Read Your Mind
Posts
😶#1: Know My Name by Chanel Miller - Book Summary and Takeaways

😶#1: Know My Name by Chanel Miller - Book Summary and Takeaways

January 28, 2022

Know My Name is the story of Chanel Miller, the survivor of the widely publicised Stanford Sexual Assault Case.

It is a reclamation of Chanel’s life, her story and her power over what happened to her. It is a form of processing.

It is painful, gruesome, truthful, yet also beautiful. It shines a much needed light on the darkness and gives words to the experiences that so many people struggle to describe in the aftermath of trauma.

Trigger warning: rape and sexual assault.Quotes in italics are taken directly from the book.

The Story

Chanel Miller was a 22 year old college graduate and she was working full time at a company in San Francisco. One Saturday night in January of 2015, she was going to go to bed early and read a book, but instead decided to go out with her younger sister Tiffany to a party as she was only home visiting for one night and Chanel wanted to spend time with her.

They went to a party at a fraternity house at Stanford, a ten minute drive from their parents’ house. They drank, they danced, then Chanel woke up the next morning lying on a gurney in a hospital. She couldn’t remember anything that happened past midnight.Her hair was matted and thick with pine needles, her underwear was missing, she had abrasions on the backs of her hands and on her buttock. She spent the next three hours having a rape exam and being photographed head to toe, including inside of her vagina. Over the next two weeks the details of what happened to her in the darkness came out. Chanel learned the brutal details of her own sexual assault in an online news article that popped up while she was sitting at her desk at work.Chanel was sexually assaulted on the ground behind a dumpster. While it was happening, two cyclists rode past and realised something looked very wrong. The perpetrator - Brock Turner - ran and the men tackled him. They went to see Chanel was okay and immediately called the police. By the time the authorities arrived, the cyclists who she affectionately refers to as “The Swedes” in the book, were distraught from the scenes they had witnessed.The book continues to detail the trial which followed, and the aftermath, which ended up spilling over to take up years of Chanel’s life.

There are so many lessons and takeaways from this book that it was almost impossible to choose just a few things to focus on - the highlights and notes I took totalled twenty-five pages.

With great difficulty, I have distilled the book into three main takeaways:

1. Trauma is like jars multiplying

“At the time it was very simple; I put the memory of that morning inside a large jar. I took this jar and carried it down, down, down, flights and flights of stairs, placing it inside a cabinet, locking it away, and walking briskly back up the stairs to continue with the life I had built … When I came home that evening, the jar I had carried down into the depths of my mental cellar was sitting in the center of the room, waiting for me. That’s funny, how did you get here? Again I picked it up, opened the door, and walked down, down, down the stairs to lock it away.

Every time I thought of that morning, another jar was born. Now jars filled every inch of my mind. I had nowhere to put them. They cluttered the stairwells, could not be contained in cabinets. I was full of these sealed jars, no room to sit or walk or breathe.”

The jars of trauma continue to multiply the more we try to ignore and the more we try to bury. It is a sad fact that whether we actively choose to face them or not, at some point they will start to take over.

The only way that Chanel was able to deal with her trauma and stop the jars from taking over every aspect of her life was to face it. To go through it.

Sometimes in order to go forwards, we need to go backwards.

2. After trauma, it can feel like you are living two lives

“In the beginning I was good at keeping the selves separate. You would never be able to detect that I was suffering. But if you looked closely enough, cracks appeared.”

There is this overwhelming feeling of not wanting to drag other people into the darkness with you, for fear of seeing them go through their own experience of your pain, that a relationship might change, that they will forget who you were.

“There have been numerous times I have not brought up my case because I do not want to upset anybody or spoil the mood. Because I want to preserve your comfort. Because I have been told that what I have to say is too dark, too upsetting, too targeting, too triggering, let’s tone it down.

But when I wrote the ugly and painful parts into a statement, an incredible thing happened. The world did not plug up its ears, it opened itself to me.”

There is such relief of pain when you are no longer forced to live a double life. When you don’t have to pretend anymore. When you can just be. Chanel goes on to say,

“When you hear a story about rape, all the graphic and unsettling details, resist the instinct to turn away; instead look closer, because beneath the gore and the police reports is a whole, beautiful person looking for ways to be in the world again.”

Trauma delivers itself to people in all different forms, so I believe that this is not only applicable to survivors of sexual assault or rape, it is true to anyone and everyone who has been through something. That we are all just looking for ways to exist, ways to unify the shattered parts of ourselves back into one.

3. What does healing actually look like?

“I am not sure exactly what healing is or looks like, what form it comes in, what it should feel like.

I do know that when I was four I could not lift a gallon of milk, could not believe how heavy it was, that white sloshing boulder. I’d pull up a wooden chair to stand over the counter, pouring the milk with two shaking arms, wetting the cereal, spilling. Looking back I don’t remember the day I lifted it with ease. All I know is that now I do it without thinking, can do it one-handed, on the phone, in a rush.

I believe the same rules apply, that one day I’ll be able to tell this story without it shaking my foundation. Each time will not require an entire production, a spilling, a sweating forehead, a mess to clean up, sopping paper towels. It will just be a part of my life, every day lighter to lift.”

Healing is about practice. Healing is about doing. Healing can be sharing your story with someone close to you, so that they may understand. Healing can be picking up one jar at a time, looking at it and figuring out for real what you are going to do with it.

“It took me a long time to learn healing is not about advancing, it is about returning repeatedly to forage something.”

With time, support, resources, practice, it is possible for the things that once were the most painful and inconceivable to turn into a source of strength and power:

“From grief, confidence has grown, remembering what I’ve endured. From anger, stemmed purpose. To tuck them away would mean to neglect the most valuable tools this experience has given me.”

Once upon a time, I thought that healing was about forgetting. Pushing it down. Making it go as far away as possible. But now I know healing is exactly the opposite.

Final Thoughts

Know My Name was a reckoning of sorts to read and was by no means easy. But it has imparted on me a knowing that I am not alone and has gifted me more tools and ways of thinking to keep progressing forward on my own journey, and I hope it will do the same for you.

The last quote I will leave you with perfectly sums up Know My Name’s spirit:

“It is not a question of if you will survive this, but what beautiful things await you when you do.”

Thank you for reading this first edition of Post Traumatic Growth Weekly. I am here for you and am always a willing ear if you have any thoughts or reflections bubbling up after reading.

Until next week,❤️🙏 Eleanor

Additional links and resources:If you are struggling, please reach out to a support service or professional:🤝 Human Rights list of Mental Health Support Services

There is an incredible interview with Chanel Miller on Soul Conversations with Oprah:🖥 Watch the video🎧 Listen to the podcast

With her permission, Chanel’s 30 page victim impact statement from the trial was published on Buzzfeed in early 2016. It went viral, clocking 16 million views in the first week. I highly recommend reading it. Give yourself the time and space to do so, with a cup of tea and a box of tissues. 🗞 Read the article

Next week’s book:

Coming out next Friday 4th Feb 2022 is the edition #2 of the newsletter, featuring: 📚 What Happened To You by Oprah Winfrey and Bruce Perry MD, PhD

If you haven’t already, subscribe to the newsletter here to receive it direct to your inbox!