Beginning Again

A memoir of secondary trauma and the fragile work of healing

Thomas Trezise, a professor of French, was working on a book one morning in southern France when his wife, on a walk in the surrounding countryside, was sexually assaulted and nearly murdered. Here Trezise revisits the challenges of supporting a survivor when his own life was forever changed by the event. He closely examines secondary trauma, in which grief, fear, and anger carry no clear public recognition and little permission to speak. While drawing attention to the overlooked distress of those who stand by survivors, he questions his own masculinity in a world where the vast majority of sex crimes are committed by men. With emotional clarity and psychological insight, Beginning Again recounts the struggle to rebuild a life despite marital and social strains, professional turmoil, and the unfamiliarity of the French legal system. And it highlights how post-traumatic experience can change the very stories told to make sense of it, describing the author’s joy at becoming a father and his discovery, through the culture of Martinique and Guadeloupe, of a renewed relationship with France.