In the case of my mother, everything she ever did to me and for me came from a place of love, but the fact is that people who love us can hurt us. The fact is that there's no handbook to how to react to someone you love going through an extreme trauma. As the quote I open the book with - "Trauma is not what happens to us but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness" - I think I was really shocked that people were unable to see with compassion something that they had not experienced. It seemed to me that your anger toward your family for not really responding to you led to a really serious and secondary form of emotional trauma, because these are the people you thought would really have your back. Play icon The triangle icon that indicates to play Matis spoke to about the complicated relationship she has with her family in the wake of writing her memoir, misogyny on the trail, and how to be compassionate to those whose traumas we do not understand. The revelation opens her up to adventure, to love, and ultimately, to a newfound peace. The dangers specific to women are no greater or less than those in the civilized world, and Matis gains something in the woods that she may not have figured out back home: how to assert her authority, how to say no, and how to say yes, all with self-love. If the message you take from Girl in the Woods is that it's unsafe for a woman to travel alone in the woods, however, you have missed the point. Faced with disappointment after disappointment, however, she stops looking for outward validation from strangers who should never have meant so much to her in the first place.
Raw from her trauma and emotionally scarred from her family's inability to empathize with the rape, she at first desperately seeks companions with whom she can share her secret. What she does not expect, however, is that even thousands of miles of undisturbed wilderness can belong to men. She is prepared for the perils of nature. "I could go someplace gorgeous where nobody knew me and start over," Matis writes as she begins to map out a journey that will take her through treacherous snow-capped peaks, dense forests, and dry, splintered desert. Though Strayed leverages more life experience than Matis, who was 19 at the time, Matis's story will strike a chord with any girl who is just emerging into adulthood, confused by the unspoken and complex set of rules women are forced to abide by and the consequences for those who question them.
The book is thematically similar to Wild, Cheryl Strayed's book-turned-movie about a self-discovery trek on the same Pacific Crest Trail. In her memoir, Girl in the Woods, 25-year-old Aspen Matis writes about how she was raped on the second night of her freshman year at Colorado College, and the 2,650-mile hike that led to her salvation.
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