Book excerpt: Heidi Ramer’s mother, Karen, was raped for the first time in 1979. She was sexually assaulted at least twelve more times by the same man over the next three years and emotionally tormented by him for the next twenty. After harboring her secret for years, she eventually sought help through counseling and her faith. After Karen’s untimely death in 2001, Heidi’s father handed her a canvas bag full of handwritten journals. In that bag, Karen left a story that needed to be told. In a candid presentation that intertwines entries from Karen’s journals with Heidi’s personal reflections, readers are led down the uniquely painful path of sexual abuse and its wider impacts. Emerging from an era when women were groomed to seek praise and approval from men, Karen chronicles her experiences from realization through forgiveness, openly expressing how the trauma affected her life, health, and peace of mind. Heidi documents the ways in which her mother’s pain was intrinsically connected to her own and how her mother’s words eventually inspired her to navigate her own brokenness. Their stories are powerfully woven together to reflect the tragic yet beautiful integration of their lives and the transformation of two women, formerly defined by pain, into a compassionate legacy now carried on by a secondary survivor. Her Words, My Voice merges the journal entries of a victim of sexual assault with her daughter’s journey of self-discovery to share an authentic, inspiring story of survival, hope, faith, and unwavering love..