Toward the Light: A Year in Paris

>>> BOOK COMING SOON!

In late-September 1992, I boarded a plane bound for a year-long adventure in Paris. Twenty-two years old, I had graduated from college the previous spring. I was headed to the city to au pair (nanny) for a French family. Two months later, just as I was making friends and finding my way, a stranger sexually assaulted me after a morning run in a park a few blocks from the apartment building where I lived. Plunged into darkness, I chose to stay in Paris and sought to rediscover and reclaim my light.

Toward the Light: A Year in Paris, a memoir, is the first-person narrative of a young woman at the intersection of adolescence and adulthood when she is sexually assaulted, catapulting her onto a new path. The book invites readers along on my search for meaning, community, and connection in the aftermath of rape.

I arrived in Paris a naïve Midwesterner who had never traveled overseas on her own. I didn’t know anyone. The cramped, drab confines of my room, on the top floor of the apartment building where the French family lived, soon became both sanctuary and cell. In those first few weeks, I ventured out by myself each morning to explore the city. Each evening, after completing my au pair duties for the day, I returned to the dimly lit room to write, detailing my adventures in my journal or letters to family.

My initial loneliness slowly dissipated as I met other au pairs, began French classes, and settled in to a routine with the six-year-old girl for whom I was responsible. Within a month of my arrival, I discovered the American Church in Paris, which became my spiritual home. The ritual of Sunday morning services and Wednesday evening choir rehearsals filled a void I hadn’t realized existed, providing me with a new circle of friends, the opportunity to make music with a group again, and the familiarity of weekly worship.

The Saturday after Thanksgiving—a cool, sunny late-fall morning—just as I finished a run in the Bois de Bologne, a park near the apartment building, a stranger sexually assaulted me. In the immediate aftermath, the couple that employed me became my caretakers and support system. They returned to the scene to help me find my glasses, which had been lost in the bushes. And they encouraged me to call a friend, knowing I couldn’t spend the day curled up in my bed—which is exactly what I wanted to do. One of my new friends stood beside me as I called a rape crisis line and held me while I sobbed.

Toward the Light focuses on the essential, but often overlooked question, “How does healing begin?” The first hours, days, and weeks after being sexually assaulted, without the support and comfort of family and friends from home, I had to find community and connection to move forward. In the book, I tell the story of the next eight months, as I began rebuilding my shattered foundation, excavating the depths within myself to uncover the courage, strength and resilience that had always been there.

My hope for you, dear reader, is that after reading my story, you will know it is possible to find beauty in the midst of our most difficult struggles.