This document is the foreword and prologue to a memoir written by Céleste Peters for a school assignment in 2022. It details how the assignment inspired her to expand and improve upon the original work to create a full book. The prologue is written from the perspective of the author in 1957, where she references leaving notes and memories in a notebook for a friend named Maurice, and wishing he could read letters that were burned that would show how much someone loved him. The author expresses regret for having to abandon Maurice but cannot continue living after revelations from the night before.
After the Darkness: A survivor's true story of childhood incest, rape, abuse, domestic violence, and her ability to overcome the negative impact these events had on her life.
After the Darkness: A survivor's TRUE story of childhood incest, rape, abuse, domestic violence, and her ability to overcome the negative impact these events had on her life
This document is the foreword and prologue to a memoir written by Céleste Peters for a school assignment in 2022. It details how the assignment inspired her to expand and improve upon the original work to create a full book. The prologue is written from the perspective of the author in 1957, where she references leaving notes and memories in a notebook for a friend named Maurice, and wishing he could read letters that were burned that would show how much someone loved him. The author expresses regret for having to abandon Maurice but cannot continue living after revelations from the night before.
This document is the foreword and prologue to a memoir written by Céleste Peters for a school assignment in 2022. It details how the assignment inspired her to expand and improve upon the original work to create a full book. The prologue is written from the perspective of the author in 1957, where she references leaving notes and memories in a notebook for a friend named Maurice, and wishing he could read letters that were burned that would show how much someone loved him. The author expresses regret for having to abandon Maurice but cannot continue living after revelations from the night before.
This document is the foreword and prologue to a memoir written by Céleste Peters for a school assignment in 2022. It details how the assignment inspired her to expand and improve upon the original work to create a full book. The prologue is written from the perspective of the author in 1957, where she references leaving notes and memories in a notebook for a friend named Maurice, and wishing he could read letters that were burned that would show how much someone loved him. The author expresses regret for having to abandon Maurice but cannot continue living after revelations from the night before.
By Céleste Peters (started may 2022-) Warning to the reader.
This book contains descriptions of sexual assault,
child abuse, self-harm, suicide, and mental illness. Foreword
I was never supposed to write this book. Never, if,
of course, my history teacher, Mr. Brugmans, had not asked me to do so. This book is, in fact, the fruit of a school assignment carried out when I was in fifth secondary at the Léonie de Waha school. The task was simple: write a notebook about a person born in the nineteenth and having lived in the twentieth century. We had the choice of the gender of the person, their skin color, their country, their year of birth, their class, their political positions and so on. I had several ideas but it was a white French woman born in 1892 of bourgeois background with a leftist leaning who finally emanated from my pen. I must admit, however, that the book you are holding in your hands at the moment is absolutely not the same notebook that I returned to my teacher one day in May 2022. Far from it, although this book was mostly inspired, it's not the final version and I'm very happy about it. I still don't understand how my teacher gave me an 'A'. Reading it again, I could only point out the grammatical errors, punctuation errors, and gibberish that I had written. However, my mom reassured me and told me that my notebook was quite remarkable and that it was not a few spelling mistakes that were going to change the situation. I still wasn't sure if she was saying that because she meant it or if it was because she was my mom. So I had several people close to me read it – some asked me without my asking them, and their responses to my book inspired me to improve it and make a book out of it. For an inspiring history teacher, a reassuring mum, an encouraging dad and fellow students who will probably never read it to upset me. Prologue
January 11, 1957
My Mum had trouble giving birth, that's what she
told me much later. When I was born, my parents were delighted. Of course, a boy would have been better. They were still happy to have me, I never stopped smiling. My smile was contagious, they said. When Mother was crying, I remember going to her and smiling at her. She smiled back at me as she wiped away her tears. Many things have changed over time. Now I don't smile anymore.
I don't have much but I have this notebook. This
notebook that I have carried with me for more than fifty years. This notebook, I bequeath it to you. I don't want the thoughts and memories I wrote there to go with me. Because yes, Maurice, I will leave. I will join them. All. You have just arrived dear friend, and you see me sorry for abandoning you in this way. I hope that somewhere within you you will find the strength to forgive me. However, after the revelations you shared with me last night, I cannot, in good conscience, continue to live. I've been planning to leave for a while now, so you're not my reason for leaving, just know that. I see you more as a deliverance. I would have liked so much to know you a little more, according to him, you were one of the best things that ever happened to him. In the letters he wrote to me, your name was often mentioned, almost always, I must admit. Oh how I would have loved to give them to you. If only I still had them, if only I had hidden them better, if only my husband hadn't burned them. . . I wish you had read them to see how much he loved you. So tenderly. So deeply.
After the Darkness: A survivor's true story of childhood incest, rape, abuse, domestic violence, and her ability to overcome the negative impact these events had on her life.
After the Darkness: A survivor's TRUE story of childhood incest, rape, abuse, domestic violence, and her ability to overcome the negative impact these events had on her life