The Tell by Amy Griffin

While I’m the first one to grab a summer read for the beach, I tend to favor a heavier books during the summer because I have more time to read while traveling on planes or riding in cars.  “The Tell” by Amy Griffin is a very heavy story about abuse and childhood trauma. What makes this memoir particularly different from other books in this genre, is that the author did not, for many years, remember her trauma. As a student athlete, she became a long-distance runner, thinking it had no relationship to trauma at all. She ran in her hometown of Amarillo, Texas, and later at the University of Virginia. Then she continued to run when she moved to New York to start her career, get married, and have children. She thought, initially, that she ran to stay fit and healthy, but she did not realize she was running, trying to flee, from something in her past she could not remember. The secret might have stayed buried forever had her husband not suggested she try MDMA psychedelic therapy. I have read about this kind of therapy, used sometimes to help provide support to cancer patients with anxiety and depression. But I had never heard of its use to help unlock a secret buried in the mind of an adult. After only one session with a trained MDMA therapist, Griffin remembers an extremely tragic and heartbreaking trauma that occurred when she was at school in Amarillo at the hands of a teacher. She bravely then travels down a road to not only heal herself, but help others who might have experienced the same abuse she had. The Tell is a difficult book to read, but by sharing her story, one believes Griffin is trying to help others unlock their own secrets, no matter how deeply they are buried. To buy this book on Amazon click here.