the March for Justice, and I think that was
Speaker 3: that was what tipped me over.
Speaker 4: And I didn't see it coming. The morning of the.
Speaker 3: March for Justice. It hadn't entered my mind to go
Speaker 3: to the police. But that night I couldn't sleep and
Speaker 3: I just stayed awake all night. And you know, I
Speaker 3: try and describe in the book what was going on
Speaker 3: for me that night, but it was almost like I
Speaker 3: just went into this kind of subliminal zone during the
Speaker 3: night and just unpacked a whole lot of stuff, and
Speaker 3: in the morning, you just thought it, right, I'm going
Speaker 3: to the police.
Speaker 2: I want to take this moment just to pause on
Speaker 2: the title of the book and Groomed and why the
Speaker 2: idea of grooming and being groomed is such an important
Speaker 2: central part of the way you want to tell this story.
Speaker 3: As I write in the book, I don't actually really
Speaker 3: relate to the word, and that's one of the reasons
Speaker 3: why I chose the word, and I use it often.
Speaker 3: It's almost like brain training. And I do talk in
Speaker 3: the book how for me and for other survivors that
Speaker 3: I've spoken with, the word that comes up constantly is
Speaker 3: that they've been robbed or they've had something stolen, and that,
Speaker 3: for me, is a much more potent word and something
Speaker 3: that I relate to.
Speaker 4: The word groomed is not.
Speaker 3: Something that I really relate to because when I look
Speaker 3: back on the relationship, I recall being in love.
Speaker 4: The more I.
Speaker 3: Looked into what grooming is and what it does and
Speaker 3: how underhand it is, I just found it such a
Speaker 3: fascinating concept because you are being kind of almost convinced
Speaker 3: to be in love. And that's how perpetrators are so
Speaker 3: successful because they don't need to use violence or force.
Speaker 3: They can be pretty confident that you're not going to
Speaker 3: go and say anything because you come away thinking, well.
Speaker 4: I consented to that. So it's such a.
Speaker 3: Confounding thing to experience, and you know, I spend a
Speaker 3: lot of time in the book talking about the behavioral science,
Speaker 3: the neurobiology, what grooming actually is, and how it is
Speaker 3: very closely related to our need for attachment, our need
Speaker 3: to be cared for as a child. It's very similar
Speaker 3: to courtship. It's very similar to all these things which
Speaker 3: are really important, necessary, beautiful things in our lives. Hence
Speaker 3: why it's so seductive. It's all these great things except
Speaker 3: with this one little poisonous kind of element, which is
Speaker 3: it's done by an abuser, not a caring, loving equal.
Speaker 2: It's kind of weaponizing those instincts against you as a
Speaker 2: kind of active manipulation.
Speaker 4: Absolutely.
Speaker 2: And the other thing about it, which I think is
Speaker 2: so tied in with the kind of lasting trauma of it,
Speaker 2: is that it's a recasting of your reality. Your reality
Speaker 2: is distorted by your abuser. Then interests of being.
Speaker 3: Groomed, yes, yeah, and you're so vulnerable to that as
Speaker 3: a child, yeah, you know, because you can be groomed
Speaker 3: at any age. But hopefully as an adult you're more
Speaker 3: aware of power dynamics and you're not entering relationships with
Speaker 3: such a power deficit as you are as a child. Definitely,
Speaker 3: for me, I was a people pleaser, and I was
Speaker 3: pretty obedient, you know. And this is again one of
Speaker 3: the things that people don't talk about.
Speaker 4: With grooming.
Speaker 3: You are there because you're getting good things. You know,
Speaker 3: are you're getting. There are a lot of advantages and
Speaker 3: benefits and pluses, you know, whether it's attention or you know,
Speaker 3: whether the person's giving you money or whatever they're doing
Speaker 3: that there's a payoff and you are really enjoying being there.
Speaker 3: But then there's also the abuse, which you have to
Speaker 3: then compartmentalize and sort of disassociate from. But yeah, it's
Speaker 3: a very clever manipulation and I still can't.
Speaker 4: Really relate to it.
