This is a very insightful book which I fully intend to read again and keep as a reference. This book is for those abused who are ready to explore the inner needs which drive us to utilize useless and/or harmful coping mechanisms without knowing why. It is also for those who love us and need to develop patience through understanding. Having been the recipient of physical, emotional, & verbal abuse for much of my life, initially from the very people who were supposed to love & nurture me (and later from the broken record of their hateful words in my head), it was very interesting to see myself in each and every chapter. I saw my withdrawn & untrusting nature within these pages. I can better understand now my tendency to alternate between long periods of "numbness", when no one can penetrate my thick emotional armor, and those unwelcome periods of extreme emotional fragility when I must retreat to my "cave" in order to survive the pain. It gives me strength to understand that my reactions are normal given what I have been through. Also, through her apt descriptions of addictions and compulsions, which I had never thought applied to me, I better understand now my compulsive bird/mouse-like behavior of actively seeking and collecting "pretty/shiny things" as if they will somehow fill or repair the empty holes in my life. They don't. They only put holes in my bank account and clutter up my home. While reading her book, I found it helpful to replace "sexual abuse" with "abuse" in general, as the majority of the abuse I experienced was not sexual in nature (though not completely void of it). In doing so, I found that the majority of her insights clearly apply to my experiences, too. I imagine there are many others who would benefit from reading this book, as long as they don't give in to the easy temptation to say, "This book is not for me as I wasn't sexually abused." All labels aside, abuse is abuse, and rare is the adult who doesn't still have a little child inside who is hurting.
