The Roar of "No More"

Monica Holloway's parents failed her. Miserably. And not just once, but over and over. And now, they're compounding their mistakes by attacking her for telling her story.

This isn't terribly surprising, but it is terrible and it is disappointing and it is heart breaking.

Monica's book, Driving with Dead People, is funny and sad and brilliantly written. It kept me up all night, two nights in a row, when I first got my hands on it.

Monica herself is a thoughtful, loving, hilarious woman who told her stories the best way she knew how and with the clear intention to help others. We spent a long weekend lost in a car together, laughing and crying and sharing our stories, just before the book was published. She knew her family was likely to attack her when the book hit the shelves. She was frightened but willing to face them because she knows that abuse thrives in shadows and the only way to stop it is to shine bright lights directly into those shadows.

Once again, she's going through hell. Once again, her family put her there.

I have had the experience of being lied to for so long and with such vehemence that I no longer knew whether or not to believe my own heart and mind. I have been systematically bullied by someone louder and stronger and more demanding. I have spent sleepless nights analyzing my own actions and motives until I didn't know up from down or in from out.

How do I know Monica is telling the truth?

Because she questions herself. Because she is, once again, looking into her heart and her memories and examining the things she finds there. Because she is in terrible pain. We've talked back and forth via e-mail over the last few days, and pain drips from her words.

My experience with liars—and I've got a lot of it—is that they never question themselves, never doubt themselves, never torture themselves with "what if I'm wrong" sorts of thoughts. Their walls of denial are tall and thick and dense. They make no attempts to shine lights into their own dark corners, they simply attack. Again and again. No worry. No self-recrimination. Just long, loud attacks.

Monica's father and mother and one of her sisters are attacking her now. How could anyone who read the book doubt that her mother and father would deny their actions? And yet, The Diane Rehm Show has canceled her appearance and Monica's publisher's marketing plan is in disarray.

Sexual abuse of children is an enormous problem in this country and it will continue to be until the ones who have survived abuse and those of us who love them stand up and say "No more."

We can't simply say it, we must roar with all the force of all the lions of all the jungles that are now or ever have been, "No more."

Our voices have to drown out the denials, drown out the attacks, drown out the lies. Our demands for truth have to be so loud that the NPRs of the world, the attorneys, and the makers of marketing plans cannot afford to cave to the demands of the perpetrators.

Please join me in showering Monica with Light and peace and love.

Love (period)