Philadelphia Weekly has collected stories from the survivors of sexual abuse in the new eBook, The Survivors Project: Telling the Truth About Life After Sexual Abuse.

The book is an “anthology of more than 50 personal essays, written largely by non-professional writers and edited by journalists, all connected by pain and tragedy,” says senior editor Nina Hoffmann, who co-edited the book with her husband Joel. Both are survivors of sexual abuse and their personal stories are included in the book.

Eight stories from the book will appear in this week’s issue of Philadelphia Weekly.

“Reading these essays won’t be easy; writing them certainly wasn’t,” Hoffmann warns readers. “But that is what healing looks like. It is hell. And it needs to happen if you want to be happy.”

A portion of the book proceeds will be donated to Women Organized Against Rape and the Philadelphia Children’s Alliance.

Here’s the synopsis on Amazon:

When journalist Nina Hoffmann said “I do” to her husband Joel in 2010, she knew that he’d been sexually abused as a child. What she didn’t yet understand was that the hidden emotional wounds from that long-ago violation would soon come to permeate every aspect of their relationship, threatening their very ability to live and love together. The couple’s two-year battle to save their marriage culminated in Joel’s public coming-out as a sexual abuse survivor—and telling his story inspired them to begin collecting the personal stories of other survivors and their loved ones from around the nation. The Survivors Project presents more than 50 intimate, first-person essays from women and men of all ages and all backgrounds, having little in common except for the life-altering fact of the terrible thing that happened to them—and their determination to move forward by sharing their stories with the world.