Abuse goes beyond the scars

10% of each copy of Dear Daddy will go towards ASCA, Adults Surviving Child Abuse, a group that does amazing work supporting people who have their worlds pulled down around them and shaken up all while they are children. Child abuse, any abuse for that matter, shakes the core of who you are. For a life time after abuse, a shadow of fear follows you influencing your life choices and often make people feel alone. Doubt, depression, anxiety, relationship issues, trust issues, self medicating and many other problems can weave their way into a person life- affecting who they are as an adult long after the child abuse has stopped. ASCA does amazing working, reaching into the unknown and helping adults know its going to be alright.

Dear Daddy is based on a Lilly who is just on the brink of adulthood when she is brutally attacked in her own home, resulting in her being reliant on a wheelchair. Lilly is then torn from a father she has always known to a mother she barely knows. Dear Daddy is the series of letters Lilly writes to her father as she adjust to her new life, her chair and mother. Dear Daddy was written to represent that abuse does not always leave physical scars, but also can turn the mind of the person against itself and its body. Within Dear Daddy, Lilly deals with dissociation, depression and self hate also learning dark truths about her family and life. Abuse is nothing small and the damage it can cause goes way beyond skin deep.

I wrote Dear Daddy when I was 20, when trying to voice what abuse feels like, what it feels like to be trapped in a body that had once been used against oneself. The truth is there no easy way to explain it as there are too many elements.So  Dear Daddy was written to outline what abuse can do and Lilly was placed in a chair because I had felt the only way to show what effect abuse has on the inside was by showing on the outside something everyone could see. You feel damaged. Broken even. Lilly represents the pain within. But also the hope. Dear Daddy is not a true story by any means (but true to too many people out there) but more a representation of what abuse does to ones core. It took several years to amount the courage to release Dear Daddy. But now I am proud to say "Dear Daddy by Amelia Cole" is out and that's why I believe in donating 10% of Dear Daddys profits to ASCA. Because Adults shouldnt feel alone.