This weekend I read Nobodys Child by Virginia Giuffre and I wasn’t prepared for how much it would stay with me.
I picked it up thinking I’d read a few pages before bed. Except it wasn’t a few pages. It was fifty. Then another fifty. And before I knew it, I’d finished it.
I couldn’t put it down. So let’s imagine this scene, dusk and I’m still sat on the patio reading. Hence the photo for this blog.
The writing isn’t dressed up. It doesn’t need to be. That’s what makes it so heavy. It’s direct. It’s raw. It reads like someone trying to tell the truth as plainly as possible and that plainness makes it hit harder.
There’s something uniquely heartbreaking about reading someone’s lived experience in their own words. Not headlines. Not commentary. Not snippets on social media. Just their voice. Their memories. Their pain laid out in black and white.
What stayed with me most wasn’t just the events themselves it was the feeling of vulnerability threaded through the whole book. She was at risk before the headlines., starting with her own family. Her own family!! Let that sink in.
The sense of a child navigating a world that didn’t protect her. That’s the part that lodged somewhere uncomfortable in my chest. What and why.
I finished the last page and just sat there for a while.
It makes you think about how easily people can be failed. How resilience can be forced on someone far too young. How survival sometimes becomes the only available option.
It made me feel sad inside.
Books don’t always leave me feeling this way. Some entertain. Some distract. Some inspire. This one unsettled me. It reminded me that real life isn’t packaged neatly. That trauma doesn’t resolve itself in tidy chapters.
I’m glad I read it. I’m also sad that I did.
It’s one of those books that you finish knowing you won’t forget it.
And this weekend, that quiet heaviness lingered with me long after I closed the cover
CREDITS
Arvene Bistro set from Chez Moi at the EQUAL10 Event
More detail here
Mykonos Backdrop from Minimal
Isabelle Cheren 