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by Millie Anderson (Author)
A little girl learns to bury things. Some she buries in the woods behind her house, in the small graveyard where the family's pets are laid to rest, wrapped and dressed with more tenderness than she was ever shown herself. Others she buries somewhere she can't reach, for decades.
Behind the Woodshed is the true story of a childhood spent surviving the unsurvivable - running into the woods at six years old rather than staying home, sleeping in a tent behind a gas station at ten because it was safer than her own bed, learning far too young how to read a room for danger and how to disappear when she couldn't. It is also the story of the people who, without ever knowing the full truth, showed her what safety could look like: a woman who let a child sleep on her floor for a swept kitchen, a gas station clerk who never asked why a little girl needed a friend.
Written in the author's own unflinching voice and grounded in current research on how and why survivors disclose abuse, this memoir doesn't just tell one woman's story - it hands the reader a map. For survivors, it says: the delay wasn't weakness. For everyone else, it says: here is what to look for, and here is what to do.
Raw, honest, and ultimately about the people who choose to be someone's safe place, Behind the Woodshed is for anyone who has ever wondered what they'd do if they suspected a child needed help - and for anyone still waiting for someone to ask.
