Know Her Name

Once in a while, a book comes along that changes your life.

For me, that book is Know My Name by Chanel Miller.

If you don’t already know her name, it’s probably because you only ever heard the name of her attacker, Brock Turner.

When I recently saw a TikTok with the message, “Let’s not forget Brock Turner,” I jumped into the comments to shake my memory.

“I was in jail for shoplifting when this kid got arrested. My sentence was twice as long as his.”
“People blame things on victims because they want to believe it can’t happen to them. The victim must have caused it in some way.”
“The words spoken by the judge and the defense attorney make me physically ill.”
“Please read her book. It is so deep and painful to read and worth every page.”

So I bought her book.
And 48 hours after opening the front cover, the book was finished — and I was healed.

This book healed 23 years of trauma. In 48 hours.

I won’t disrespect Chanel’s experience by summarizing her story here. She told it in the exact way it was meant to be told, and I believe every adult should read it exactly as she wrote it.

What I will tell you about is what happened inside my body as this book took hold of me — and the similarities between her story and mine.

I also was 22.
I also was rebounding from my first love and heartbreak.
I also had just graduated from college, learning what being a working adult meant.
I also drank too much that night.

And I also was traumatized by that experience — meaning my nervous system was wounded, leaving me dysregulated, disconnected, and unsure of who I was.

I grabbed a highlighter and began paying attention to any slight twinge in my body as I read, marking each line that resonated deep inside.

Here are a few highlights:

Page 6: “I always wondered why survivors understood other survivors so well. Why, even if the details of our attacks vary, survivors can lock eyes and get it without having to explain.”
Six pages in, I felt seen and understood.

Page 7: “It is utter confusion paired with knowing. Gone is the luxury of growing up slowly. So begins the brutal awakening.”
She put words to a feeling I hadn’t been able to in 23 years.

Page 23: “I didn’t know that if a woman was drunk when the violence occurred, she wouldn’t be taken seriously. I didn’t know that if he was drunk when the violence occurred, people would offer him sympathy.”
I didn’t either.

Page 27: “I slid my orange folder onto my shelf, my hospital bracelet clipped off and tucked inside it. I had a strange desire to preserve everything, artifacts that proved the existence of this alternate reality.”
So did I.

I was only 27 pages in, and already, I could feel the wounded part of me getting smaller.

I’ve been doing somatic and nervous system work for about two years now — learning to notice the sensations in my body, the shifts, the spikes in energy, and the collapse that follows. I’ve learned to sit with these sensations, give them space to be, and meet them without judgment.

Even after all that healing, my 22-year-old self has stayed present deep in my core — the version of me frozen in time, waiting to be seen.

But as I turned each page, I could feel her getting farther and farther away.

By the end of the book, all I could feel was wholeness.

I had put highlighter to paper 172 times.
172 doses of medicine.

When I finished the book, I had a new and strong desire to put my 22-year-old self down for a nap. I tucked her in, kissed her forehead, and told her to rest. It was time. She deserved it.

We both slept like a baby.

When I woke up, she was gone.

And while I could identify that as healing, it also felt like a loss.
Goodbye, old friend. Thank you for always being there.

Chanel was brave enough to share her story, and in doing so, she helped me heal.

To honor this gift, I explained this experience to a friend, thinking he would tell me he thought I was crazy for putting myself down for a nap. But instead, he said, “That gives me hope.”

As author Mark Nepo said in his book The Book of Awakening, “When you heal yourself, you heal the world.”

Chanel’s story showed me exactly what that means.

Thank you, Chanel Miller.