Introduction

An astonishing journey of survival and courage told in the face of unthinkable odds The heaviness of hurt. The lightness of humor. And, finally, a reason for hope and an opportunity to serve humanity.

Stephanie Henry's childhood took an unexpected turn when her granduncle molested her. The soul-crushing experience was but the first in a series of sexual abuse perpetrated by family members and strangers that wrecked her self-esteem and left her feeling isolated, guilt-ridden, and confused. Out of necessity, Stephanie became an instant expert at survival and a student of spiritual endurance.

Desperate to regain some sense of control, she began an emotionally shattering struggle with bulimia and the curse of having ''the look'' men desire. After slipping through the education system, multiple suicide attempts, years of working as a stripper, losing custody of her daughter, battling drugs and alcohol, and enduring a string of ill-fated marriages, Stephanie put her life on course by reaching out to others and fighting for voiceless victims of exploitation around the world.

A testament to resilience and preservation, If Only I Could Sleep is a heartbreaking and riveting story of self-discovery, sacrifice, and overcoming the challenges that can make life seem unbearable.

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Excerpt

Photographs

Sitting on the floor of my dining room one evening, surrounded by photos spanning my life and before, I felt as if I were floating in a pool of memories. As I allowed those images to circle in my head, I could almost hear the voices of each of the faces that stared back at me.

Looking at a tattered old picture, I see three people sitting in a wooden restaurant booth. There’s a man in a suit, his tie firmly tightened and his arm draped around a lady. The man isn’t looking at the camera or smiling. He’s looking at the woman in his grip, who’s not smiling either. But it’s the third person in the photo I’m fixated on. He has propped his elbow on the table, and he has a cigarette in his hand. The photo was taken in 1957, long before smoking was banned from restaurants. Though he’s sitting, I can tell that his leather jacket is too short for his body.

His head is full of hair, something I will never see in any other photo of this man as long as I live. In a mere five years, while he and my mother would be living in Denver, Colorado, they would have a son, my brother Carl. Two years later, they would have me. But when the photo was taken,, he hadn’t even met my mother.

My mother is hard to describe. But I’ll try. In all the photos of her in the early stages of her marriage to my dad she is never smiling. Not even in her wedding photo. The pictures of her seem empty of happiness. You can see her beauty, but she seems hollow. My mother was a middle child. They’re said to be the most troubled ones, like little lost sheep. Mom was the middle child between a hardhearted older sister and a fun-loving, somewhat mysterious younger brother. After my grandmother’s brother died, she added his two children to her family. Mom wasn’t a troubled child, I often heard people say. But they must not have been paying attention, because she was troubled—deeply.

Timing is everything. If my mother were in the market for love when a flamboyant, larger-than-life man appeared, claiming he could give her the world, well, she would be toast! I know she fell pretty hard for my dad and probably never got back up.

It makes me think about those crazy, overadvertised dating services. Why shouldn’t we all look at the profile of the person we are about to give our soul to? What would my father’s profile look like? Would it say things like, “I am fun and loving but have just recently gone AWOL from the service, so I might have a few issues”? And mom? Hers might read, “I have been so sheltered from what looks fun and inviting that I am probably pretty desperate for love.”

If my parents had exchanged their own personal stories prior to holy matrimony would I even be here? That’s like all the questions in life that just stump the human psyche, I guess. Like why is the Texas flower, the bluebonnet, actually purple? Or why do we drive in parkways and park in driveways?

Or why couldn’t these two people, my mom and dad, be normal and provide a safe haven, something I never had until I found it on my own forty-plus years later. Then there is the question of my very existence. How did I get there? I discovered much later in life that I wasn’t exactly a welcome package. Mom and Dad somehow got from Denver, Colorado, to Blackwell, Oklahoma, before my arrival, then they put me in my grandma’s care, which is why my bond with her was so powerful.

