Trish Kinney is not only a survivor, but a victor in every area of her life. This book is a must read not only for survivors of sexual abuse, but for all who have the courage to face whatever life has to offer and continue that journey with optimism, hope and eventually the ability to love oneself.
Claire R. Reeves, MA, C.C.D.C.
President/Founder
Mothers Against Sexual Abuse, MASA
Author: Childhood – It Should Not Hurt
This is a no-holds-barred, courageous examination of how childhood abuse shapes a life and how honesty with oneself can lead to healing. It's also a very well-written terrific read.
Casey Dorman, Ph.D
Psychologist and author of I, Carlos
Silver Platter Girl kept me thinking all day and all night. Ms. Kinney's blunt, raw truth of her survival of sexual abuse is like holding a mirror up to your own history and inspecting it directly - the good and the bad. Her willingness to share her trauma and her triumph had me truly analyzing my own life and relationships. She unwraps her trauma as her life story unfolds, in much the same way the trauma of abuse is layered on over time for many victims - it seeps into every aspect of your life - until you can't recognize your true self. Ms. Kinney introduces the reader to every aspect of the abuse that suffocates her to the point where she is faced with an illness that is a physical manifestation of her trauma.
Silver Platter Girl is about how each of us can find our inner resiliency and have a healing awakening, even if the catalyst is fighting and defeating a life-threatening illness. Thank you, Ms. Kinney, for baring your heart and soul for all survivors to know there is always hope for healing and finding themselves again.
Diana McWilliams
Executive Director
Accounts of pain are common. Honest accounts are rare. Writing honestly about it makes it hurt again. The only reason to revisit the emotional wounds endured by Trish Kinney is, in the telling, to be able to help someone else ... it is the same motivation that makes someone dash into a burning building or plunge into an icy river to save a stranger. If medals were given for books instead of reviews, Silver Platter Girl would merit a mix between a Purple Heart and the Congressional Medal of Honor.
FJ Camper, author of Mindbenders and The MK/Ultra Secret
Trish Kinney's story is a classical story of survival behavior. The changes she created for herself are changes which lead to immune competence and the healing of one's life. For me, her experience can be summarized as being born again in the sense that it is the birth of something new in each of us which conquers death. Her acting experience, I am sure, was a help too. I am always telling people to act and behave as if they were the person they wanted to be. Silver Platter Girl shows that if you rehearse and practice who you want to be, it can happen, regardless of your past, when you realize you are a divine child and learn to love yourself.
Dr. Bernie Siegel, author of NY Times bestseller, Love, Medicine and Miracles
Trish taught me that health is a choice that a patient can make, even when facing dismal odds. Health, whether physical, mental or spiritual, begins as a choice to make negative circumstances work in your favor. This story tells of how innocence lost and the spiral of negative consequences can be turned around not only in spite of cancer but in some ways because of it. It shows how transformative mental imaging can create an extraordinary success not only against cancer and the side effects of treatment but also against childhood demons.
Like the home town of
John K. Camoriano, MD, FACP
Mayo Clinic
Trish’s book confronts addiction head on as we are transported deep into the oceanic crevices of her psyche. Suffering from the ultimate betrayal of childhood: a father’s sexual exploitations and a powerless mother who could not protect her family, Trish loosens the boundary between how addiction to other people is not much different from other addictions. Trish’s addiction to be desired reveals the unconscious attempt to contain her mass of undigested suffering and grief. Her story teaches us that there is no short cut from the necessary truth: to avoid pain creates greater pain. And then she got the ultimate wakeup call… her diagnosis of breast cancer in the form of a massive tumor. Trish’s life had “grown” out of control, symbolizing the wounded feminine part of her.
As a dancer, already skilled in a relationship with her body, she used her diagnosis as a path to recovery. Being entrapped by her immense emotional and now physical suffering (and the survivor’s guilt she held for her sisters suffering as well) brings to mind the wisdom of the late genius of modern dance, Martha Graham: the body doesn’t lie. Trish teaches us the only true exit from our own suffering is in the becoming a psychological being. It is the active synthesis toward a more completed self, integrating all parts of the human experience: the intellectual, emotional, physical and spiritual life which initiates healing the painful split between the mind and heart. Trish takes another necessary truth in the healing journey: responsibility for one’s own transgressions, knowing sometimes we need to go backwards in order to move forwards. She has a huge heart, big enough to forgive herself and her parents with just one non-negotiable demand: they must also quest for the truth and take responsibility for the hurt they caused.
Last but not least, Trish’s story tells all of us we cannot do this journey alone. She has had three exceptional men in her life to support her and love her. This book is an ode to her two sons and husband equally brave in joining her on this journey.
Joanna Dovalis MFT PhD
Co-Author, Grieving, Therapy, Cinema and Kieslowski’s Trois Couleurs: Blanc