Book – RAPHAELA ANGELOU

I have just finished The Good Girl Stripped Bare (ABC Books), by Tracey Spicer, and have a cacophony of emotions coarsing through me. There is utter outrage at what Tracey endured -including being sacked via email from her job as news anchor after having a baby- and sadness, frustration, incredulity and a deep gratitude that Tracey Spicer has helped pave a smoother road for the young girls of today. She is also hysterically funny and brutally honest, a delightful combination! This is a book that shall stay with me; the wisdom contained therein shall be passed to my daughter, like a baton in a relay. I think many women will be able to identify with the various scenarios Tracey describes, a reality that saddens me. I find it ironic that I read this wondrous tome in the same week that broadcaster John Laws relayed that he insists that women who work for him must wear skirts and bare legs. The age of the dinosaur is fast becoming defunct, thank goodness, going by the commentary on social media over his remarks. Run, don’t walk, to grab a copy of this book.

http://www.jojopublishing.com/html/s01_home/home.asp I received a text from an old friend, telling me my book was listed on a site. She sent me a link. I found it confronting. The girl in the picture is me. This is my story, condensed into a book. I don’t know how I feel tonight, as I am so tired. Confronted, scared, proud. Not ready. Over-prepared. Why do we have big experiences? Simply to endure them, and hopefully survive? Should we put them in a box, sit on the box, bind it tightly with packing tape and shove it into the recesses of our mind? There are many people who are seared into my heart. They are the ones who shared their stories with me. The teacher who was tutoring the kids in the children’s ward when I was sixteen and having more surgery on my beat-up body. She had been told that I had been raped and thrown off a building. What it must have taken to sit with a traumatized teen, to tell me of her own rape… I looked at the beautiful, functional woman in her thirties, heard her describe her family, and her life. It gave me hope that I could do that too, and have what she had. I saw a survivor, not a victim. Yes, we must tell our stories. They die inside us if we don’t. Before they perish, they rot our souls and our minds, and destroy anything worth having. I took my packing box, opened the bastard and let the light in. I am now in my thirties, and I have a family too. Thank you for sharing your story, teacher-lady, whose name has been lost in the mists of time. I remember your face, your spirit and more than these, I remember your story.