But this picture of the father I barely recognize was probably taken about the time he was figuring out what to do with his life. His angry look is like the one I sometimes see on my brother’s manly face. Between 1957 and 1963 my dad gained 100 pounds and lost his hair. Later, he drank and stayed away from home for long stretches and from playing with my brother and me.

Between his absences, Dad would surface fat and happy, and we’d be a family. When Dad did show up—I can’t remember him being around too often—we always seemed to have a new dog, too. And when he left again, the dog would go with him. Mom wasn’t a pet-loving woman. Dogs seemed to annoy her, and she didn’t want to deal with them. Sometimes Dad brought home a bunch of stray dogs, all of which would follow him around like some kind of entourage. I bet the neighbors talked endlessly about the giant man walking the neighborhood with all those dogs.

I know Mom tried to create a home. I see photos of swing sets, birthday parties, and dolls tucked in beside me while I’m sleeping. She repeatedly said, “When you were born, we were very poor. That’s why there are few photos of you and why I made your clothes out of the same material I used for my own.” But to this day, I will never understand why she had to make the dresses exactly like the ones she wore. Talk about how to cause a daughter to lose her identity early on—put clothes on her exactly like her mother’s and call her “Sis.” It was almost as if she had to make sure that the world knew I was only a tiny extension of her.

As for photos of me as a baby? I’m pretty sure there aren’t many because I was rarely with her.

Starved for Attention

In my early twenties, while I was sitting by the ocean in Virginia Beach reading My Mother/My Self and trying to get away from a boyfriend who liked to push me into walls when he was angry, I finally connected the dots. In one photo of my mother and me, she has her arms wrapped around me, and I am looking off, expressionless. I look like I’m her possession, like something she took from the shelf, dusted off, and decided to play with a bit. Maybe in my mother’s world she was able to control only a few things, and I was one of them. Dressing me in the exact same clothes she wore made it easier for her not to lose me in a crowd, I suppose. Or to lose me at all. If I had kept on choosing the same color, fabric, and style as my mom when other people started coming into our lives and into our home, possibly she would not have lost me.

Or maybe that's why they mistook me for her. If I were an extension of this woman, and she was bypassed by molesters, then it would make sense that I was the next target. But I wasn’t old enough to fight. I didn’t know I had to.

I have several memories of Mom cooking from scratch. The comfort food that my grandma taught her to prepare was so good and always worked its magic. I can remember black cast-iron skillets filled with Crisco and frying chicken that I was only allowed to watch from a distance because I was accident-prone. My favorite part of the fried chicken was the crunchy skin that had soaked up the Crisco and the sound it made in the back of my mouth when I’d bite down. There were mashed potatoes so creamy smooth that running my fingers through them was absolutely irresistible. My family always shamed me for eating potatoes with my fingers, but that was the only way I could truly enjoy them. A fork or spoon interrupted the sensation.

As I describe the food now, it is easy to see how it became my drug. Food filled me up on an emotional level I had never experienced. Mom did that right—cooking meals, that is. She never fathomed that I would take it to a whole other level, to an addiction. Mom was too wrapped up in her own sadness to do anything as a mother beyond providing the basics. But I watched her try.

The greatest thing I remember—and I remember it so strongly that I can still physically feel it today—was tea with Daddy. In one photo, my massive father is sitting with me at a play dining table, holding a tiny, plastic teacup in one of his huge hands, his pinky up to look sophisticated, while I pour imaginary tea from the matching pot. My hair is pixie cut and straight, and I’m sure I’m wearing a dress for the special occasion. Dad’s size didn’t matter, you see, because I never felt afraid of him, ever. We were in a time and space that no one could interrupt.

Maybe Mom was taking the photo, but I know one thing for sure: She was anything but playful with me. Because of how she wasn’t with me, I learned to be what I needed for myself. I promised I’d be a playful mother, someday.

But at the time, I focused on trying to get her attention. view abbreviated excerpt only...

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