Speaker 3: I can only sort of relate to it in a
Speaker 3: theoretical kind of way. But I find it such a
Speaker 3: fascinating sort of dynamic.
Speaker 2: You write really well about the desire to constantly pick
Speaker 2: up the scape of knowledge about this stuff that, even
Speaker 2: as the personal processing was it some of its hardest points,
Speaker 2: you couldn't resist reading everything you could find, the accounts, watching,
Speaker 2: listening to just absolutely mainlining any stories about kind of
Speaker 2: similar reviews. And I'm curious about the relationship between comfort
Speaker 2: in seeing the familiar and seeing the echoes and discomfort.
Speaker 2: Seeing elements of your own experience echoed in the stuff
Speaker 2: that you read help or was it jarring? Did it
Speaker 2: make it harder to carve out your own space?
Speaker 3: It definitely helped, and it helped for quite a few reasons.
Speaker 3: I could feel enormous empathy for other survivors in a
Speaker 3: way that I couldn't for myself, and that helped me
Speaker 3: kind of, I think, grieve, because I could kind.
Speaker 4: Of a grieve for these other survivors.
Speaker 3: It's so lonely grief, but then when you're around other
Speaker 3: people who are grieving, it can you can find incredible
Speaker 3: kind of company in the loneliness.
Speaker 4: And so I think.
Speaker 3: There was a lovely feeling of community within this otherwise
Speaker 3: kind of harrowing space, and it helped me feel like
Speaker 3: not such a freak because people were describing exactly what
Speaker 3: I was feeling and doing, and I was just like, Okay,
Speaker 3: this is what I'm experiencing. Is these are normal responses
Speaker 3: or you know, I don't like using the word normal,
Speaker 3: but these are to be expected and not total outlies.
Speaker 2: When we returned, Sonya shares her grueling journey through the
Speaker 2: legal system and reveals why she didn't hide under the
Speaker 2: covers that they groomed, hit the shelves. We'll be right back.
Speaker 2: So there's another overlay that we haven't gotten to yet.
Speaker 2: If we begin with the stories that you tell yourself
Speaker 2: to cope and to be able to get through life,
Speaker 2: and then we have the layer of stories that come
Speaker 2: when confronting one's own experience and giving it a different
Speaker 2: name and dealing with it. But the third level is
Speaker 2: the legal system and the ways in which there are
Speaker 2: structures and pressures for how a story must be told.
Speaker 2: There that in some ways rob you again of the
Speaker 2: telling of your own story, and that's a kind of
Speaker 2: key part of how Groomed plays out. Your experience with
Speaker 2: the legal system was not a happy one.
Speaker 4: No, I didn't enjoy it.
Speaker 2: No, I didn't enjoy reading it. I mean, it was
Speaker 2: beautifully written, but it was it was upsetting. You know,
Speaker 2: six to eight years between that therapy session and when
Speaker 2: you felt ready to go to the police, talk me
Speaker 2: through what it felt like to suddenly lose ownership of
Speaker 2: your own story again having just regained it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's, uh, what's the best word for it, fucked? Yeah,
Speaker 4: it is. It's you're going.
Speaker 3: Through the legal system, not because you know, you think
Speaker 3: you're going to have a great time in the legal
Speaker 3: system and you're not going to get any money or
Speaker 3: anything like that for you know, a criminal case. You're
Speaker 3: going because you've had power taken from you and you're
Speaker 3: trying to regain that power and to say, Okay, I'm
Speaker 3: in charge, I make the rules to do with my
Speaker 3: body and what things are okay and what things aren't okay.
