{"id":4474,"date":"2018-07-25T14:36:01","date_gmt":"2018-07-25T18:36:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/?p=4474"},"modified":"2018-07-25T14:36:01","modified_gmt":"2018-07-25T18:36:01","slug":"life-stories-103-michelle-stevens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/2018\/07\/25\/life-stories-103-michelle-stevens\/","title":{"rendered":"Life Stories #103: Michelle Stevens"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.beatrice.com\/life-stories\/LifeStoriesMichelleStevens.mp3\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/LS-michelle-stevens.jpg\" alt=\"Life Stories: Michelle Stevens\" title=\"Life Stories: Michelle Stevens\" width=\"532\" height=\"353\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-4475\" srcset=\"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/LS-michelle-stevens.jpg 532w, http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/LS-michelle-stevens-300x199.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 532px) 100vw, 532px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I first met <a href=\"http:\/\/scaredselfless.com\/about.html\" target=\"_blank\">Michelle Stevens<\/a> in 2014, back when I was an acquiring editor for a startup book publishing company. We took a meeting with her and her agent after reading the proposal for her book, which combined a memoir about surviving childhood sexual abuse with solid explanations of the psychology involved in the dissociative identity disorder that Stevens, among others, developed as a result of that protracted trauma. I was impressed by the proposal, and the meeting, but I wasn&#8217;t the one who got to make those sorts of decisions, so we ended up passing on the book&#8212;fortunately, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.powells.com\/partner\/29017\/biblio\/9780735215351\" target=\"_blank\"><i>Scared Selfless<\/i><\/a> wound up with a great publisher who was able to support the book in a way it deserved, so chances are that, sometime in 2017, you might have seen her in a magazine you were reading, or on a daytime talk show&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Happily, she and I were able to keep in touch, so when she came to New York City to do some media, we were able to get together for a frank conversation about&#8212;among other things&#8212;what dissociative identity disorder is (and what it isn&#8217;t), about how surviving her trauma motivated her career in psychotherapy, and about what it&#8217;s like to come forward with a story about surviving sexual abuse in a country where, let&#8217;s face it, the outcome of the most recent presidential election suggests our concern about sexual assault is not what it should be. I&#8217;m delighted to finally be able to share this conversation with you.<\/p>\n<p><font size=\"1\">Listen to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.beatrice.com\/life-stories\/LifeStoriesMichelleStevens.mp3\" target=\"_blank\"><i>Life Stories<\/i> #103: Michelle Stevens<\/a> (MP3 file); or download this file by right-clicking (Mac users, option-click). Or <a href=\"https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/life-stories\/id650168716\" target=\"_blank\">subscribe to <i>Life Stories<\/i> in iTunes<\/a>, where you can catch up with earlier episodes and be alerted whenever a new one is released. (If you&#8217;re already an iTunes subscriber, please consider rating and reviewing the podcast!)<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"1\">photo courtesy Michelle Stevens<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I first met <a href=\"http:\/\/scaredselfless.com\/about.html\" target=\"_blank\">Michelle Stevens<\/a> in 2014, back when I was an acquiring editor for a startup book publishing company. We took a meeting with her and her agent after reading the proposal for her book, which combined a memoir about surviving childhood sexual abuse with solid explanations of the psychology involved in the dissociative identity disorder that Stevens, among others, developed as a result of that protracted trauma. I was impressed by the proposal, and the meeting, but I wasn&#8217;t the one who got to make those sorts of decisions, so we ended up passing on the book&#8212;fortunately, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.powells.com\/partner\/29017\/biblio\/9780735215351\" target=\"_blank\"><i>Scared Selfless<\/i><\/a> wound up with a great publisher who was able to support the book in a way it deserved, so chances are that, sometime in 2017, you might have seen her in a magazine you were reading, or on a daytime talk show&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Happily, she and I were able to keep in touch, so when she came to New York City to do some media, we were able to get together for a frank conversation about&#8212;among other things&#8212;what dissociative identity disorder is (and what it isn&#8217;t), about how surviving her trauma motivated her career in psychotherapy, and about what it&#8217;s like to come forward with a story about surviving sexual abuse in a country where, let&#8217;s face it, the outcome of the most recent presidential election suggests our concern about sexual assault is not what it should be. I&#8217;m delighted to finally be able to share this conversation with you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[272],"tags":[1102,132,1100,305,653,1101,1103],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4474"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4474"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4474\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4477,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4474\/revisions\/4477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}