Fugue: I can't remember how I got here... - Paperback

by Dody J. Johnson (Author)

I lived my life as silently as I could. I spoke my first words to my beautiful kindergarten teacher when I was five. It wasn't safe to speak at home. At this tender age when I was forming memories to last a lifetime, I was also repressing them as they happened. Fugue is about growing up in a violent home where most nights there was more food on the ceiling than on our plates. I've always remembered wanting to die as a child, but never knew why. I carried my suicidal thoughts into my adult life flirting with death as I sped down rolling, flexuous country roads. I picked up hitchhikers that looked like Charles Manson thinking maybe this will be my last day. My dreams of leaving home helped me until I left. I never found home no matter how many times I moved. I never found someone to love me no matter how many times I married. And then one day I heard a voice from my past and I listened. Fugue is about healing and shows life in full circle. I was healed after facing my childhood traumas, and present for my daughter while she healed from hers. Fugue is not about blaming, revenge or getting even. It's about understanding that you can heal from whatever crime was done to you as a child. Today, I look for opportunities to tell people, "A violent home can offer you a quality life."

Author Biography

Dody Johnson is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. With seventeen years of healing behind her, she offers hope to other survivors to begin their healing journey to obtain a quality life. Dody is the Vice President for the nonprofit organization EmpowerSurvivors, which offers an array of services to help survivors heal from their childhood sexual abuse. She facilitates a support group from Restoring the Heart Ministries, www.rthm.org called In the Wildflowers, counseling series, breaking the bonds of sexual abuse. Dody received a grant provided by the McKnight Foundation to work with a professional mentor to help prepare her book for publication. Fugue, I can't remember how I got here...was published in 2011, and the expanded edition in 2015. Dody is a public speaker and has spoken often at prisons and churches to educate the public about childhood sexual abuse and the effects it has on a child's life. Besides Dody's firsthand experience with childhood sexual abuse, she has also received sexual abuse training from Darkness to Light, domestic abuse training from The Refuge Network and was contracted by Papillon Libre, a national nonprofit organization working to stop the secrecy surrounding child sexual abuse. Dody was a member of RiverVoices writer's group while she worked on her book, and a member of Toastmasters to overcome her shyness of public speaking. Dody was told seventeen years ago by her group facilitator, "If you do the hard work to heal, your life can be of better quality than of someone who was never abused." She made doing the hard work her goal, and for proving that to be true, she now encourages others to do the hard work to heal so they too can obtain a quality life.