Speaker 3: So you're trying to kind of gain control, and then
Speaker 3: you enter this system where the door is shut in
Speaker 3: your face. Once it hit the legal system, that's where
Speaker 3: I felt like I was just out in the cold,
Speaker 3: and there would be all these hearings that were being
Speaker 3: conducted that I wasn't allowed to be ash, and there
Speaker 3: would be the accused and his lawyers, and then the
Speaker 3: prosecution lawyers for the opp crown lawyers, and there would
Speaker 3: be a magistrate. So everyone was there except for me,
Speaker 3: the person who could actually explain what was going on,
Speaker 3: and they would have these hearings and I would be
Speaker 3: kind of frantically saying what happened in the hearings, and
Speaker 3: they'd be like, oh, well, it's just going to be
Speaker 3: you know, it's going to be another three months and
Speaker 3: we'll let you know if anything happens, and if we're
Speaker 3: hear any you know. So you were constantly, you know,
Speaker 3: constantly sort of knocking at doors trying to say, you
Speaker 3: know what's going on, and just let me in the room.
Speaker 3: Let me in the room with him, his lawyers, give
Speaker 3: me a lawyer, and we will bash this out in
Speaker 3: ten minutes. And I do describe this period of feeling
Speaker 3: like I was in a straight jacket because I was
Speaker 3: kind of in this battle mode, ready to go back
Speaker 3: to the scene of the crime and fight it out again.
Speaker 3: But I was just being told to, you know, just
Speaker 3: sit in the waiting room. We'll deal with it, leave
Speaker 3: it to us.
Speaker 2: Plus, you've been wildly retraumatized in the process of having
Speaker 2: to dredge it up and go into forensic detail over
Speaker 2: stuff that is hard enough to kind of tell the
Speaker 2: story of in broad terms let alone, Yep, expose yourself to.
Speaker 4: That absolutely, and.
Speaker 3: You're going in with the knowledge that you are ninety
Speaker 3: five percent of the evidence. And so the entire job
Speaker 3: of the defense is to undermine you. Like if they
Speaker 3: can undermine you and they can kind of break you down,
Speaker 3: then they've won. So you realize very early on that
Speaker 3: truth is completely irrelevant, Like there doesn't seem at any
Speaker 3: point a time when people are trying to actually work
Speaker 3: out what happened, and people don't seem interested in what happened.
Speaker 3: It's just can they break you? Because if they can
Speaker 3: break you, then they're one. If they can't break you,
Speaker 3: then you win.
Speaker 2: So laying out these different versions of your story, personal, structural, legal,
Speaker 2: all of those a question. We come back to it
Speaker 2: again and again on read this. It seems is different
Speaker 2: writers feel differently about the cathartic potential of writing, about
Speaker 2: whether it's a thing that frees them from stuff they're
Speaker 2: working through or whether that's a bit of a false economy.
Speaker 2: I think we've come back again and again to the
Speaker 2: fact that writing is not therapy. Therapy is therapy and yep,
Speaker 2: worth doing alongside the writing. But one about for you,
Speaker 2: the experience of putting it down in a book and
Speaker 2: seeing that book in the world and having a launch,
Speaker 2: doing interviews, actually thinking about it as an artifact.
Speaker 4: Yep, how's that been.
Speaker 3: I'll have to break it down into a few because
Speaker 3: there's the writing process and then there's the publishing process.
Speaker 3: The writing process, a lot of people said to me,
Speaker 3: it must have been really hard to write, and it
Speaker 3: was incredibly easy to write and even enjoyable to write.
Speaker 3: And I think that possibly a lot of it comes
Speaker 3: back to that sense of control that I didn't have
Speaker 3: in the legal system.
Speaker 4: But when you're the writer, you are you are God.
Speaker 3: When you are writing, you know, you decide what goes
Speaker 3: in and you decide how are you going to say this,
Speaker 3: So you become the protagon hot and you become, you know,
Speaker 3: the hero of the story, not that you know, necessarily
Speaker 3: a traditional hero, but you are the person who tells
Speaker 3: the story and tells it how you want to tell it.
Speaker 3: So I found that sense of being able to say
Speaker 3: what I wanted to say and be in control of
Speaker 3: my story really really helpful. The publishing side of things
Speaker 3: was terrifying, and you know, thankfully I had a very
Speaker 3: supportive team, my agent and my publisher, a firm press
Speaker 3: or very supportive. I have very supportive friends, my husband,
Speaker 3: my kids, so I had I had a great network
Speaker 3: around me. But it was still absolutely terrifying. And I
Speaker 3: did initially say that I wasn't going to have a
Speaker 3: launch because I just I just wanted to hide under
Speaker 3: the doner when the book came out, I was just
Speaker 3: so like, I just want to be in another country.
