About the Author

Just a note about the writer of this book... We live in a female body, 44 years of age, single, a college graduate, with no living children. We share our life and living space with a beloved cat. We are beginning to work part-time, after being unable to work for over a decade. We were diagnosed DID in March 1997, though we had been in therapy intermittently, un-diagnosed and misdiagnosed, for years. We survived physical, sexual, emotional, and spiritual abuse and torture for the first 30 years of life, and intermittently for the next 9 years. The length of time, severity, and the extreme nature of what was done to us resulted in the creation of a very (very) large and diverse System. Perpetrators included family members, neighbors, school-mates-as well as the fathers of two school-mates, strangers, persons in authority in churches and schools we attended, and persons in the medical and mental health communities. We are also a survivor of SRA, and organized mind control programming by several different groups of individuals. We self-mutilated for decades, attempted suicide several times, and ended up in a psych hospital once. We hated ourselves, we hated our life. We held no hope of anything ever changing, of the pain and horror and evil ever stopping. We didn't know life could be any different. We finally found our way to a remarkable therapist, skilled both in treating trauma, and in accurately diagnosing DID and knowing what it takes to manage this diagnosis and re-integrate. We do not believe we would be here today without his skill, courage, compassion and unflagging belief in us, and his commitment to fight for us as long as we fought for ourselves. Although we are not 100% in following what is in this book 100% of the time, we continue to work toward ever-higher levels of this, because the ideas contained in this book are what have saved us, and what gave us a real chance at a healthy, satisfying life. There is a lot of us in these pages. Our successes have been hard-won, and they have not come quickly... but they have come. Accepting the diagnosis, learning to accept each other inside and work together instead of trying to vex each other, learning through hard experience the critical importance of good self care, doing the wrenching work of remembering what was done to us and working through it-speaking our truth, feeling the feelings, doing the homework assignments... these are things that were incredibly, unbelievably difficult and time- and energy- consuming... difficult beyond what we believed we were capable of doing. Yet, standing where we are today, we say to you that it was worth it. And if sharing any of this helps you, it was worth it. -atw January 2005

Reviews

"Highly recommended for newly diagnosed DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder) Survivors. This book is very concise, very clear and very compassionate towards DID survivors in general. Lots of information on how to help yourself manage DID issues related to day to day life, as part of your therapy and overall healing. I would highly recommend this book to any DID survivor, because there is a lot of information in there that I try to teach fellow DID survivors in order to manage their DID issues in terms of day to day life. As we struggle with the internal issues in between therapy sessions, this book gives you lots of ideas and suggestions so that you can do the things such as work, school and have a social life. Kudos to you, ATW .. and thank you .. you did a wonderful job writing this awesome and amazing book."
-- Stephanie Bryant, Founder, Multiple Treasures, http: //www.multipletreasures.orgGot Parts is an excellent book: it is wonderfully clear, concise and compassionate. I have worked full time with MPD clients for 15 years and this book would be the first required reading. It is a good reference book because often things that are said to the client don't get retained. Having a resource book such as this would have made my client's lives much easier. I will require it for any new clients, refer it to other therapists who do this work, and have even recommended it for clients who are much farther along in their healing. It is a definite keeper and I would recommend that you let the International Society of Study of Dissociation know about it when you have it published,
-- Karen Hutchins, MA LPC, Cicada Recovery Servicea