Ave Maria Press – ISBN: 978-1-59471-290-6
Dawn Eden shows how the lives of the saints have given her hope and aided her journey of spiritual healing after childhood sexual abuse.
Eden uses her own story as a backdrop to introduce numerous holy people— like Laura Vicuña, Thomas Aquinas and Bernard of Clairvaux—who suffered sexual abuse or sexual inappropriateness, as well as saints such as Ignatius of Loyola who suffered other forms of mistreatment and abandonment.
Readers seeking wholeness will discover saints with wounds like their own, whose stories bear witness to the transforming power of grace. Eden explores different dimensions of divine love—sheltering, compassionate, purifying, etc.—to help those sexually wounded in childhood understand their identity in the abiding love of Christ.
Dawn Eden is the author of My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints (Ave Maria Press, 2012) and The Thrill of the Chaste: Finding Fulfillment While Keeping Your Clothes On (Thomas Nelson, 2012).
Born into a Jewish family in New York City, Dawn lost her faith as a teenager and became agnostic. During her twenties, in the 1990s, she was a rock historian, interviewing artists such as Elton John, Brian Wilson, and Del Shannon. She went on to work on the editorial staff for New York City newspapers, including the New York Post and the Daily News.
When Dawn was thirty-one, she experienced a dramatic conversion to Christianity that ultimately led her to enter the Catholic Church. Her first book, The Thrill of the Chaste (2006), became a surprise hit, published in four languages and earning her speaking invitations throughout North America, as well as in England, Ireland, Poland, and at World Youth Day Sydney. (She holds the honor of being the only chastity speaker ever to have been invited back to speak for a second time at Georgetown University.)
In her new book My Peace I Give You, which carries an Imprimatur from Donald Cardinal Wuerl, Dawn offers a Catholic spirituality of healing for adult victims of childhood sexual abuse. She holds a master’s degree in theology from the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception at Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C., and is currently continuing her studies toward a doctorate.
