Interview with 'I Am The Product of Rape: A Memoir' Catherine Wyatt-Morley & Jalyon Welsh-Cole

Catherine Wyatt-Morley is the founder, chief executive officer and heartbeat of Women On Maintaining Education and Nutrition, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit social service organization for the at-risk and HIV-positive community. In 1994, Wyatt-Morley founded Women On Reasons To Heal (W.O.R.T.H.), the first and what has become the oldest HIV-positive women’s support group in Middle Tennessee.

Wyatt-Morley has appeared in countless media outlets nationwide, including SELF Magazine, the Today Show, A&U Magazine, POZ Magazine, CNN, Voices of America, MSNBC, Talk America Radio, FX Radio, SiriusXM Satellite Radio, the Palm Beach Post, the Indianapolis Indiana Recorder, the Los Angeles Times, the Canadian Sun, Nashville Scene, and the Tennessean.

Jalyon Welsh-Cole has been director of Women On Maintaining Education and Nutrition, a 501(c) (3) nonprofit social service organization, since 2010. Welsh-Cole began writing when she was very young, starting with short stories and poems. As a teen, she was inspired to draw, finding comfort and creativity in her art. She joined forces with Wyatt-Morley to share her story in I AM THE PRODUCT OF RAPE – A MEMOIR. Together, they also have created #HealingSecretHurts workshops, which bring the spectrum of traumatizing sexual assault into the light.

WEBSITE & SOCIAL LINKS:

WEBSITE | TWITTER | FACEBOOK

Q: Welcome to The Writer's Life! Now that your book has been published, we’d love to find out more about the process. Can we begin by having you take us at the beginning? When did you come up with the idea to write your book?

I had been thinking about the idea in my early thirty’s but life kept getting in the way. Nevertheless in my late-forties the idea was affirmed to write I Am the Product of Rape―A Memoir the moment I spoke to my biological mother during our first telephone conversation. Before that conversation I was writing journal notes to myself as a way to heal from the pain of my childhood growing up in an adoptive home where there was clear favoritism made between my brother and me. Journaling has always been a method of processing and organizing my thoughts. But the day I heard my biological mother’s voice I knew this would be much more than journal notes.

Q: How hard was it to write a book like this and do you have any tips that you could pass on which would make the journey easier for other writers?

It was an extremely difficult journey and took many years to write I Am The Product of Rape-A Memoir. In the process I was taken to unfamiliar destinations and exposed to unfathomable pain. Although I have writing AIDS Memoir Journal of an HIV Positive Mother, (Kumarian Press, 1997), Positive People, Combating HIV and AID (Trafford Publishing, 2006) My Life with AIDS, Tragedy to Triumph (Four Pillars Media Group, 2013), writing I Am The Product of Rape-A Memoir was traumatizing, difficult, and filled with tears. At times my words would numb me, simply put, I would be left raw. Over the course of this often emotional pilgrimage, which exposed heartbreaking secrets, lies, immorality, and deceit, I found my truth.

My suggestions for others would be no matter how long it takes, no matter how much the pain, write! Writing is healing. Hand write it, type it, or speak it into a microphone. Whatever it takes, just do it. Get it out.

Q: Who is your publisher and how did you find them or did you self-publish?

Four Pillars Media Group is the publisher of I Am The Product of Rape-A Memoir. They are a small publishing house and had published my third book. They were failure with my work and welcomed this manuscript.

Q: What other books are you working on and when will they be published?

In addition to I Am the Product of Rape―A Memoir, the authors have developed an interactive Workbook, which is near completion. We intend to expand the I Am the Product of Rape―A Memoir brand by using #HealingSecretHurts (#HSH). Using the #HealingSecretHurts Workbook and other accompanying tools our intent is too jointly conduct small to mid-size acquisition sessions which, with attendees, explores the raw subject matters of I Am the Product of Rape―A Memoir in a safe, comfortable environment. We will conduct engaging speaking events using visuals and the interactive workbook. Our mother daughter synergy educates, enlightens and empowers as we share our experience books while bringing the spectrum of traumatizing sexual assault into the light.

Q: What’s one fact about your book that would surprise people?

People are surprised by a woman who knowingly allows her husband to unleash his inhuman sexual savagery upon her vulnerable child for years, while she herself continued to have his children year after year. People’s astonishment intensified when they read that I was created through the atrocities of incest by that very same brutal manipulative monster, and that I was born to a twelve year old child in a filthy basement and, while moments old, was denied by a heartless grandmother who never bothered to look at me. The discovery that my oldest son was a toxic anger uncontrollable inferno sexually violating my daughter, his sister, for many year has amazed many people.

Q: Finally, what message are you trying to get across with your book?

The intergenerational trauma, historic oppression, and life-altering consequences of incest molestation and rape have cruelly and senselessly entrenched in our family. We have had to face incestuous acts that were heinous and committed without remorse. Recognizing the past cannot be changed, I Am the Product of Rape—A Memoir speaks up, speaks out, speaks loud demonstrating that the cycle can be broken. Jalyon courageously says, I want to un-shame incest victims and bring awareness. We can personally testify that there is a purpose in all that we have endured. It is our purpose to use our life's experience as an example of healing. The events described in I Am the Product of Rape—A Memoir led us to the great privilege of reaching out to others with our family story in which, somehow, horror became hope.

About the Book:

Title: I AM THE PRODUCT OF RAPE – A MEMOIR
Authors: Catherine Wyatt-Morley and Jalyon Welsh-Cole
Publisher: Four Pillars Media Group
Pages: 194
Genre: Memoir

BOOK BLURB:

The phrase “secrets and lies” takes on terrible new meaning in Catherine Wyatt-Morley’s devastating book, I AM THE PRODUCT OF RAPE – A MEMOIR.

Wyatt-Morley’s shocking story traces the repeated patterns of rape and incest that plagued four generations of her family, including Wyatt-Morley’s birth in a filthy basement to her 12-year-old mother, who was sexually abused by her step-father.

“…In the process of writing this book, an extremely difficult journey that has taken years, I was taken to unfamiliar destinations and exposed to unfathomable pain,” Wyatt-Morley relates. “Part of that pain was learning that I was created through the atrocities of incest by a brutally manipulative monster and, while only moments old, (I was) denied by a heartless grandmother who never bothered to look at me.”

Wyatt-Morley wrote I AM THE PRODUCT OF RAPE – A MEMOIR, she says, “as my way of dealing with my personal healing. But through conversations with many diverse women, I quickly began seeing I was not alone. So many had never told anyone of the abuse that has happened to them; yet they have a need to heal, to not feel isolated.”

Wyatt-Morley’s daughter, Jalyon Welsh-Cole, also suffered the terrible legacy of her family when she was abused by her eldest brother. She wrote the epilogue to I AM THE PRODUCT OF RAPE – A MEMOIR, an essay she called BURNING HOUSE, in response to the continued pattern of abuse that formed her familial legacy.

“Most of my family members who have learned of this are dealing with it as well as one can,” Welsh-Cole says. “However, others are still in disbelief and struggle to understand. For over two decades I kept this heinous secret to myself. I have had time to bury it, cry over it, and finally seek therapy and come to grips with it.”

Welsh-Cole’s mother’s story “made me feel as if our bloodline was full of secrets and lies that I wanted to expose,” she continues. “I knew after learning of my grandmother’s story that I wasn’t alone. Today, I cannot allow this to continue to happen in our family.”

As dark and unrelenting as it is, the story told in I AM THE PRODUCT OF RAPE – A MEMOIR leads to a conclusion of overcoming tremendous odds, leaving readers riveted, inspired, and empowered.