The Third Floor Window by Colleen Spiro

Incest and sexual abuse are not issues anyone likes to think or read about. However, Colleen Spiro has tackled a difficult and heart-wrenching topic, one that leaves the reader with hope. The author, whose own abuse began at a very young age, takes the reader on a difficult journey.

“The Third Floor Window,” aptly named because her childhood bedroom was on the third story, features a beautifully designed cover (at right) with a young girl looking out a window.

In the introduction, the author says “What had started out as a story of what it is like to be a survivor of child sex abuse turned into more than that. It turned into a story of living with hope. A story of death leading to new life.”

The book’s description says: “Feeling driven to help other survivors, Colleen decided to share her own story. So she set out to teach the world about the long term effects of child sexual abuse. What she found along the way was healing and hope. And the discovery that, while she has not always known God, God has always known her. And has been with her through it all.”

Her faith in God and her hope-filled message came through clearly in this book. In one inspiring section, she questions where God has been through all the years of abuse and she has a flashback of being in the room while the abuse was happening and Jesus sitting in a chair in the corner and crying.

Not surprisingly, this is a difficult book to read, but it is an inspiring memoir that would benefit sexual abuse survivors and their families because of the author’s hope-filled message.

I highly recommend it.