I Choose Elena
“A fierce, eloquent meditation on trauma, #MeToo, the body, pain and memory.” –Sinéad Gleeson,
“Thank-you Lucia Osborne-Crowley for writing I Choose Elena, for your bold and precise testimony on the devastation of sexual violence, on the body’s extraordinary and destructive compulsion to contain its own trauma. Every one of the insights you share is extremely hard-won, and I am so grateful to you for putting them into this incredible book.” –Rosie Price, author, What Red Was
“This book burrowed deep under my skin. A searing, potent testament to the vital necessity of articulation in the struggle for women to own their bodies and find a language to talk about violence and trauma.” –Jessica Andrews, author, Saltwater
“Startlingly intelligent, disturbing, profound and moving, I Choose Elena shows us that the #MeToo movement has grown roots, and that for survivors of rape and sexual assault, the revolution is just beginning. Osborne-Crowley gives us darkness wrought in light and the hope she offers is as palpable as it is hard-won.” April Ayers Lawson, author, Virgin and Other Stories
“… a thoroughly researched and deeply affecting essay.” The Fountain Sept 19
“Beautiful and sad and moving and too real in the finest way.” —Irish Times
“Exquisite. A powerful, moving insight into an incredible personal journey that also highlights the experiences of many other women. It is thoroughly researched, bringing together important learnings about trauma (particularly in relation to sexual assault) across medical, legal and social fields in an accessible way. It is a ground breaking approach to discussing issues that are so often kept in silence. It is brilliantly written, I devoured it in one sitting. The author has a captivating, emotive, seamless, and authentic way with words. This book will change the conversation.” Goodreads
“I don’t think I’ve ever actually cried reading a book but I had tears in my eyes as I finished I Choose Elena. Lucia’s writing about trauma and shame and the overwhelming desire to disappear is so honest and powerful and resonant. It truly is a perfect thing, and the best thing I could have read before starting therapy myself.” Goodreads
“A stunning, searing piece of work.” Goodreads
My Body Keeps Your Secrets
‘A work of astonishing compassion, insight, and care.’ Ellena Savage, author of Blueberries
‘It is both thrilling and terrifying when a body refuses to remain silent anymore. My Body Keeps Your Secrets is a beautiful and deeply moving book, and one that is vitally important: we have so much still to learn about the somatic nature of assault and trauma. Lucia OsborneCrowley has written an insightful and moving witness statement for women who live with the consequences of assault and abuse, and for the world that has refused to see. Our bodies hold our traumas, and Osborne-Crowley refuses to keep the silence anymore.’ Virginia Trioli, journalist and author
‘Lucia Osborne-Crowley knows the natural range of the human body is so much greater than we have imagined. She has lived it. This book is a clever catalogue of the ways our bodies endure and the work they do in making sure we do, too. Osborne-Crowley writes with an elegant precision about this most urgent of subjects. Like the human body, this book contains a warning: if we do not attend to its revelations, there may well be pain. Bold, sharp and compassionate, this work announces Osborne-Crowley as a writer with great purpose.’ Rick Morton, author of My Year of Living Vulnerably
Brave, unflinching and infuriating, the stories Lucia has collated are ones that desperately need to be heard.’ Osman Faruqi, editor of the 7am podcast
‘This book brilliantly interrogates our relationship to our bodies but also to those around us, inhabiting each daily, hourly, minute-byminute contradiction that having a body, and so being alive, entails. A testament to the power of externalising our own stories so as to understand them through others’ eyes, demonstrating how inextricably connected each of us ultimately is. Her writing is beautiful, unflinching and clear and, most importantly, it renders shame visible—a material thing that, having been sewn into the body, can also be cast off.’ Olivia Sudjic, author of Asylum Road
‘An extraordinary achievement, told with such clarity and anger, so much truth, but also with such love and hope and vulnerability.’ Sophie Mackintosh, author of Booker-longlisted The Water Cure and Blue Ticket
‘This book is a burning manifesto for the revolutionary act of articulating shame and trauma. It is a testament to the feminist praxis of listening to each other’s stories in collective solidarity as a refusal of erasure and a way to claim presence and power in the world.’ Jessica Andrews, author of Saltwater
‘Through the stories of women and non-binary people about abuse and recovery, as well as her own experience of sexual assault and chronic pain, Lucia Osborne-Crowley reaches the depths of haunting secrets locked into the body, and exposes the connection between untreated trauma, inflicted shame and long-term illness.’ Nataliya Deleva, author of Peroto Literary Award-winning novel Four Minutes
‘This book will save lives. Through rich storytelling, Lucia imposes on us the harsh realities that untreated trauma and shame have on our physical selves. A powerful collection of deeply personal stories that will resonate with women young and old.’ Emma Husar, former Labor MP