You never truly know what goes on behind closed doors. What little girl/teen/young woman is hiding from her family, teachers, church members and friends? In every community across America there is a child/teen who is suffering from abuse, addiction, or self-deprecation. Most likely, you’d never know her depths of despair; know the signs to look for; the eyes that just don’t seem quite clear unless you’re made aware. Stephanie Henry — abuse victim, addict, author and activist — knows exactly how that girl/teen/woman feels. By telling her heart-wrenching, painful life story in If Only I Could Sleep, she hopes to give strength to the thousands of tortured souls in America and around the world to stand up and fight for themselves. And to understand that it’s not okay to be victimized, exploited, or to feel the lowest depths of self-esteem.

“If you take anything away from the experiences I am sharing, remember that many of us have suffered different kinds of abuse at the hands of others,” Henry says. “You don’t have to be ashamed and you don’t have to be silent. There is help around the corner, literally.”

By telling her life’s troubling journey — molested at a young age by her great-uncle, raped by her step-brother at the age of 13, passed through the educational system without any fundamentals, becoming a stripper to pay for her beloved first-born daughter’s child support, and becoming an educated activist on women’s empowerment issues — Henry sparks readers to question how she was able to overcome all of these adversities and find the strength to turn them into something good.