Writing Second Assault was never just about telling a story, it was about reclaiming one.

For years, I struggled with how to put into words what had happened to me, not just the trauma itself, but everything that came after: the silence, the disbelief, the institutional betrayals, the misdiagnoses, and the psychiatric holds that left more scars than support. Second Assault began as fragments, journal entries, late-night reflections, dissociative spirals caught in text messages, therapy notes, and flashbacks that came without warning. Eventually, those fragments demanded form.

The book took shape slowly and painfully. It wasn’t linear, because trauma never is. I wrote scenes from hospital rooms and courtroom steps, in moments of clarity and during long stretches of dissociation. I wrote as a survivor, yes, but also as someone still learning how to survive. Each chapter became a negotiation between memory and meaning, between the girl I was and the woman I’m becoming.

I chose to write in the third person not to create distance, but to reflect how dissociation has shaped my experience. The main character, Abby, carries my voice, but she also speaks for many others who have lived through complex trauma and been retraumatized by the very systems meant to protect them. Her voice is plural, layered, and often at odds with itself, just like mine.

There were times I almost gave up. There were drafts I deleted, truths I softened, and chapters I wrote only to bury again. But what kept me going was the knowledge that Second Assault might do for someone else what no one did for me: name the second betrayal.

This book is not a redemption arc. It is a reckoning. It is also a love letter to survivors, those who were institutionalized and not believed, and those who are still searching for the words to describe what happened to them.

Writing Second Assault changed me. It forced me to look at the systems that failed me and ask better questions, about justice, about healing, about what it means to take back a story that was never meant to be silenced.

With deep appreciation,

Abigail