Speaker 3: I just I want to be here and look people
Speaker 3: in the eye who have read my book. But very
Speaker 3: quickly I started getting messages from people who had read
Speaker 3: it who were thanking me. And of my four books,
Speaker 3: it's been the most rewarding of all four books because
Speaker 3: of the gratitude from people saying, thank you, You've helped
Speaker 3: me make sense of my story. I've been sitting with
Speaker 3: this for thirty or forty years, and I now understand
Speaker 3: things better, and yeah, thank you for putting words to
Speaker 3: what I've gone through. So I get those messages every day.
Speaker 3: And I had been warned that I would get a
Speaker 3: lot of messages from readers and that it could be
Speaker 3: really triggering for me. It's been the opposite. It's made
Speaker 3: me feel very confident that what I've done in writing
Speaker 3: this book has been worthwhile.
Speaker 2: I am a big fan of your earlier novels. Did
Speaker 2: want to ask do you look at those earlier novels
Speaker 2: now and see them differently? Do you see things that
Speaker 2: you were working through in them that you might not
Speaker 2: have identified at the time, or echoes and shadows that.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 3: All three of my earlier works have a theme of
Speaker 3: someone not understanding what's really going on. All of them
Speaker 3: have got sort of unreliable narrators that tell a story
Speaker 3: and it becomes, i think in all three stories, quite
Speaker 3: clear to the reader that the narrator is not seeing
Speaker 3: what's really going on. And I was halfway through writing
Speaker 3: my last book, Into the Fire, when I had the
Speaker 3: therapy session that's kind of uncovered this kind of different
Speaker 3: story of my past.
Speaker 4: And that was.
Speaker 3: The biggest aha moment for that book, because I suddenly
Speaker 3: realized what I was writing then and that I had
Speaker 3: kind of split myself into two characters who were the
Speaker 3: two females in that novel. One of them had one
Speaker 3: story and the other one had another story of their past.
Speaker 3: And the novel is these two stories kind of parallel,
Speaker 3: which one are you going to believe as a reader
Speaker 3: kind of thing, and all is revealed at the end.
Speaker 3: And I don't think I would have been able to
Speaker 3: finish that book had I not had that therapy session
Speaker 3: and that aha moment, because that was the novel that
Speaker 3: was I think the warm up for me writing this memoir.
Speaker 2: I guess if the body keeps score, the body of
Speaker 2: work provides commentary or.
Speaker 3: Something absolutely and it's yeah, I mean I think I
Speaker 3: think a therapist would probably you know, there's probably a
Speaker 3: book therapist out there for writers who could look at someone's.
Speaker 2: Pott for moost sessions. Let me just read what you've written.
Speaker 4: And then yeah, exactly exactly where the gaps are.
Speaker 3: And I do I do feel like, you know, I
Speaker 3: could just walk into a therapist's office and hand over
Speaker 3: my four books and just go, okay, start there.
Speaker 2: That's very efficient a reading list. I'll see you when
Speaker 2: you're done.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: I like the idea of pre reading for therapy, and
Speaker 2: I have no doubt that Groomed will join the ranks
Speaker 2: of things that empower and strengthen and not just victim survivors,
Speaker 2: but anyone who's finding it hard to find words to
Speaker 2: share a story. I think you've done them and all
Speaker 2: of us are great service.
Speaker 4: So thank you, thank you so much, Thank you.
Speaker 2: Sonja Orchard's new book, Groomed is available at all Good bookstores. Now.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening to another special episode
Speaker 1: of Read This. If today's episode has raised issues or concerns,
Speaker 1: make sure you tap into your support systems or call
Speaker 1: one eight hundred, respect or other similar services in your
Speaker 1: local area. Don't try to manage it alone. We'll have
Speaker 1: another episode of Read This to share with you next Sunday.
Speaker 4: See then,