What happens when we move beyond the question, “What happened to you?” to a more courageous one:
“What did it do to you?”
About Dispatches from the Couch:
Stacey has what she believes to be exactly the right life before she steps onto the psychological equivalent of a patch of black ice. As Dr. Hettes, she fills her days doing the work of a college professor and assistant dean. Students love her passionate teaching—focused as much on sharing neuroscience’s beauty and wonder as its theories, facts and data. Colleagues rely on her generosity and thoughtfulness as a rare female leader on a campus steeped in the blended patriarchies of academia and southern gentility.
At an emotionally charged forum on sexual violence, Stacey takes a stand against a colleague’s reckless verbal assault, outing herself as a sexual abuse survivor in the process. After that event, she skids back to her fractured childhood. One she spent years in repetitious cycles of therapy attempting to reconcile. Dr. Hettes must continue her work even as Stacey finds herself submerged in the sights, sounds, and smells of her memories with Mr. Jay, a Pentecostal church deacon.
With exceptional candor, Dispatches from the Couch invites readers to take a seat beside her in the office of her new therapist, Piper. This memoir reveals the laborious, complex, but promising work of revisiting the past in order to extract its remnants of shame and loneliness from the present.
Early praise from literary and academic folks alike . . .
“Dispatches from the Couch is the story of an arduous, complicated, and ultimately hopeful journey in the direction of healing. Dr. Stacey Hettes, a professor of neuroscience, plunges into a mid-life unraveling when she chooses to say in public that she was a survivor of sexual abuse as a child. In the capable and loving hands of Piper, a therapist, Hettes confronts the snakes that have awakened in her brain and reveals herself to have a heart full of honor and integrity. As Piper says, “There’s a badass in there.” A powerful exploration of trauma, this is a book for everyone who toys with walling themselves off to live with loneliness.” -Betsy Teter, Co-founder, Hub City Writer’s Project, Hub City Press
“‘The [psychologists] of that era held little awareness regarding how predictably a tiny girl’s brain hard-wires for self-loathing when a man reaches his body into hers.’ Stacey Hettes, a neuroscientist and survivor of sexual violence, uses her scientific expertise and first-hand experience to map the innerworkings of a traumatized brain. And like the brain searching for equilibrium, Hettes ricochets through time, tone, and narrative styles, trying to make sense of the senseless. ‘As if flipping the channel on a television, my brain pops over to the adage 'no use crying over spilt milk,' along with an image of a milk jug shattering to the floor…Do I have it in me to gather the pieces and patch them together?’ So often, we call books unflinching, but Dispatches from the Couch beautifully flinches. In her story, Hettes hesitates, she backslides, she panics and obscures. And of course she does! She is contending not just with traumatic memory, but with the culture of silence, religious conservatism, and patriarchal social structures that can keep victims of sexual abuse trapped in a cycle of retraumatization. On her therapist's couch, the little-girl Stacey trapped in a cell, the gold-star good girl she convinced herself she had to become to make up for shattering her family's Leave it to Beaver idyll, and the passionate, curious scientist who sees problems and possibility in the mind-body connection meet and make amends. Like Boy Erased and Somebody's Daughter, Dispatches from the Couch shows us that people can hurt and people can heal. An invaluable book.”
- Anna B. Sutton, LCMHCA, author of Savage Flower
“There is no turning away from the past in Dispatches from the Couch; this beautiful, thoughtful memoir explores the legacies of trauma through the lens of a neuroscientist and her therapist. Tender, thought-provoking, and difficult, Hettes' story dances razor-thin territory of what we forget and what we remember, and who we become in the remaking of our stories. Brave, smart, and big-hearted.” -Tessa Fontaine, author of The Electric Woman and The Red Grove
“It’s easy enough to label child sexual abuse as horrific, but the acts themselves are only part of the problem. Through detailed accounts of her therapy sessions, Dr. Stacey Hettes reveals the crushing, long-term consequences of sexual violation and our culture’s collective failure to address it. You can’t read this book without seeing how the “good-girl” complex sets up girls and women to be victimized. And you can’t read this book without being enraged by men who – whether deliberately or ignorantly – manipulate women and then blame them for their pain or resentment. By sharing her journey toward healing, Dr. Hettes not only reveals her vulnerability but also showcases her immense power and strength.” -Sheri Reynolds, NYT Bestselling author of The Rapture of Canaan and The Tender Grave
“[Dispatches] is a memoir of a college professor who, despite having years of experience in studying the brain, recognizes that the brain isn't always kind to its owner and returns to therapy to overcome trauma. It encourages the reader that therapy is always useful. Even if you think you've overcome your trauma, sometimes it sneaks up on you and suddenly it feels like you're back to square one. Getting help even after you thought you were "cured" is normal. Don't be afraid to seek it. -Rebecca Cruciani, editor, Apprentice House Press
“In Dispatches from the Couch, Dr. Stacey Hettes teaches us that living with trauma is an ongoing and difficult journey, but that healing is possible. By openly sharing her painful but moving personal journey, Dr. Hettes inspires others who are living with the effects of trauma, and she provides insight to those who wish to understand the therapeutic healing process. I thank her for writing it.” -Dr. R. Michael Furr, Professor of Psychology, Wake Forest University, editor, Character: New Directions from Philosophy, Psychology, and Theology, Oxford University Press
“The narrative that Dr. Stacey Hettes so expertly crafts in Dispatches from the Couch brings readers along her powerful, laborious and triumphant journey of self-discovery. Stacey’s is a story of courage - the courage to say no to oppressors and abuse, the courage to say yes to herself, and the courage to show up, session after session, committing and recommitting ‘as many more times as it takes’ to cultivate and grow the person she is.” -Dr. Mara Welsh Mahmood, Executive Director, University-Community Links, UC Berkeley School of Education, co-editor of University-Community Partnerships for Transformative Education: Sowing Seeds of Resistance and Renewal, Palgrave Macmillan,
This is such a personal and powerful account of how trauma exists in the aftermath of sexual violence. Dr. Hettes' vulnerability allows the reader to feel like they are on the couch with her in each therapy session, working through this absolutely daunting topic. This book shook me to my core, but I needed to experience it. Her story offers a rallying cry to break the silence around these issues. This book will speak to many families that are working through the trauma that sexual violence creates. I found hope through her resilience and feel empowered by her courage. Dispatches From the Couch has had such a profound impact on me. —Dr. Matthew Hammett, Executive Director for the South Carolina Institute on the Prevention of Sexual Violence on College Campuses
photo credits from top to bottom: Hub City Press; Jasper and Fern; Sheri Reynolds.com; Wake Forest Univ.; Univ. of California, Berkeley, Lander Univ.